A recent study conducted by the Pew Research Centre revealed that millennials in America are leaving traditional institutionalised religions such as Christianity. Roughly two-thirds of those between ages 23-28 surveyed said that they attend worship services ‘a few times a year’ or less. 4 in 10 say that they seldom or never attend.

According to David Masci, while the general American public is becoming less religious, millennials are ‘by many measures less religious than everyone else.’ He adds that young adults born between 1981 and 1996 are ‘much less likely than older Americans to pray or attend church regularly or to consider religion an important part of their lives.’

Michael Hunt, professor of sociology at New York University, thinks that this in part has to do with the way in which millennials have been brought up by their Baby Boomer parents. They have been taught to think for themselves, to find their own moral compass, as it were. Hunt says that ‘As a result, they are more likely to have a “do-it-yourself’ attitude toward religion.’

The American Enterprise Institute conducted a similar survey involving more than 2,500 Americans in the same year. It offers the following reasons for millennials’ disinterest in organised religions:

• Millennials are less likely to develop strong associations with organised religion because they never had strong ties with it in the first place.
• These young adults are also likely to have a spouse who is not affiliated with a religion, thus reinforcing their secular worldview.
• The changing cultural climate, especially with regard to the relationship between morality and religion, has increasingly convinced parents that religious institutions are not relevant to their children.

Millennials also tend to have a negative view of religious people. Fifty-seven per cent of the young adults surveyed are of the view that religious people are generally less tolerant of others.

Many millennials who have drifted away from the Church are less likely to return to it later in life. In previous generations a cycle can be discerned when it comes to religious affiliations and involvement. Young adults may stray away from the Church for a period in their lives, but as they become older and have a family, they tend to return to the Church.

Sadly, this is not the case for millennials. According to Hunt, ‘In the past 20 years, we really haven’t seen a lot of evidence of that cycle continuing.’

This brings me to the ‘do-it-yourself’ attitude toward religion that Hunt referred to. While millennials have no patience with organised religions like Christianity, they are attracted to what has sometimes been described as ‘nonreligious spiritual practices.’ Many have also been turning to the occult.

According to Brendan Pringle, ‘As young people flee from churches that don’t align with society’s values, spirituality and occult are quickly filling the void. Sadly, this is where many are finding meaning in their lives.’

Some commentators are of the view that millennials are drawn to the occult because they feel that it gives them greater control over their lives. According to Melisa Jayne, who owns a ‘metaphysical boutique’ in Brooklyn:

Whether it be spell-casting, tarot, astrology, meditation and trance, or herbalism, these traditions offer tangible ways for people to enact change in their lives … For a generation that grew up in a world of big industry, environmental destruction, large and oppressive governments, and toxic social structures, all of which seem too big to change, this can be incredibly attractive.

In the US, the so-called psychic service industry is seeing an unprecedented upsurge in business as more millennials are attracted to the occult. According to an article published in MarketWatch, the industry is now worth USD 2 billion annually in the States.

In an article published in The Observer entitled ‘Star Gazing: Why Millennials are Turning to Astrology’, Rebecca Nicholson reports that many millennials have resorted to astrology and horoscopes to find direction and meaning in their lives.

She gave the example of a website called The Cut which focuses on fashion and catered to the millennial audience that saw its typical horoscope post receiving 150% more hits in 2017 than in the previous year.

Another social networking app that is popular among millennials that Nicholson referenced in her article is called Co-Star. It is an app ‘which sees just how compatible you are with your friends and lovers, based on their birth charts.’

In an interview with The Observer, Zing Tseng, the UK editor of the popular women’s website Broadly, offers this explanation as to why millennials find the occult attractive:

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My personal belief is that people tend to turn to mysticism, spirituality and the occult in uncertain times. And I feel that young people, especially, are living in one of the most uncertain times ever, at least in my living memory. There’s an increasing willingness to question the arranged order, break out of pre-defined social norms and look for answers elsewhere.

While these trends are more pronounced in the US, Christian parents, pastors and church leaders in Singapore should be concerned that they are not replicated here.

Some years ago, the Barna Research Group published an interesting article on its website entitled ‘5 Reasons Millennials Stay Connected to the Church’. This article is instructive, and could serve as a catalyst for conversations among Christian parents, pastors, leaders and millennials about the importance of the Christian faith and the church.

Among the many important points that the article discussed, two or three especially stand out as we evaluate our approach to ministry to young adults in our churches.

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The first has to do with the importance of relationships. According to David Kinnamon, president of the Barna Group:

… among those who remain active, this much is clear: the most positive church experiences among Millennials are relational. This stands true from the inverse angle as well: Seven out of 10 Millennials who dropped out of church did not have a close friendship with an adult and nearly nine out of ten never had a mentor at the church.

This, it seems to me, to be a very important observation. In order to reach out to the young adults in our congregations, pastors and church leaders must be careful to invest more time in cultivating relationships.

The second striking point that the article highlights is the need to make what it calls ‘reverse mentoring’ a priority. The church must help young adults to find their true mission, a ministry where they can serve with conviction and commitment. ‘Effective ministry to Millennials’, Kinnamon says, ‘means helping these young believers discover their mission in the world, not merely asking them to wait their turn.’

And finally, the article points out that millennials must be nurtured in such a way that they can truly experience a deeper sense of intimacy with God. It is out of this profound relationship with God that young adults gain the conviction to participate in the ministries of the church, which in turn will further deepen their faith in and commitment to God.

According to the aforementioned article, ‘Millennials who remain active are more likely than those who dropped out to say they believe Jesus speaks to them personally in a way that is real and relevant (68% versus 25%). Additionally, actives are much more likely to believe the Bible contains wisdom for living a meaningful life (65% versus 17%).’

Millennials challenge the church and her leaders to ever greater authenticity, and to put more emphasis on cultivating relationships that are at once mutually edifying and redemptive.

A recent article by a former editor of the Straits Times in Singapore caused some interest related to the spike of Covid-19 infections, especially those related to the B1.617 variant.

Of interest to Christians is the author’s reference to thymos or thumos, a Greek word used by ancient Greek philosophers. As it is also found in the Bible, it would be useful to reflect on how the Bible uses the word.

 Thumos and Orgē

Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines the word as “passion, angry, heat, anger, forthwith boiling up and soon subsiding again; glow, ardor, the wine of passion, inflaming wine (which either drives the drinker mad or kills him with its strength.”

An example of how the word is used in the Bible is: “When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious” (Lk 4:28). The ESV Bible translates the word as “wrath”.

There is another Greek word in the Bible that is translated as wrath—the word orgē. This word appears in what John the Baptist says in Mt 3:7: “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”

Sometimes both thumos and orgē appear together. “Get rid of all bitterness, rage [thumos] and anger [orgē], brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” (Eph 4:31).

What, then, can we learn from the way the Bible uses these words?

First, these emotions can easily go out of control and lead us to sin. If we harbour them within us, we can begin to play god and take things into our own hands. The Bible generally sees these emotions negatively. It is for this reason that the church fathers considered passion to be a dangerous thing, something that would easily lead us to sin.

Second, only God can handle anger on His own; His wrath arises from His character and is always just and merciful. “Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’ He treads the winepress of the fury [thumos] of the wrath [orgē] of God Almighty” (Rev 19:15).

The key lesson for us is this: We should handle our anger (even if we consider it to be just and righteous) with care, for it can easily mislead us if not properly grounded. On our own, without any significant reference to God, we are bound to become angry in a sinful way (Eph 4:26).

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 Lessons from Micah 6:8

It is increasingly common to quote Micah 6:8 as a battle cry among Christians to rise up to fight for social justice. Even those who are not practising Christians use this verse to rally the troops.

The context of this verse is God’s charge against Israel’s unfaithfulness. The prophet chimed in by pointing out that without faithful obedience, all the ritualistic temple sacrifices were of no use. Then, he summarised what God actually required of Israel. The people were to act justly and mercifully as they walked humbly with God.

All three parts of the verse must be strongly held together, especially our humble walk with God, without which the other two will fall into disarray. We can see this in Psalm 82. There is a strong call to defend those who are oppressed and help those who are needy (vv. 3-4). But this is truly possible only because God is presiding over everything: “God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the ‘gods’” (v. 1). The psalm ends with an appeal to God to rise up to judge the earth (v. 8). The call to practise justice and mercy is bookmarked by references to God as the ultimate judge, one who has perfect justice and mercy.

In his book, The Magna Carta of Humanity, Christian thinker Os Guinness argues that there is a difference between the freedom conceived by the founding documents of America in 1776 and that conceived by the French Revolution in 1789.

He traces the roots of 1776 to the Hebraic-Christian tradition connected to Mt Sinai and argues that the vision of freedom in 1789 was based on an angry uprising that was epitomised by French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot’s statement, “We will never be free until we strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest.”

The French Revolution thus sought to overthrow both state and church as oppressive institutions, and freedom was measured in terms of the degree of rejection of these institutions. Guinness traces many of the current calls to freedom to the sentiments connected with the French Revolution and its Enlightenment foundations.

Guinness notes that “post-modernism, political correctness, identity politics, the sexual revolution, and all that stuff, right down to critical theory, they are all the heirs of 1789, not 1776. And as you know well, they come out badly. Revolutions in that side never succeed and the oppressions never end, and yet, many Americans have become bewitched by ideas from the radical left.”

If Guinness is right, then Christians who are actively involved in the Micah 6:8 agenda of justice must examine whether the roots of their premises and actions are biblical or whether they are from secular notions of rights and freedoms, disconnected from God (think “woke culture” and neo-Marxism).

When Jesus criticised the Pharisees for their legalistic religion, he referred to “the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Mt 23:23), an obvious reference to Micah 6:8. To walk humbly with God is to be faithful to Him, to learn to be humble under God’s mighty hand (1 Pet 5:6).

It is good that Christians are paying more attention to justice issues, but we must be careful that we have proper roots for Christian action—faithful obedience to God and a deep humility.

Cultural theologian Andrew Sandlin has argued that cultural Marxism is “the preeminent social vision of our time” and describes its wide and deep influence in society through the activism of an influential minority (“A Primer on Cultural Marxism,” Journal of Christian Legal Thought, 8:2 [2018]).

This is also being seen in the church. Sandlin asserts: “Professing and practicing Biblical Faith, in all of its glorious and gracious hierarchies, is the victorious alternative to Cultural Marxism.”

It is right to get upset with the bad things that can be found around us in the world. After all, the prophet Isaiah saw in God’s presence that he lived among “a people of unclean lips”. But first he realised that he himself was “a man of unclean lips” (Isa 6:5). If there is anger within us about sin around us, we must first turn it inwards, because we, as individuals and members of various groups, are also guilty of sin.

It is out of that humility, in God’s just, holy and merciful presence, that we can then serve God in Christ by seeking justice and mercy and bringing some good in this world.

This article is aimed mainly at Christian leaders, educators and theologians. But I hope that as they are called to account, thoughtful Christians will also come to a deeper appreciation of the church and a higher expectation of its leadership.

Let us begin by defining the second of the two key terms in the title:

A tradition is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least key parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretative debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted [Alasdair Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p. 12].

A tradition is about the way a community, bound together by fundamental agreements or core values, engages with various challenges to its core values so that it can continue to develop and progress without changing its basic identity.

Now, for the other key term. In Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (Eerdmans, 2010), Stanley Hauerwas recounts the tragic story of John Yoder who was disciplined by his Mennonite Church for his bizarre behaviour with women. According to Hauerwas, Yoder was ‘experimenting’ with new forms of sexual relationship besides marriage. The temptation to experiment with tradition reveals an inherent weakness in the Anabaptist tradition to which Yoder belonged. It is the consequence of rejecting the Church after Constantine when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. I think Yoder got the idea of tradition right but one vital part of the nature of tradition wrong.  It is this small but critical error which led Yoder to experiment with tradition and helps to explain his strange behaviour near the end of an illustrious career.

Hauerwas himself, unfortunately, seems to entertain a similar view of tradition. It shows up in his self-designation as a ‘high-church Mennonite’ and the description of his own situation as ‘ecclesiastically homeless’. He demonstrates his homelessness by moving through several denominations. In fact, at one time he was not attending church at all until a student challenged him about his inconsistency. Hauerwas has a strong concept of the church: ‘I am not even sure what I believe. I am much more interested in what the church believes.’ But this high ecclesiology is not expressed in faithfulness to one particular church except the one he happens to be attending at the time.

It is this ecclesiastical homelessness that may also explain why Hauerwas at times appears to be experimenting with tradition as seen in his overly sympathetic gestures towards the LGBTQ. For all the importance he places on the church, it seems that at this point it is the culture of the world that shapes his response. When one is not quite at home with Mother Church, one feels less constrained by her authoritative teachings.

The basic problem with Anabaptism is its trying to reinvent the church. But the church cannot be reinvented any more than tradition can be reinvented. Without some historical link to—yes, the Constantinian Church, there is no true tradition to talk about. As Alan Jacob of Wheaton College has rightly noted, a ‘do-it-yourself’ tradition is no tradition at all. Both Yoder and Hauerwas, I think, got most of the substance of the Christian tradition right, but there is an element in MacIntyre’s definition which they fail to take into serious account. It is the phrase ‘through time’. A tradition through time implies a history, and history implies that there is real connection between the church then and now. The link is not just between communities sharing similar ideas. Two separate communities may share the same ideas, but remain two separate communities, still.

Perhaps to put it more strongly, we should speak not only of historical continuity but of historical contiguity: there must be some actual contact of people and their shared ways of life from generation to generation. This is the significance of the laying on of hands in ordination and of sharing the eucharistic bread and wine with other local churches in ancient times. There is actual contact in the handing down of a tradition. Hands touch, something is given and received—that is what Christian tradition in its fullest sense is about.

A proper understanding of tradition will have ramifications for the future of the church in general and theological education in particular. We have encountered mature Christians and even theological students exposed to new ideas coming away shaken in their faith.

One could explain it as just a part of growing up. To some extent it is, but the history of theological education is full of examples of seminarians who never recovered from the shock. They ended up dismissing the faith which they once held dear, or they came away with a watered-down faith, or they dug their heels in and ended up as fighting fundamentalists!

The problem must be laid squarely on those who experiment with tradition. The clever scholars with a flair for novelty become the experimenters; they also become iconic, adored as trailblazers. But let us not forget this somber warning from an early church historian Eusebius: ‘Novelty is heresy.’

The problem is not so much with the novelty of ideas as the way they are handled. The bearers of the Tradition are both open-minded and dogmatic. Open-minded because the living Tradition is open to further development until the Eschaton, and dogmatic because it is grounded in a history with a given content from which they draw to build for the future.

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What characterizes faithful teachers of the church is their sense of being in communion, i.e., in contiguity with prophets and apostles, church fathers and mothers, saints and martyrs, through the ages. This enables them to hand down the truth faithfully as well as engage boldly with new and challenging ideas.

Thoughtful Christians generally are not afraid of ideas that jolt them or even shatter their preconceived ideas; what they fear is to be left intellectually and spiritually stranded because their leaders show a lack of confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ, or display a blasé attitude towards things that ought to elicit seriousness and reverence.

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If church leaders are confident about the things they believe in, it gives their followers the same assurance to do their part for the next generation. But when they lose confidence, they start to experiment with the Tradition.

How should Christians understand and view the arts?

SINCE the Reformation in the 16^th century, when leaders of the church destroyed statues and other works of art to stem out and prevent idolatry, Protestant Christianity has always been suspicious of the arts.

It must be clarified that the iconoclasm of the Reformers is not an indication of their opposition to the arts, but only its abuse. But Protestant Christians sometimes fail to understand the difference and therefore continue to hold a negative view of the arts. This is why in comparison to Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, the Protestant Church has very little use of the visual arts – statutes, icons and religious pictures – in its worship.

Yet, even Christians who are dismissive of the arts cannot do without them altogether. Artistic decisions are made whenever the church composes religious music, designs the architecture of its building, chooses the furniture for its sanctuary, or simply produces a brochure for a youth programme.

The arts are an important aspect of human life and culture. Anthropologists have noted that works of art in one form or another are found in every human community and culture, and throughout the history of human civilisation. Christians must therefore reflect on the meaning and purpose of the arts in human life and culture. And such reflections must include the use of the arts in Christian life and worship.

But before we go any further, we must ask the very thorny question: What is art? Many attempts have been made to answer this question, all of which have been shown to be inadequate. For the purpose of this article, we may define art as human creations that bring to expression our profound intellectual, spiritual and emotional experience of the world. Art is a human enterprise, and is therefore always bound up with the particularities of history, culture, context, political ideologies, religious sensibilities, etc. Yet art must also be seen as an expression of human transcendence, the human openness to mystery and meaning.

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Because art is human activity and product, the best place for the Christian to begin to reflect on its meaning and purpose is the account of the creation of man in the first chapters of Genesis. These chapters, of course, present God as the Creator of the universe. Theologians from Origen to Bonaventure have portrayed God as the Supreme Artist on the basis of these chapters. With His creative powers God brought the world into being, a world characterised by beauty and harmony. But Genesis also describes human beings as created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-28). As bearers of the divine image, human beings are created co-creators, capable of fashioning things that are at once meaningful and useful.

In addition, Genesis 1:28 records what some theologians have described as the cultural mandate: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every creature that moves on the ground.” This command reveals the true vocation of human beings as bearers of the divine image and as created co-creators. The command covers a broad spectrum of human activity, including the arts.

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ON THE basis of this command, the creative arts, insofar as they image the work of the Creator, may be said to be part of the responsibility of man. The Bible therefore has a very positive view of human art in all its diverse forms and expressions.

This positive affirmation of the arts, however, must immediately be qualified. Like all human enterprises, the arts are compromised because of the fallen human condition. Human artistic expressions are therefore tainted by sin and disobedience. This means that there can be no romanticising or idealising of the arts. The arts, like every aspect of human culture, are riddled with paradox and suffer from profound self-contradictions. While they are the expressions of human transcendence, the arts are at the same time crippled by the distortions that result from human sinfulness.

It would therefore be a mistake to think that only cultural Philistines who are incapable of appreciating art are given to the baser passions. As George Steiner pointed out so provocatively, the monsters who ran the infamous Nazi concentration camps with such unspeakable cruelty were “avid connoisseurs and, in some instances, performers of Bach and Mozart”.

Although the Bible is generally positive about human works of art, it is careful to emphasise that not all works of art are pleasing to God. God loves all kinds of art: visual art, poetry, prose, drama, music, etc. But not every expression of art will meet the approval of God. Because God has a very high standard of art, He can never endorse art that is either pornographic or propagandistic, for example.

Any form of art that violates the character of God offends Him. Scripture describes God as good (Ps 107:1; 119:68), as truthful and true (Isa 45:19; 1 Thess 1:9), and as beautiful (Ps 27:4). Art that is truly pleasing to God must therefore display these qualities. In this way, the admonishment of Paul in relation to Christian discipleship in Philippians 4:8 can also serve as the ethical and aesthetic norms for art and for the artist.

This brings us to the question concerning the purpose of art, which has been a subject of considerable debate for centuries. Space does not allow us to discuss this at length. But based on the above reflection, we must conclude that to argue that art serves no higher purpose than art itself (“art for art’s sake”) is mistaken. This is the kind of romanticising of the arts that we have cautioned against. For this understanding of the purpose of art would lead to idolatry.

A Christian theology of the arts must insist that the arts (again like all other human cultural expressions and endeavours) do serve a higher purpose: God. Art is never only for art’s sake. It is always for God’s sake. Art should never be self-indulgent, or self-glorifying. True art should always seek to glorify God!

The Bible does speak about meditation. It basically means thinking about God and His Word in His presence. We can look at a few verses that shed some light.

Biblical Meditation

The Old Testament patriarch Isaac once “went out to the field one evening to meditate” (Gen 24:63). It appears that Isaac was used to meditating out in the solitude found in the fields in the evening (when nobody would be working and people would be resting from their labours).

Joshua was told to read and meditate on God’s law (Josh 1:8). The Hebrew word for “meditate” is hagah, the same word used in Isaiah 31:4 referring to the sound of a lion growling over its prey (perhaps referring to hunger pangs). Here the concept of meditation is the practice of chewing on God’s Word. It is like the way cows eat grass, sitting and chewing the cud.

This is biblical stillness that is connected with meditation upon God and His Word. In our solitude, silence, and stillness we become connected with God as we think about Him and become aware of His presence, precepts, purposes, and promises. This can be seen often in many of the psalms.

“On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.” (Ps 63:6)

“I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.” (Ps 119:15)

“My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promises.” (Ps 119:148)

“I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.” (Ps 143:5)

We can read God’s Word in different ways, but it is in silence and stillness that we are able to meditate on what we read as we think of God. Theologian J I Packer helps us to understand what is involved in Christian meditation and what its result is.

“Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purpose and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God as a means of communication with God. Its purpose is to clear one’s mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let His truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart. It is a matter of talking to oneself about God and oneself; it is, indeed, often a matter of arguing with oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God’s power and grace” (emphasis added).

Note the content of meditation is God as we bring into focus our thoughts and attitudes and emotions. It results in clarity, which results from practising stillness in God’s presence as we learn to set our hearts and minds “on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Col 3:1).

It is a place of quiet rest in which we find true peace, where our lives are “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). It is for this reason that Jesus told His disciples (and us) that while in this world we will have trouble, in Him we can have peace (Jn 16:33).

The ancient practice of reading God’s Word, meditating on it and responding to it through prayer is called lectio divina (literally “spiritual reading”). Elsewhere I have explained this process (Till Christ be Formed In Us, 2019, ch 30). Here we only need to note that following meditation on God’s Word and prayer is the experience of contemplation that can be described as resting quietly and lovingly in God.

Christian meditation is the “laboratory of the soul” (Morton Kelsey) that provides, as Richard Foster explains, “the emotional and spiritual space that allows God to construct an inner sanctuary in the heart”.

Mindfulness and How It Differs from Christian Meditation

Christian meditation is not the same as the modern concept and practice of mindfulness, a movement that began with the work of medical doctor Jon Kabat-Zinn who introduced the techniques of mindfulness in the 1980s as a natural way to combat stress and illness.

Today, it is widely practised in medical services, business, education, and for self-care. Even churches have adopted this practice, the religious roots of the movement notwithstanding.

According to mindfulness.org, “Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”

It is true that mindfulness helps people to connect with their bodies and minds, and to focus on the present experience. It is an antidote in part to the highly stressful lives that modern people live. It might bring better physical and mental health. However, it is not the same as biblical Christian meditation.

While mindfulness helps you to focus on your body and your biofeedback, and your present thoughts and feelings without any judgement, Christian meditation turns its central attention elsewhere.

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Mindfulness produces self-awareness while Christian meditation produces awareness of the other (more specifically, God). Mindfulness is self-referenced, while Christian meditation is relational in approach.

Most specifically, meditation, as the church father John Cassian (360-435) wrote in the early church, is “divine contemplation” (pondering over divine things) something the Lord considers as the “chief good.”

Scripture urges us to “pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away” (Hebrews 2:1).

In mindfulness we are mindful of ourselves, while Christian meditation makes us pay attention – we become attentive to others; in the case of God, we become more worshipful, and in the case of others, we become more compassionate.

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Together with this, we become more aware of ourselves in relation to God and others. The central experience in Christian meditation is love (cf. the Christian calling to love God and neighbours).

Mindfulness can help people to de-stress and find relief, but it does not go far in our search for God and in developing our relationship with Him. The Bible calls us to have the “mind of Christ” (Phil 2:5).

This includes thinking thoughts about God; it is when we do so that we experience true and lasting peace. “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. (Isa 26:3, ESV).

Such attentiveness to God and, through Him, to others will help us to live a life of worship, obedience, compassion, and love. We will thus be able to please God and serve others.

Modified excerpt from Robert M Solomon, Spiritual Disciplines for Urban Christians (Singapore: Genesis, 2021), 193-197.

Many years ago, I met a group of Chinese Christians who do not believe in celebrating the Lunar New Year. The festival, in their view, has its roots in a pagan (Chinese) culture and is inextricably bound to the superstitions associated with it.

But does being a Christian mean that one should abandon one’s culture and the customs associated with it? What is the relationship between faith and culture?

In recent decades, some theologians have coined the neologism “inculturation” to explore the long and complex relationship between faith and culture. The former superior general of the Jesuits, Pedro Arrupe, defines this as “the incarnation of the Christian life and of the Christian message in a particular cultural context, in such a way that this experience not only finds expression through elements proper to the culture in question, but becomes the principle that animates, directs and unifies the culture, transforming and remaking it as to bring about a ‘new creation’.”

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 It is obviously impossible for me to unpack this dense statement in this short article. What I propose to do, instead, is to briefly offer some theological handles that would guide our reflections on the relationship between faith and culture.

Firstly, the foundation for a theology of inculturation is the incarnation of the eternal Word of God. In the Incarnation, we learn that God did not reject the fallen world but has chosen instead to inhabit it so that He might redeem it.

Secondly, Christians of every stripe believe that in this sin-marred world there can still be found traces of the true, the good and the beautiful—however faint. Christians must therefore affirm these aspects of human culture as manifestations of God’s common grace (Phil 4:8).

Thirdly, although Christianity is not tied to a particular culture, it has the capacity to accommodate the cultural forms and sensibilities of the people who embrace it. As the renowned missiologist David Bosch has pointed out: “The Christian faith never exists except as ‘translated into culture’. Scripture itself—and every translation of it—are examples of inculturation.”

And finally, inculturation does not mean that Christians should simply and uncritically assimilate every cultural form, custom or practice to their faith. Some cultural practices obviously must be rejected because they are antithetical to the Word of God (see Deut 18:9). And, as Auppe’s statement makes clear, even the cultural elements that are embraced must be transformed by the Word of God and sanctified by His Holy Spirit.

The theologian Andrew Walls has helpfully suggested that in the process of inculturation, two principles are at work. The “indigenising principle” maintains that the Gospel is at home in every culture and vice versa, while the “pilgrim principle” underscores the fact that the Gospel is in many ways also counter-cultural.

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Based on this understanding of inculturation, Chinese Christians need not totally abandon the celebration of the Lunar New Year.

 Without embracing or condoning certain elements associated with the festivity such as its astrological and horoscopic aspects as well as the conventions and rituals associated with ancestor worship, Christians can surely celebrate Chinese New Year purely as a cultural event. This would include traditional practices like the reunion dinner, the visitation of family members, and even the giving of hongbao or red packets (not as a way of dispensing good luck, but as a genuine act of mutual gift-giving).

Christians can use this happy occasion to emphasise the importance of family, friends and community, and the need for forgiveness and reconciliation. They can take advantage of this celebration to strengthen relationships and ties, and wish each other: “愿耶和华的恩典与平安伴随着你 (May God’s grace and peace be with you through the year).”

“You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13).

In its May 12, 2014 post, Mail Online reported that an 85 year old Italian woman paid €10,000 to a euthanasia clinic in Switzerland to help her to commit suicide because she was ‘unhappy about losing her looks’.

Oriella Cazzanello was in good mental and physical health when she travelled from her home in Arzignano, near Vicenza in northern Italy, to a clinic in Basel, Switzerland.

She did not inform her relatives of her intentions, or where she was going. In fact, her family members only knew that she had taken her own life when they received her ashes and the death certificate from the clinic.

The Italian new agency ANSA reported that Mrs Cazzanello, a well-to-do pensioner, chose to end her life because she was ‘weighed down by ageing and the inevitable loss of the look of which she was proud’.

Although active euthanasia, where the physician directly administers a legal substance to a patient, is not legal in Switzerland, physician-assisted suicide is permitted since 1942. In physician-assisted suicide, the patient administers a lethal substance supplied by the doctor to himself, thereby causing his own death.

According to this Swiss Criminal Code, assisting someone to commit suicide is a crime only when it is done with ‘selfish motives’, like personal gain. Article 115 of the Code reads: ‘Inciting and assisting suicide: Any person who for selfish motives incites or assists another to commit or attempt to commit suicide shall, if that other person thereafter commits or attempts to commit suicide, be liable to a custodial sentence no exceeding five years or to a monetary penalty’.

Swiss law does not require a physician to be involved in assisted suicide. Neither does it require the recipient, that is, the suicide, to be a Swiss national.

This unique law, which is not found anywhere else in the world, has attracted many people who wish to end their lives to Switzerland. It was reported that in the past decade more than 200 Brits have travelled to Switzerland to end their lives by assisted suicide.

A University of Bern study found that about 16 percent of those who seek the services of the suicide clinics in Switzerland had no serious health problems. They were simply ‘weary of life’. Unlike most countries that have legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide, in Switzerland assisted suicide is legal even if the person requesting it is not terminally ill.

Many proponents of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide have argued that the decision to take one’s own life with the help of the physician is a very personal one. They argue that every person must have the right to do this because of the principle of autonomy. Assisted suicide is the ultimate act of self-determination, which is priced above everything else in a society that is governed by the dogma of individualism.

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But although assisted suicide may be a personal decision, it can never be said to be a private one. This is because the individual is always part of a community, and his or her personal actions will always have ramifications on those who are related to her, and to society as a whole.

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Seen in this way, Mrs Cazzanello’s decision to take her own life has profound impact and consequences on her family members who were kept in the dark, and who discovered what happened only when her ashes were delivered to them.

Furthermore, the legalization of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide betrays the way in which society looks at human life. It opens the door to what Pope John Paul II described as ‘the culture of death’ that trivializes human life in a way that will result in the moral erosion of the community.

In his encyclical entitled, Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae) Pope John Paul presents the most lucid account of the Christian view of suicide: ‘Suicide is always as morally objectionable as murder. The Church’s tradition has always rejected it as a gravely evil choice. Even though a certain psychological, cultural and social conditioning may induce a person to carry out an action which so radically contradicts the innate inclination to life, thus lessening or removing subjective responsibility, suicide, when viewed objectively, is a gravely immoral act. In fact, it involves the rejection of love of self and the renunciation of the obligation of justice and charity towards one’s neighbour, towards the communities to which one belongs, and towards society as a whole. In its deepest reality, suicide represents a rejection of God’s absolute sovereignty over life and death …’

The prohibition against murder – which includes suicide because it is self-murder –found in the Decalogue (Exodus 20:13) addresses this question. The command that prohibits murder is in fact a command to value and protect human life.

In this commandment, we are taught to think about all human life, including our own, in a particular way – as God’s precious gift to us. Because life is a gift, the language of rights does not apply. Simply put, because life is God’s gift, we do not have the right to take our own lives. And finally, in this commandment we learn that our primary business is about living, not dying.

In many ways The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown which was published in 2003 is an anomaly in recent publishing history. The thriller,   Brown’s   fourth novel, received glowing reviews from leading newspapers and magazines, and held its place on the New York Times best-seller list for a remarkable sixty weeks. A reviewer from the New York Times describes it as a riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller ’, while The Library Journal raved, ‘This masterpiece should be mandatory reading’. The Chicago Tribune said that the book contained ‘several doctorates’ worth of fascinating history and learned speculation’.

So what is The Da Vinci Code? Is it a one-hit wonder?  Is it a fad? Is it a novel? Why should Christians be bothered with it?

On the surface, The Da Vinci Code is, of course, a novel.  It has a story, a plot, and various characters to play out the story. But The Da Vinci Code is more than this. It claims to deconstruct the history of the church and its traditional teachings regarding Christ. By Brown’s own admission, the novel hopes to provide an alternative account of the history of Christianity. ‘Since the beginning’, Brown asserts, ‘history has been written by the “winners” (those societies and belief systems that conquered and survived)’. ‘My sincere hope’,   he continues,   ‘is that The Da Vinci Code, in addition to entertaining people, will serve as an open door to begin their own explorations’.

Why is The Da Vinci Code so successful? And why is it being taken so seriously by so many readers and by the mainstream media?

On an immediate level, the answer lies in the genre that Brown has chosen to communicate his theories. In his website, Brown admits that the theories that he presents are not new.   What is novel is that for the first time such theories are expounded in the format of a popular thriller. In his chosen format, Brown could entice the reader until the latter is fully absorbed into the ‘secret’ that he unveils. As one reader puts it, ‘I found myself, unwillingly, leaving the novel, and time and time again, going online to research Brown’s research – only to find a new world of historic possibilities opening up for me’.

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But on a deeper level, the novel panders admirably to the ambiguities and ambivalence of our culture – its suspicion and even deep-seated distrust for institutionalized religions like Christianity on the one hand, and its spiritual restlessness on the other. As Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel put it in their book, The Da Vinci Hoax, ‘The Da Vinci Code is custom-made fiction for our time: pretentious, posturing, self-serving, arrogant, self-congratulatory, condescending, glib, illogical, superficial, and deviant.  It has managed to tap into the deep reservoir of spiritual longing, restlessness, distrust, suspicion, and credulity’.

Philip Jenkins has argued convincingly in similar vein in The New Anti-Catholicism:  The Last Acceptable Prejudice that ‘the main reason for the book’s popularity is deeper, a fundamental suspicion of traditional claims to authority, where they conflict with contemporary ideas and standards, especially over sex and gender. It mainly illustrates a broader suspicion about orthodoxy generally, and the idea that the truth is out there’.

Many decades ago, G. K. Chesterton wrote perceptively that ‘Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves’. The Da Vinci Code is able to enjoy such a huge success precisely because ours is a culture that no longer has respect or patience for truth. It is a culture that has sought to blur the boundaries between fiction and reality, myth and truth. In many ways The Da Vinci Code is the ideal postmodern myth, pulp-fiction style. ‘We have made fiction to suit ourselves’.

The success of the book can be further attributed to the fact that many people do not care that they are historically illiterate. As historian James Hitchcock has put it pointedly,

The Da Vinci Code can be viewed as merely an ephemeral artifact of popular culture, but its immense sales ensure that it will have influence on people who never read serious books. Brown has found a formula for becoming rich: sex, sensationalism, feminism, anti-Catholicism, and the occult. But it is also obvious that he sincerely hates Christianity and sees himself as engaged in an anti-crusade. The culture is ripe for such a debased book, so that even professing Christians are being seduced by it.

Should Christians take the book seriously? Since the appearance of The Da Vinci Code, a steady stream of reviews, articles, essays and books have been written by Christians to debunk its claims. Seminars, conferences and classes are organised to expose the gross historical inaccuracies of the book and the agenda of its author. Some churches have organised comprehensive projects to educate their congregations and the Christian public.

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Not everyone, however, is convinced that such efforts are necessary. Some are of the opinion that Christians have over-reacted, while others feel that the enormous interest in the book is just a harmless fad.

I think Christians should take the book seriously. Imagine if someone were to write a novel that argues that the Holocaust never really happened, and that it was fabricated by a group of powerful Jews, who used the ‘myth’ to attain for they power and fortune. Or imagine a novel that claims that the prophet Mohammed was a violent alcoholic and a homosexual.  Such novels should be rightly condemned, not just by the relevant religious communities but also by a majority of critics and readers. The Da Vinci Code claims that Christianity is fraudulent, that the church is a misogynist, violent institution, and that Jesus was a mere mortal. Christians have every right to respond to such claims.

But there is another reason why Christians should take the book seriously. And that is because the book has caused much confusion even among Christians. One Christian reader wrote, ‘Honestly, [reading the book] shook my whole faith. I realise that the book is fiction, but much of what he wrote about seemed like it was based on historical facts aside from the characters. Since I am not a Christian scholar I don’t even know where to begin to refute such claims’. The issues raised in the book must be addressed because there are Christians who need guidance and help.

However, it is not enough for the church to organize seminars to address the issues raised by The Da Vinci Code. The success of the book, and the confusion that it has caused among Christians should remind the church of the importance of its teaching ministry. The church neglects this important ministry only at its own peril. In

2004, I published a brief review of The Da Vinci Code in the Methodist Message. I think the words I wrote in the concluding paragraph of the review still ring true and bear repeating as I end this essay:

… the success of the book should serve as a wake-up call for the Christian church. It should challenge Christians to know their own history and to steep themselves in the apostolic tradition that shapes their faith. It serves as a clarion call for Christians to take theological truth seriously.

It has become unquestioned wisdom these days to advocate that the study of theology at some level should be for every Christian inasmuch as it is practically achievable given her current commitments and stage of life. Whether it be full-time, part-time or occasional studies, Christians are encouraged to give as much of their time to learning about God as possible.

After all, since we have put in so much effort into our own secular studies—especially within an educationally intense system as Singapore’s—shouldn’t we be prepared to do the same and even more when it comes to learning about God?

The advent of the internet has also made theological knowledge much more accessible, either through prescribed courses of self-study or individual on-line modules.

I remember taking a correspondence course many years ago with an American seminary on the history of Western philosophy; the amount of time it took for my assignments to be sent in, marked and returned would simply be unacceptable in our digital age.

Alongside on-line modes of learning, Christians also enroll for classes in seminaries and other organizations. At Trinity Theological College, more and more participants are signing up for our night courses which are open to the Christian layperson. This means that there are people willing to trudge down to our campus after a hard day’s work, to sit and listen to a two-hour lecture till 9.30 pm once a week.

Why would anyone endure such “afflictions” for courses that do not add to their market value? The simple answer is that the pursuit of the knowledge of God is reward itself.

J. I. Packer, one of my former theology lecturers, has asserted that not only is the study of God reward in itself, it is the responsibility of every Christian to do so. Quoting Charles Spurgeon in his book, Knowing God, he writes that, “I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God, the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead” (p. 13).

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Indeed, the fact that many Singaporean Christians are committed to learning more about their faith is something every theological educator should take delight in.

In this article, I do not intend to question the basic notion that theological studies of some form is for everyone. However, I do think that in view of the trend discussed above, that there is a need to highlight one particular area that some Christians unwittingly neglect. And that is the fundamental posture of learning theology.

Far too often, lecturers have encountered students who commenced their studies with a similar set of attitudes and values that they had subscribed to for their secular education. They aim for excellence, better results and higher grades.

Not only that, they thoroughly enjoy theological discussions and dissecting the latest scholarly debates, so much so that sometimes we worry if they have forgotten who they are talking about.

Personally, I have found it sometimes necessary to remind my first-year classes that the study of theology is different from any other field of inquiry. For we stand on holy ground when we talk about God, and there must be a certain humility and reverence in our attitude towards the subject since He far surpasses us.

The church father, Gregory of Nazianzus was once asked whether theology is for everyone. His answer, which may come as a surprise to us, was an emphatic No;

Discussion of theology is not for everyone….Nor, I would add, is it for every occasion, or every audience…It is not for all people, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing, purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold of pure things is dangerous, just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun’s brightness.

What is the right time? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty is not confused by illusory, wandering images, leading us, as it were, to mix fine script with ugly scrawling, or sweet-smelling scent with slime. We need actually “to be still” in order to know God, and when we receive the opportunity, “to judge uprightly” in theology.

 (Theological Orations 27.3)

Christopher Beeley, in his book, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God (OUP, 2008) summarizes that for Gregory, while everyone has been called to know God, in reality perhaps only some will attain to this as there are other accompanying criteria, including most important of all, the purification of the Christian (pp. 67-68).

In contemporary terms, this purification refers to a radical change in one’s character and conduct so that one befits the privilege and responsibility of knowing God.

To purify oneself before learning about God is a practice that we seldom hear today, and therefore, Gregory’s words are a timely reminder to us—including educators—to be careful that greater theological literacy does not lead to the danger that Paul warned us about; for “knowledge puffeth up” (1 Cor 8:1).

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While writing this article, I was perusing my autographed copy of Packer’s Knowing God, and found that he has included in his handwritten inscription a biblical reference that has been echoed by Gregory – Psalm 46. May we learn to be truly still in order to know that He is God (Ps 46:10).