Skip to main content

God never promised us a rose garden

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.  (1 Peter 4.12-14 https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)
What is the fiery ordeal to which the writer refers? Given that Peter is believed to have perished during Nero’s persecution after a great fire in Rome, people have often wondered whether it relates to a passage in an account of the persecution by the historian Tacitus, who was a boy at the time of the fire.
He wrote, "Therefore, to stop the rumour [that he had set Rome on fire], he [Emperor Nero] falsely charged with guilt, and punished with the most fearful tortures, the persons commonly called Christians… Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.’
Some things about this account have caused historians to wonder how accurate it is. To begin with, there weren’t many Christians in Rome at this time. We only have copies of the text that were made much later by Christian scribes and people have wondered whether, influenced by the passage in 1 Peter, they inserted explicit references to Jesus and to Christanity into an account that was originally about the persecution of minorities belonging to other faiths too. And then, while burning people is certainly a fearful way to torture them, it isn’t a very good way to create illumination.
Whether the fiery ordeal actually involved setting people alight or was just a very difficult test of their faith, the writer says this type of thing shouldn’t surprise us. We should expect to be ‘reviled for the name of Christ’, (which does suggest a link with actual persecution), and we should ‘rejoice insofar as [we] are sharing Christ’s sufferings.’
This doesn’t mean deliberately provoking confrontation or rejoicing in being a doormat for Christ. It does mean accepting, to quote the Country Music song, that in life - and the Christian life in particular - God has ‘never promised [us] a rose garden’.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his ...
14 comments
Read more

Giotto’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds

John 1.10-18 In the week before Christmas the BBC broadcast a modern version of The Nativity which attempted to retell the story with as much psychological realism as possible. So, for instance, viewers saw how Mary, and Joseph especially, struggled with their feelings. But telling the story of Jesus with psychological realism is not a new idea. It has a long tradition going back seven hundred years to the time of the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. This nativity scene was painted in a church in Padua in about 1305. Much imitated it is one of the first attempts at psychological realism in Christian art. And what a wonderful first attempt it is - a work of genius, in fact! Whereas previously Mary and the Baby Jesus had been depicted facing outwards, or looking at their visitors, with beatific expressions fixed on their faces, Giotto dares to show them staring intently into one another’s eyes, bonding like any mother and newborn baby. Joseph, in contrast, is not looking on with quiet a...
1 comment
Read more

Luther and Loyola

James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Within Christianity there has always been a tension between two poles. At one end of the spectrum stands Martin Luther, who said that Christian faith is about trusting in God to put us right - or make us righteous - through the saving death of Jesus. Luther came to this conclusion when he was a professor of New Testament studies in a little town in Germany called Wittenberg. One year he decided to teach his students about Paul’s letter to the Romans and that’s when it suddenly dawned upon him that Christian faith is all about trust. At the other end of the spectrum , stands someone like Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Society of Jesus. He spent a lot of his later life in crisis, first struggling to overcome severe wounds that he had suffered when he was a soldier and then during two short periods locked up in a cell by the Spanish Inquisition. He came to believe that the Christian life is a similar sort of struggle, a lifelon...
Post a Comment
Read more