European Leadership Forum 4

Sunday afternoon I did not go to the optional workshop. It was better for me to digest what I’d already heard, and to try to think about some of the conversations I’ve had.

Then at 4.00 the next workshop was with Wayne Grudem. His discussion was A Call to Personal Holiness. His point was that we seem to have neglected the fear of God as a factor in our living, and replaced it with a softer reverence. God is holy and calls us to holiness, and scripture tells us that not living holy lives brings inevitable consequences. The example of Ananias and Saphira is an extreme one, but we were reminded that there is a judgement which is not eternal judgement – and God deals with us according to what we do (1 Peter 1:14 – 16) There is a passive judgement, where God removes his presence, giving us up to our own desires. But there can also be an active judgement where something happens which seems to be God calling us to repent and turn by allowing something bad to happen. Of course this is not the only reason bad things happen to Christians (take the example of Job). But there seems to be in the USA an emphasis on grace which belittles sin. I found his emphasis needing to be qualified, but I understand where he is coming from.

The evening session with Pablo Martinez brought out the caring and careful nature of the man. He is a Psychiatrist in Spain who has done much for the church and especially the student movement there during his life. He spoke on Love, Faith and Faithfullness in Family Life. He began by illustrating how things have changed in European attitudes, citing a spanish tv reality programme, where the premise is that to preserve faithfulness to one’s self, one needs sometimes to be unfaithful to our partners. Faithfulness is threatened by a triumvirate of rights surrounding the self – My right to be happy, my right to change, and my right to be myself. These selfish rights supercede the duties or responsibilities towards others – they justify unfaithfulness. The result of these rights being insisted on is the death of self.
However to combat this we have a triangle with God at its’ centre. This triangle consists of love (not eros, the passion which scientific research has shown lasts about three years, but agape.) faith, which leads to faithfulness. this means that instead of insisting on “my rights”, when I fulfill my duties, this leads to life abundant. This was so reasonably and carefully presented that they could form the basis of a course of preparation for marriage.