Benjamin Mathews - The Cross Purpose

Who is Benjamin Abraham?

Benjamin Mathews — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 23:30:00 +0000

Evil is only vanquished by the salvation offered by Christ. Evil repaid with evil does no good to anyone. Only salvation has the power to snuff it out once and for all and replace it with the righteousness of Christ.

Benjamin Abraham

Entrepreneur, musician, engineer, and so on and so forth, and let’s not forget, a gifted writer. Benji has long been our Chief Editor, and shares a passion to see Gospel-centred resources penetrate our culture. Apart from his exasperated schedule running his own company, he also writes, lends his music talent and has his hands in many cookie jars within TCP.

Married to Kripa, they eagerly await the arrival of their firstborn.

The post Who is Benjamin Abraham? first appeared on The Cross Purpose.

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Why so serious? A review of the Joker movie.

Benjamin Mathews — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 08:28:45 +0000

SPOILER ALERT! This article contains several spoilers from the recent Oscar-winning movie, “Joker”. So, if you’re planning on watching it soon, you may want to save this article and come back to it once you’re done with that. Also, this article promises to be a slightly depressing read. if you accept the risks involved, let us begin.

“In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.”
– The Joker

A movie about the Joker. I was apprehensive from the get-go. Though I’m no stranger to the corresponding comic book universe, I wasn’t entirely sure what I expected to see. I had a feeling I would find it more uncomfortable than entertaining, though. Seldom have I been this depressed at being proven right. Unfortunately, they don’t give you refunds just because you found the movie unsettling. And so I watched. I watched as Joaquin Phoenix portrayed, quite skilfully I should add, a slightly different take on this self-proclaimed psychopath criminal. I watched as the makers of the movie attempted to communicate the humanity behind the cruelty, the justification of the anarchy, the sense within the insanity. Here was a person, they said, who was mentally unwell and yet found no solace in his circumstances and no pity in his neighbours. I watched as the world knocked him to the ground, and then kicked him mercilessly when he was down. I watched as the professional clown, ironically, tried and failed to find joy in his life. I watched as the less privileged got overrun by those who were, simply, luckier.

As joy failed him, he looked for justice. As justice eluded him, he sought meaning. As meaning vanished, he struggled to justify life, and wondered why anything was forbidden by law when it was perfectly legal to be unapologetically cruel to those who could not fight back. He ended up on a path of reckless abandon in pursuit of death, and there he found joy, but it was joy in the pain of another, and he did not mind in the least. He found justice, but it was justice in dealing out death to those he disliked, and he revelled in it. At that point, meaning of life is no longer of any importance. You have taken matters into your own hands. You have stood up to the tyranny of the more privileged of society. You are giving them what they deserve, and they must listen to you because they are wrong and you are right. They must listen to you, or die. Because they have wronged you, you have the right to wrong them. You have reached out from where you had fallen and grabbed your enemy in a deadly chokehold. Everyone will understand. No, it is more than that. Everyone will agree that it is the only fitting response. Needless to say, I did not agree.

Photos from the Joker movie

I grew increasingly disturbed as the deranged man descended deeper into the darkness. He killed some people. And then he killed some more for good measure. They all deserved it, obviously. I stiffened in my seat as he proceeded to repeatedly bash another person’s skull into a wall. One, two, three, four, five, six… I closed my eyes in despair. At some point after this, I began to tune out and reflect on what was going on. This is what happens when you take such a dark comic book character and try to make his story ‘relatable’ in a modern sense. They did the same thing with the hero too, in the Dark Knight series. The comics don’t worry too much about making psychological, mental or emotional ends meet in a ‘believable’ way. If it makes sense, it makes sense. This movie, however, was trying to bring that fictional character to life, almost trying to make him look like someone you knew. Or perhaps even trying to make him look like you yourself. I was imagining a real person suffering in this way and my heart was overcome with grief at the outcome I was witnessing. The man had become a symbol for revenge and rebellion, and the city was drowning in riots. That’s when it happened. You see, by the time the movie was almost over, I was certain things had gotten as dark as they possibly could. I was wrong, and seldom have I been this depressed at being proven wrong.

There, while the Joker was being exalted by the mob of rioters on screen, I heard a lot of commotion happening off screen. I looked around me, only to see that the people in the theatre were applauding and cheering. This expression was so foreign to what I was feeling that I was completely thrown off for a few seconds. They were cheering for him. For the Joker. Why? Did I miss something while I was pondering the mysteries of life? No, there he was, painting a smile on his own face using his own blood. The mob around him cheered, and so did the people sitting around me. Suddenly, it felt like it was my skull that had gotten bashed against the wall. Why am I so agitated about something so silly, you ask? Why am I making such a big deal of people cheering at a movie? I know what you really want to ask me. Why so serious, right? Yeah, I may be going off a little on the deep end here, but it isn’t without good reason. I’m confused. Worried. Scared, even.

What are we cheering for here? What are we applauding? The victory of the little guy? His triumph over trials? The revenge of the oppressed? A few, I’m sure, simply enjoyed the cinematography. I don’t know if those people are normally the cheering type, I’m more used to seeing silent admiration or whispered praise from such people. What about the rest of us? Whatever your justification, here’s the fact: you’re cheering for the villain. You’re applauding his viciousness. You’re calling it a victory, the fact that he killed all those people, and you’re celebrating it. Really? Is that what the minds behind the movie intended too, I wonder? To make it acceptable to be a mass murderer? Will it be ‘intolerant’ tomorrow to cringe at the taking of a life? We just watched him suffocate his mother while she lay defenceless in a hospital bed, and here you are now, getting goosebumps at how cool he looks! What if that was your sister who was killed by her son? What if that was your father or brother who was shot to death for being a bully? Will it still make sense then? Will you still cheer for the killer? If we find this manner of justice justifiable, we must also be prepared to be on the receiving end of such punishment.

Perhaps none of us cheered for his actions. Perhaps it was simply the emotion that was brought out through the intense storytelling. That still does not serve to justify the act. Why blindly celebrate what is so clearly wrong? Evil is evil. It does not depend on who did it, or who it was done to. It does not matter what complicated series of events led to it, or what ‘good’ was supposed to be achieved through it. Evil is evil. There is no justification for it. Here’s the problem, though. We are attracted to it. Without a shadow of a doubt. We like to be bad. Some part of us always wants to be a rebel. Whether it shows or not. And, outside of the Bible, there is no real case that can be made against this. Who is to dictate what one cluster of cells is allowed to do to another cluster of cells? Who is to say that this particular series of firing neurons constitutes a “correct understanding”? I dare say every religion has some sort of prohibition of such evil. Someone like this would perhaps be condemned according to the belief systems of most religions. The uniqueness of the Bible lies in it’s promise of redemption from sin. All things considered, I could not help but wonder if there is a hope of redemption for someone who was this far gone. “And such were some of you”, the apostle Paul whispers in my mind’s ear (is that a real thing? Well, it is now).

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?… And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
– 1 Corinthians 6:9,11 ESV

The magnitude of the promise of salvation is one that is too huge for us to comprehend. And yet, we wonder if it is ‘too much’ to hold out hope for people who are ‘so evil’. We forget that the whole story of humanity is one of abundant grace in absolutely hopeless situations. God had just one rule for the first man. Just one article was stipulated in the heavenly penal code, and we still managed to mess it up. Even there, we see God’s grace at work, in that He did not destroy them that instant, but instead, began a work of redemption that would be completed in the sacrifice of His son, Jesus Christ. And how did mankind react to this? When given a choice between Christ and Barabbas (a murderer and instigator, not unlike the villain we’ve been talking about here), humanity shouted, “Away with this man! Give us Barabbas and crucify Christ!” Don’t you see? We have always preferred Barabbas to Christ. We have always admired the rebel over the righteous. We have always wanted to exalt the sinner over the saint. Here again, like everywhere else, the grace and mercy of God pierces through the fog of our sinful nature, as He ordains our evil intent to be the means he uses to give us the gift of salvation. How enormous is this truth! Since the very first sin, till this instant, we have been experiencing extraordinary grace and inexplicable mercy. And it extends, without a doubt, to those who are broken and distraught, and those that have fallen far away from righteousness. Those who feel they were dealt a bad hand in life should only look to the one who sustains all of life. For “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). You see, evil is only vanquished by the salvation offered by Christ. Evil repaid with evil does no good to anyone. Only salvation has the power to snuff it out once and for all and replace it with the righteousness of Christ. Because, at that point, we want to give it up. Till then, we remain in the grip of sin. for It is only at the sight of this great grace that we can be truly freed from the chokehold of sin.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
– Matthew 13:44 ESV

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The Suffering Servant

Benjamin Mathews — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 07:15:51 +0000

700 years before Jesus was born, Isaiah spoke of a servant of God who was different from the rest. Most other occurrences of the word ‘servant’ in the book of Isaiah refer either to Israel (as in Isaiah 41:8,10), or to Isaiah himself (Isaiah 49:5). However, the description of the servant that starts in Isaiah 52:13 and goes on till the end of the 53rd chapter cannot be applied to either Israel or Isaiah. That much is clear from this single verse in chapter 53, where the prophet Isaiah says,

“Surely, he took up our iniquities and carried our sorrows”
Isaiah 53:6

Clearly referring to a single person, ‘he’ is said to have taken up ‘our’ iniquities. Here, the usage of the word ‘our’ seems to refer to the Israelites, including Isaiah. Or, perhaps in a broader sense we can take it to mean “all people”. Considering the text in its entirety, it quickly becomes apparent that no man can come close to fitting the fantastic description provided here, but Jesus Christ fulfils every single requirement. In fact, the whole passage of Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12 is often described as a ‘summary of the gospel in the Old Testament’! Turning to the first verse of chapter 53, Isaiah asks of the world, “who has believed?… To whom has (it) been revealed?” The answer is “no one”, or maybe “to very few”. Part of the reason for this is found in verse 6: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” The depravity of mankind was the reason for their unbelief. Starting from the second part of the second verse, Isaiah describes the response of the people to this servant of God:

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected… one from whom men hide their faces, he was a despised and we esteemed him not”
Isaiah 53:3

He was rejected by the rebellious people. His appearance was not one that they deemed worthy of respect, making it clear that the people gave respect based only on appearance. John Piper brings an interesting angle on this. He says that the people, being steeped in sin, found the perfect person of Christ to be despicable, either because they did not believe or because they felt condemned by His holiness. So, He was despised, because it is easier to ignore Him than to deal with His convicting holiness. What astounding a reality is this, then? How outrageous a fact is it that it is this servant of God, who was being rejected by all around him, who then took it upon himself to die for our sins!

“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, by his wounds we are healed”
Isaiah 53:4-5

The suffering servant.

We all go through some kind of suffering on Earth. But what separates Christ’s suffering from ours is the last part of the verse: “the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him…” What could this possibly mean? How does the punishment Christ endured bring us peace? Because the punishment He endured is not merely physical, it is the ultimate punishment for all our sins. The fulfilment of God’s justice. The conviction and sentencing in the court of the Creator King. This punishment is not your garden variety pain, or physical discomfort, or emotional agony, or difficult life circumstances or discomfort. This is not even persecution in the line of ministry. No, this speaks of the wrath of God. As sinners from birth, true justice is only attained when we, the perpetrators of sin, are dealt the full punishment of the crime, that is eternal separation from the grace of God and final death. That is the “punishment that brings peace”. That is what Christ suffered. For on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.

He suffered for us, the lost sheep. We who were awaiting judgement, awaiting the guaranteed and unrelenting wrath of God as punishment for our sin. We who looked at the requirement of earning God’s favour, of pleasing Him, and recognised the impossibility of it. We who had no strength to hold at bay the sinful nature in us, let alone approach the holiness of God almighty. That is what we were. In line for certain death. Beloved, do you see? Christ suffered that we would never have to. He took upon Himself the burden of our sin that we could not lift. He took the full measure of our punishment in the wrath of God that we would be utterly consumed by.

Now, it doesn’t end there. Lets go to v9:

“though he had done no violence, nor was deceit in his mouth…”
Isaiah 53:9

Do you see the difference? Do you understand it? Not only was he the suffering servant, he was also the sinless servant! That is what enabled him to be the atoning sacrifice for all of humankind. He was the only one. The only one who was holy. Had he been only human, he could have claimed to be the only one to have fulfilled the law and all its requirements, Had he been only human, he would have been the only one to not be required to pay the wages of sin – death. He was the only one who fully pleased God. And yet. “Yet, it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer”.

Pause for effect.

I cannot help but struggle with the thought – if it was the Lord’s will to crush ME, and cause me to suffer, how would I respond? How have I responded so far? Isn’t it so much more common to expect comfort and peace because “God loves me”? We will have peace, yes, but do not be surprised to see that peace manifests itself often in the midst of suffering. How else could it become a peace that “passeth all understanding”? The world cannot make sense of the peace that you have. You know that no present suffering is worth comparing to that of Christ. You know that you’ll never know how much it cost. The rest of the verses in that passage tell of a promise aimed at Christ and it is so beautiful. From v11, it is now God who is speaking:

“… by his knowledge, my servant will justify many… Therefore I will give him a portion among the great.”
Isaiah 53:11

The sinless suffering servant, stained by the sin of mankind, sacrificially slain in our place, He conquered sin and death, and rose from the dead, and has brought salvation to us by His righteousness that we can claim by believing in His name. He is now seated in immeasurable glory at the right hand of the Father, who has handed over all authority in heaven and on earth to the Son, in whom He is most pleased and most glorified, the Lord of hosts, the King of glory, the heir of the Kingdom of God. The promises about Christ apply to us too in our positions as ‘co-heirs with Christ’. What a magnificent reality this is! What an outrageous claim, that we are given the privilege to be sons of God, co-heirs with Christ. How can we ever justify this gift of mercy? How can we come close to repaying our eternal debt? However, beloved, we must take care to not disregard the suffering that comes along with it.

“For as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives so also through Christ, our comfort overflows”
2 Corinthians 1:5

The sufferings of Christ flowing into our lives is taken as a given. It is the assumed starting point when stating that we have comfort through Christ. The promises of Christ are punctuated with the clause: “…because he poured out his life unto death”. Yes, the blessings are too great to count, and the gift is too valuable to measure or repay, but we must not be so consumed by the glorious sight of the exalted conqueror that we forget the humble countenance of the suffering servant. Don’t you see? He has purchased us with His blood, and so, suffering is in our blood, beloved! Remember the apostles, and the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us. Remember the Son! As we grow in our relationship with Christ and conform to His image, let us remember that the image of Christ is that of a saviour crushed by the just judge, a Son who drank the cup of suffering according to the will of the Father, a lamb that was slain, the suffering servant.

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