In Depth:  David Gibson

On December 4 2011, Trinity Church, Aberdeen was born.

The new church fellowship was formed as a result of decisions taken by the Church of Scotland. At its General Assembly in May 2011, the CofS took a clear step towards recognising same-sex relationships in the ministry as acceptable for those in leadership. Although a definitive position has still to be decided, many evangelicals feel that the die has been cast and the departure from biblical orthodoxy will not be reversed.

Last time we looked at three things the Psalmist was going through during his time of great trouble. These were that he experienced life without living, he faced death without hope and he was asking questions without receiving answers.

So how does the Psalm help us? I have four suggestions:

We are not the first people to ask ‘where is God?’ when unspeakable agonies grip our souls. But it is something of a surprise to have help not in the form of direct theological teaching but in the Psalms, in the form of songs and prayers.

‘Ten minutes into our trip home I noticed an oncoming car on a lonely stretch of highway driving extremely fast. I slowed down at a curve, but the other car did not. It jumped its lane and smashed head-on into our minivan. I learned later that the alleged driver was drunk, driving at 85mph.

You may have heard the story of the Mennonite Brethren movement. One particular analysis goes like this: the first generation believed and proclaimed the gospel and thought that there were certain social entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel and advocated the entailments. The third generation denied the gospel and all that were left were the entailments.1

Another story. In 1919, Trinity Great Court in Cambridge saw a meeting between Rollo Pelly, the Secretary of the liberal Student Christian Movement, and Daniel Dick and Norman Grubb (Presi-dent and Secretary of the evangelical Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union). The meeting was to discuss the re-unification of the two movements that had split in 1910. Norman Grubb's account of the meeting is infamous: