Welcome to 'Soul Thoughts'

This is such a dire situation. Please be in prayer and give what you can through agencies like World Vision and Oxfam.

Read the details here.

N.T. Wright’s latest book, How God Became King, discusses the reason we often miss the real story of the gospels, why the creeds say what they do and why they don’t say many other things, and how and why the Gospel writers use the Old Testament to explain particular events in Jesus’ life and ministry.

The book also answers a question that many evangelicals ask – why did Jesus live? That is, if he came to die for our sins and was raised to give us new life, why do the gospels spend so much time talking about his life? The following talk by Tom Wright in January this year helps answer these questions. I also plan to read the book to get more detail.

Eden Parris is a friend of mine who I have known for a few years now. He has always impressed me as a man who is genuine in his friendship and desire to be a good person. I spent some time with him on a men’s camp last year and we ended up having quite a deep conversation about our lives and about our view of Christian faith. It turned out that we share similar views. So when, as he left the camp, he gave me a copy of his album Rumours of Hope, I looked forward to listening to it, not really knowing what to expect in terms of the type of music and what he would be singing about.

After listening to a few songs I was hooked. This is a special album, and Eden is a special songwriter. Of all the Christian music going around today, you don’t hear alot about the biblical message of the kingdom of God and about the good news of who Jesus really is and the new creation that he has inaugurated. Much Christian music is about feeling good, and unlike most of the old hymns, does not contain much good theology, and therefore doesn’t bring us close to the God we worship. As far as great theology goes, Eden’s songs are alot closer to the old hymns than much of today’s Christian music.

To paraphrase Walter Brueggemann, this is an album of prophetic imagination. Throughout the songs, Parris inspires us to dream of a better world, a world that is not just a pipe dream, but a world that, if we dare to believe it, has already been inaugurated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Some of the lyrics from the first song, A Deeper Magic, say it all:

This is just a sample of the quality of lyric (more of which can be seen in the video of the whole song above) and inspiration that we see on this album. But it is not just dreaming that we are called to in these songs. They also draw us out of our fears and natural cynicisms to be a part of something bigger, something worthwhile, rather than be caught up in the treadmill of a life that is on its way out.

Clearly influenced by Jesus’ message of the kingdom that is both now and not yet, as well as by such geniuses as C.S. Lewis, this is an album that is easy to relate to. It not only draws you out of yourself, but Parris also gets quite personal and sings of issues that resonate with the astute listener, be they about the relationship struggles that we all go through if we want to make them work, or about the encouragement that we all need on the often trudging road to our destiny of love.

It is not just the lyrics that make this album so enjoyable though. It is the musical style that evokes a certain simple joy in the midst of struggle and pain. The lyrics and the music complement each other to bring out the sure and certain hope of the kingdom despite what  too many people experience in our world of injustice and inhumanity.

This is an album that leaves you wanting more. It inspires a desire to live the dream, but not the dream that our society talks of. This album speaks of a dream that is just so much better and complete that it doesn’t bear comparing to anything that we think is special in this world’s way of thinking.

This album has lyrics and music that more people need to be made aware of. I recently watched Eden play live with one of his band members, during which he played a song that will be on a forthcoming album. I’ll be keeping an eye on Eden’s Facebook page for the details. If it is anything like Rumours of Hope, it will be well worth the wait.

If you would like to book Eden Parris and his band The Second Chance, email edenparris@yahoo.com.au

Aung San Suu Kyi has made headlines again recently for her National League for Democracy (NLD) Party in Burma winning seats in Parliament for the first time since they officially won the national elections in 1988 but were unjustly prevented from taking office.

This movie is therefore timely, as well as being timeless, in its beautiful portrayal of this most elegant and courageous of women. Marketed as somewhat of a love story, my initial thoughts were that that would inevitably stain what is the story of a life of true inspiration. My fears were unfounded however, for this was not some mushy romantic interruption of the like that Hollywood would tend to produce. Instead, the unswerving commitment to each other of the one they call ‘Suu’ and her English husband, Michael Aris, is pretty much foundational to this story. It in fact gives Suu Kyi much of the courage to continue her struggle.

Based on facts, the story opens with a young Suu Kyi being doted on by her loving father, a general in the Burmese army in the late 1940s, but one who is committed to democracy for his beloved homeland. Known as the father of the nation, General Aung San’s commitment is so total that it in fact costs him his life, gunned down in a brutal slaying by the enemies of freedom.

As she returns to her native Burma as an adult to care for her dying mother, Suu Kyi is distressed to find herself in the midst of a struggle between the generals and the people that is now seeing protesters shot openly in the streets. Upon realising that she is back in the country, democracy activists plead with her to lead their struggle, convinced she would be an inspiration to thousands as her father’s daughter.

Following discussions with her husband and children, Suu Kyi decides to stay in Burma. The rest, as they say, is history. Her first speech as Opposition Leader cements her as the one the people have been waiting for. As she climbs the steps to the podium, the camera pans out to a million people waving flags and cheering for their new leader. She doesn’t disappoint, giving a stirring speech imploring her people to fight for what is right. As the struggle continues, Suu Kyi puts in place strategies and methods inspired by her earlier reading of Gandhi and his use of non-violence.

What follows is a portrayal of the brutality and fear of those who will not cede power easily. But the world slowly comes to realise the greater power of the diminutive Suu Kyi, as well as her amazing courage as, in one unforgettable scene, she stares down soldiers with guns pointing in her face and calmly and heroically walks through them, exposing their impotency despite their deadly weapons.

As with all dictatorships, no measures are out of bounds for the generals in their determination to stop Suu Kyi from achieving her ends. They only demand that she be kept alive to stop her from becoming a martyr like her father. And so it was that in 1988 when her party overwhelmingly won the national elections, that the generals refused to cede power and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest.

What this movie portrays is the courage, passion and dedication of one lady to fight for her country’s freedom. But this story is not just about the fight itself; it is more about the way the fight is conducted, and the fact that her manner is the same with her country as it is with her beloved family. And so, when her dear husband is diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer and has days to live, Suu Kyi is faced with the agonizing decision of leaving Burma to be with him in his dying days, knowing she will never be allowed to return to Burma, or stay and continue the fight while thousands of miles away from her life partner as he passes silently away.

The struggle is highlighted by her many tears as the pain of what she goes through hits home. But, again, as is the case with dictatorships the world over, and as we have seen in the Arab spring in recent times, the power of non-violence is not to be trifled with. Bowing to years of international pressure (during which she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991), Suu Kyi is eventually released from house arrest and is allowed to resume her fight from outside the confines of her home again.

In what seems at first to be a surprise, the film abruptly ends during the 2007 protests by Buddhist monks that made world headlines. But we find out during the credits that much of the producing of this movie involved great risk-taking and it is possible that the risks were too great to continue following the documenting of the 2007 protests. Nevertheless, the story ends on a high note, with Suu Kyi greeting her ecstatic supporters at the gate of her home.

Since then, it is of great relief to know that dramatic change is taking place for the good in Burma, with Suu Kyi herself winning a seat in Parliament and her NLD winning 43 of the 45 vacant seats in the lower house. But as she herself said when asked recently about the progress of democracy in Burma on a scale of 1-10, it is approaching one.

Watching this movie from the comfort of the Dendy Cinema in well-to-do Brighton, I could not help but be inspired by the courage of a lady who faced down her oppressors with the power of non-violence and the unstoppable determination of one who truly loves her country, unlike the fear and hatred of those who would only cling to power for power’s sake.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a hero of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, and The Lady portrays the story in a way that makes one so glad to be standing on the side of justice and freedom. She, more than most, deserves the recognition she is now receiving.

Postscript: The BBC revealed this week that Aung San Suu Kyi has been given a passport for the first time in 24 years and that she plans to go to Norway in June to accept the Nobel Peace Prize which she won in 1991. What a celebration that will be. I’m sure Michael Aris will be there in spirit standing alongside his lady.

This one is a cracker:

The latest New Internationalist focuses on mental illness and has a great article on what is called the collective insanity of consumer culture. It is certainly no exaggeration that our obsession with stuff is an addiction. The fact that, as Brene Brown says, we are the most obese, addicted, medicated society in history, coupled with the widely acknowledged fact that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, shows that we are in a seriously dangerous place in our mentally ill culture. Here are some quotes from the article, along with comments from me in blue:

• A century on from Oscar Wilde’s immortal poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, death comes gift-wrapped and perfumed, in beguiling guilt-free varieties, delivered with a toothy smile and prophecy of material salvation. Betrayal gets absolved as the consumer age supplants conscience with craving, and duty with self-devotion. Even with our beloved Earth and the future of humankind balanced on a knife’s edge, our killing feels strangely like a bargain.
• In Escape from Evil, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker describes consumer culture as a second-rate religion that has programed a society of ‘cheerful robots’ to martyr all to “a grotesque spectacle of unrestrained material production, perhaps the greatest and most pervasive evil to have emerged in all of history.”
• If consumer culture were a separate individual and assessed psychiatrically, its diagnosis would be criminal psychosis of the most fiendish variety.
• Once sold on ourselves, we can be wooed by the most impoverished of ambitions, from ‘having it all,’ and ‘living the dream,’ right on down to ‘making it to the top.’
• Hyper-competitive individualism is a lonely straightjacket that fuels frustration, alienation, and rage. Freedom has cheapened into a demeaning free-for-all in a prison of petty wants. As a springboard to happiness, emotional health, and social well-being, ‘the good life’ is an exhausting flop. As evidenced by Martin Seligman’s research which shows that consumer culture now has ten times the rate of depression we had at the end of the Second World War.
• The term ‘cultural insanity’ refers to normative templates that have become so counter-productive and self-defeating, or so misaligned to our basic human needs, that they stand to undo society or its life supports. In fact, normality can be the deadliest of foes.
• Never before has a society indebted itself so heavily to unreality.
• For the first time, Utopia is a matter of life or death. Getting it half right or even mostly right is not enough.
• For cultural psychologist Erich Fromm, the only defense against our all-consuming social insanity was ‘a radical change of the human heart.’ Perhaps the most important change that needs to happen, because all the other changes will not last unless the human heart is connected with a Source outside of itself.
• We recognize in films like The Matrix and The Truman Show our phantasmagoric world of factory-farmed experience that keeps us blankly nippled to fantasy, and numbed to life beyond our brainwashing.
• God, increasingly hell-bent on wanting us to be rich, is resisting the green makeover that some prayed could spare Creation. Unfortunately, as with many article of this type, written by those with a socialist leaning, the God they critique is the God of fundamentalism, who is a kill-joy and only cares about punishing homosexuals and people who have had abortions. Millions of Christians don’t believe in this God either.
• The highest act of love in a criminally insane society is disobedience. Normality can no longer be trusted. Unconditional obedience is an unaffordable luxury. To be “well-adjusted” is to be part of the problem. Brilliant; a great definition of love in this context.
• Economics, once the boring background affair it should be, is now the cornerstone for cultural consciousness. What will it profit someone if they gain the whole world but lose their very self?
• For the same price as the insanity-saving ‘credit crunch’ bailout, we could be well on our way to a society of minimalists, naturalists, humanitarians, and debt-dodging vegetarians. Compassion and childlessness could be chic, and conservationists sexy. Throw in half a year’s military budget and peace could be hip, education could enlighten, and eloquent simplicity could be all the rage. A society where childlessness is encouraged is a society on its way to extinction. What else could it be? And as far as education goes, as I read once, because of human nature, education doesn’t achieve the desired outcome. If you educate a devil, you don’t get an angel, you just get a clever devil.
• There is nothing that we cannot be or believe. We are as perfectible as we are corruptible. Thousands of years of human history has shown us by now that this is simply not true. This type of thinking is really the same addictive thinking that says that despite the mountain of evidence, we can still be perfect one day. It is not for nothing that Jesus said that without Him we can do nothing. It is only when we find ourselves in our ultimate Connection that we will eventually be made perfect, and that will not be this side od death.
• The biggest problem is that, by design, we are cultural creatures, fated to be normal except for rare individuals with enough courage and conviction to liberate themselves partially from culture’s powerful gravitational pull. Even well meaning individuals who profess concern about the unfolding apocalypse usually plod on like zombies in allegiance to their cultural norms.
• Culture is the last great frontier. While it would be a spectacular leap of maturity on our parts, the deliberate and preemptive management of collective consciousness guided by a responsibility-based culture is the next and most important step in our evolution.

This magnificent article needs to be shared far and wide, despite its naivety and seeming ignorance of the deception of the human heart. It comes closer to a vision of the kingdom of God than much of what we hear in our churches. I am reminded of a couple of brilliant books that should also be must-reads for people of faith. They are Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change, and Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.

It is true that what we need is a change in the human heart, but what this article proposes is a kingdom without a king. As Johnny Cash sang in the song The Wanderer, ‘they say they want the kingdom but they don’t want God in it.’

Perhaps the most important omission from the article is the house on rock that Jesus spoke of, that of hope; not just hope that we will one day get to our utopia, but a hope based on a fact of history, that because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, there will indeed come a day when utopia will be a reality, and we can indeed build for it now. But it will not be one that is finally completed by defective humanity, but one that is completed and consummated by God himself. It will be the wonderful new creation that the Scriptures point to and whose consummation is gloriously described in Revelation 21. May that day come quickly because God knows we need it.

Some of the latest Richard Rohr daily reflections have been focusing on evil and goodness in the world. they are taken from his Spiral of Violence CD. This one really spoke to me about the subtleties of evil and some of the strategies of the Enemy. Reminds me somewhat of C.S. Lewis’ brilliant Screwtape Letters. I have highlighted the bits that are most profound to me. Check it out below:

When the first level of the spiral of violence, “the world” (group selfishness), is not exposed for what it is, and the second level, “the flesh,” generates out of control (murder, stealing, rape, lying, adultery, greed), then a third level of fully justified evil always emerges. These are systems like oppressive governments, penal systems, legal systems, military systems, economic systems, and all the other systems we create to control disorder and violence. They ordinarily have a complete life of their own. These can, of course, be good too; but when you worship them, when you let them have total power, when you refuse to critique these systems, they can wreak the greatest havoc in history—and they have. Any system that says “bow down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9) is always diabolical, whether it be church, state, or “the market.”

The devil’s secret is camouflage. The devil’s job is to look very moral! It has to look like we are defending some great purpose or cause, like “making the world safe for democracy” or “keeping the bad people off the streets.” Then you can do many evils without any guilt, without any shame or self-doubt, but actually with a sense of high-minded virtue. Evil must disguise itself as good (Thomas Aquinas), and until Christians start understanding that, their capacity for “discernment of spirits” (1 Corinthians 12:10) remains very minimal. They are easily duped and always misled.

Some of the themes that come out of this for me are the ends justifying the means, a sense of moral superiority (even ‘God on our side’), the politics of division, and the sense that we are inherently right and ‘they’ are inherently wrong. How I have to watch this in my own life.

This fourth and final article on my time in India last year is a reflection of what were some memories that will be embedded in my being forever. As I have mentioned, India is a land like no other. It is a combination of ancient and modern, it is in danger of being overrun by Western consumerist madness, and it has produced some of the most wonderful people to have ever walked this good earth.

Read the post here.

I wrote this article 5 years ago and thought it would be worth re-posting again now. I probably wouldn’t change much if I wrote this again today. I’d be interested in others’ thoughts.

I don’t often agree with very much at all that Chris Berg says. In fact, most points of view propagated by the Institute of Public Affairs, of which Berg is a member, are not ones I subscribe to. However in yesterday’s Age, Berg wrote an excellent piece on the contribution of Christianity to Western civilisation through the centuries.

Berg probably mentions a bit much the contributions of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, but the overall gist of his article is excellently researched and complies with the best research put forward by historians such as Rodney Stark on the contributions of Christian faith to the very foundation of our society. Even moreso, it is the consequences of the atheist desire to rid the world of religious faith that Berg, a non-believer, explains best. Here are some of his quotes:

• “Virtually all the secular ideas that non-believers value have Christian origins. To pretend otherwise is to toss the substance of those ideas away.”
• “It was theologians and religiously minded philosophers who developed the concepts of individual and human rights. Same with progress, reason and equality before the law: it is fantasy to suggest these values emerged out of thin air once people started questioning God.”
• “For most of our history, all the great thinkers have been religious. So our secular liberalism will inevitably owe a huge amount to its Christian origins.”
• “Ideas do not exist in a vacuum. If we imagine they were invented yesterday, they will be easy to discard tomorrow.”
• “If atheists feel they must rip up everything that came before them, they will destroy the very foundations of that secularism.”