Soul Thoughts

Faith and relevance in the 21st century

Category: Culture (Page 6 of 8)

John Dickson on gay marriage

June 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The jury is still out in my mind on this issue. There are Christian leaders who are friends of mine I deeply respect who have differing opinions to each other. The way I am leaning is best expressed in this interview of John Dickson from the Centre for Public Christianity.

The important point that John makes, and which I have heard elsewhere, is that Jesus had this incredible balance in which he actually intensified the norms of his culture (“previously it has been said…, but I say to you…”) while at the same time being a friend of ‘sinners’. Today I have no doubt he would be known as a friend of the same-sex oriented community.

It could also be said that we should say as much as Jesus did about this particular issue, which is of course nothing. But that is a cop-out. This is obviously a very real issue for thousands of people in this country. It has also been said that same-sex oriented people make up a very low proportion of the population, but that issues like greed, which Jesus said a heck of a lot about, affects us all, so therefore we should be speaking on these ‘bigger’ issues. I understand that point of view, and I agree with it to an extent, but it still can tend to be a convenient distraction from what is a red-hot issue and one that is very close to the hearts of many people.

I have to think more about this, and I intend to read some more over the next few weeks, particularly from the point of view of those who support same-sex marriage so that I get a balanced view. I want to be open to what I think is the most Christ-like response. I’ll post my thoughts as they are developed.

Mental health and consumer culture

May 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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.

Chris Berg on the contribution of Christianity to Western culture

April 16, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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.”

It is that last point that has implications for society as a whole. Let’s just see where we end up if we have a society without the contributions of Christian faith.

Remembering the Titanic

April 16, 2012 / / 0 Comments

As we remember the tragedy that was the Titanic disaster 100 years ago, it has always intrigued me as to why we find this tragedy so fascinating. The main reason I see is because it is a tale that illustrates so much of human nature, and of the culture of the day. The class distinctions, the failure of human self-sufficiency in an age of ‘inevitable progress’, the emphasis on what is importnat in life and what is not, the hubris of not having enough lifeboats on board; all these things tell us so much about ourselves. The real tragedy is that it took a real vent and not just an illustration to remind us of these things. The 1500 people who died were real people with real dreams and real families. That just highlights to me the urgency of seeing ourselves in the light of who we really are – dependent on Something else for our existence, that human frailty is real and human autonomy is folly.

A couple of articles, one written last week and one written in the days following the disaster in 1912, illustrate all this elegantly. The first article is from Eureka Street’s Andrew Hamilton and talks about the lessons we can learn from the Titanic sinking, going into more depth than what I have attempted to describe above. The second article is a sermon by the great theologian Karl Barth delivered on 21 April 1912, just a week after the fateful event. Fascinating reading.

Another classic from Richard Rohr

February 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

How easy it is to lose our spiritual hunger when we are so satiated in our society, when we have so many choices that we suffer from choice anxiety and we don’t feel a need for God. In that vein, here is some more wisdom from Richard Rohr that I want to take on board:

Beginner’s mind is a posture of eagerness, of spiritual hunger. The beginner’s mind knows it needs something, just as children do. This is a rare feeling in today’s treacherously seductive culture. Because we are offered so many things that are immediately satisfying (albeit in a superficial way), it is hard to remain spiritually hungry. We give answers too quickly, take away pain too easily, and too commonly stimulate ourselves with nonsense. In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of pain before we have learned what it has to teach us. Much that we call entertainment, vacations, or recreation are merely diversionary tactics,and they do not “re-create” us at all. The word vacation is from the same root as vacuum, and means to “empty out,” not to fill up. One wonders how many people actually have such vacations!

We must be taught HOW to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. That is the path, the perilous dark path of true prayer. It is how contemplative prayer differs from the mere recitation of prayers (which can actually be another diversionary tactic instead of any kind of self-emptying).

Adapted from Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, pp. 43-47

Thoughts on the American psyche

September 11, 2011 / / 1 Comment

My wife and I recently returned from spending some time in the United States. Having been there a few times now, and having some family over there, I have decided to pen my thoughts on this country of contrasts, of opportunity and of deprivation.

We were in Florida on the 4th of July, and we spent the evening with a few hundred other people watching the fireworks and celebrations. As I watched and took on the reactions of the people, I was impressed by how much Americans love their country, and by how genuinely patriotic they are. While I do believe that Americans go over the top with their sense of patriotism, there is a reason for it, and on the other hand, I don’t think Australia goes far enough with it. And frankly I am sick of people who constantly bag America for this and other reasons when they have probably never even been there. It is easy to be judgmental from afar.

Americans really believe they are the greatest country in the world, not necessarily in the sense of being superior (though of course there are indeed many Americans who believe their country is superior than others; and that attitude is not just limited to those who believe that America is somehow God’s promised land), but in the opportunities they have in this country. Freedom is everything in this land; it is what has made it great. But it has also led to an arrogance that will one day be its downfall. For example, for Barack Obama to say, in response to the recent downgrade of the US credit rating, that “no matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a triple-A country” was the height of American hubris.

But despite the claims of freedom that this country is built on, I am convinced that Australia has more freedom than the US. Our health system is not out of reach for millions of our citizens, we do not live in nearly as much fear of a major terrorist attack on our shores, and our level of poverty is generally not as high as in many places in the US.

As I watched the fireworks and was impressed by the love of Americans for their country, I was equally impressed by the view that America does not have a right to impose itself on the rest of the world. No country, however powerful, has that right.

Martin Luther King once made the point that a true patriot is one who loves their country enough to criticise it. He was responding to those who said his criticism of America came out of a hatred of its ideals. King though, loved his country, and wanted it to be the best it could be, to live out its ideals of equality and freedom for all. His criticism did not come out of any resentment or an attitude of judgmentalism or superiority. It came out of a dream he had for his country.

Any criticism must come out of a motivation of love. Otherwise it is tainted with self-interest. I tend to think that there will be many people gloating over the problems America is facing at the moment, looking forward to the decline of the American empire. I have to admit I struggle win that myself at times, but it is not the way of Jesus.

It is easy to be seduced by America and the very consumer culture that is the source of many of its problems at present. The ideal of freedom of enterprise, private ownership of property and individual opportunity are the unshakable bottom lines of this nation, and they have provided both opportunity and heavy costs over the years.

My relationship with America is one of both love and anger (as opposed to hatred; I don’t believe in hatred). Having a brother who has lived there for half his life, and having been there myself a few times, I see both sides of what, in my limited opinion, is both good and bad about this country.

One of the privileges we had while in the US recently was watching in person the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, the final launch of the shuttle. The word ‘awesome’ is bandied around everywhere these day to describe things which are really incredibly mundane. But watching this live was, for me, truly awesome. To watch as people are blasted into space was to realise, as my brother who was with me at the time said, that this is the very frontier of exploration. It was estimated that 750,000 people lined up on the Florida coast that July morning. It was a sight to behold, seeing the enormity of what a country can do in terms of technology. No wonder the patriotism on that day was so strong.

It must always be remembered though that, while this technological brilliance of America has certainly driven its innovation, it has been at the expense of social safety nets for the millions of less fortunate and less free, those who miss out because of billions of dollars spent on the space program.

Perhaps my response to the shuttle launch was also linked with my thoughts on the cultural hegemony of this nation. When we were in America, it hit me about how much we are infiltrated by American culture through television. It is so constant that we aren’t even aware of it. This cultural hegemony is largely what makes America so powerful. Through television, American culture has for years been exported around the world. The idea of American freedom and the American way of life has been shown to billions around the world, non-stop, 24/7, and, quite simply, it is part of our identity. That is why, when many people visit certain parts of the US, it feels familiar, they feel like they know the place; there is a level of comfort with the surroundings. Such familiarity also gives America more power. Image and perception is everything, and the America that is exported around the world is the America of Hollywood and dreams, whereas the other side of America is often hidden, for instance the side that has 46 million of its citizens living in poverty. This is one example of the lack of liberty that many people experience in the land of the free.

A final word must be taken from the Gospels. America was founded on the belief of many that they were a nation blessed by God, a light on a hill. And the constant refrain we hear from American Presidents at the end of every speech is ‘God bless the United States of America’. Well, my word toAmericais “be careful what you pray for.” The God in whom the Pilgrim Fathers placed their faith said “blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn, and blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” The way of Jesus is inevitably the way of suffering. And this is the tension with which America lives. It is truly a remarkable nation, one that has given much good to the world, but it is also one which has inflicted untold suffering on innocent millions in the name of the very freedom which it proclaims to the world.

The psyche of America is indeed a wounded one. Today of all days the nation will be feeling this. The Founding Fathers seemed to have great motivations for the new country, but it has been greatly misguided over the years, leading to equally misguided hatred on the part of those who would destroy it.

On the statue of Liberty in New York harbour, the sign proclaims “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. And in Matthew 25 when the nations are brought together, it will be those who treated these very people as Christ did who will go into the glory set aside for them. Will America heed the call? On this day when many are mourning, may God truly bless the United States of America.

Truth in a postmodern culture

January 25, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Showing Christ to be relevant in a postmodern, largely secular society has its share of conundrums. I will say upfront that I am not an expert on postmodernism; the following are simply my observations of being a follower of Jesus in 21st century Melbourne, as well as some insights picked up from other followers on the way.

I have a deep conviction, and in fact I can say – and I understand that this will seem like an incredibly arrogant assertion to make in a postmodern culture – that I know that Jesus is the answer to the question of life, of what it’s all about and how we deal with it. He is the only one who delivers on the life that humanity is after. This conviction has been borne out of years of surrendering my life to this Christ, asking for His will and not my own to be done in my life each day. As C.S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” You can’t prove that by the logic of reason, and that is one of the benefits of bringing across Jesus today. Many people are not seeking ‘proofs’ these days. As John Smith has said, you could convince someone that Jesus really did rise from the dead, but they could at the same time turn around and say, ‘so what?!’.

People want to know that Christianity works. But whilst it is important to bring that across, it is equally important to remember that Christianity isn’t true because it works; it works because it’s true. Again, this will come across to many people as another seemingly arrogant assertion to make. But I learnt from Rikk Watts some time ago, and I agree with him, that truth is something different to what I had always thought. In these postmodern times where what’s true for you doesn’t have to be true for me, I believe we have forgotten what the definition of truth is. I believe we have been looking at it the wrong way. We are still caught in the trap of our post-Enlightenment thinking that sees truth as a concept. But the Scriptures never describe truth in such a way. Have a read through John’s gospel and you will see it. Truth is personal. The truth has come to us in a Person, the person of none other than God incarnate. A concept is impersonal, and truth is not that.

When talking about truth we have been asking the wrong question. Ever since Pilate asked Jesus that great existential question, ‘what is truth?’ (John 18:38), we have thought of truth as a concept. But John tells us that truth is a person. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). And John in his gospel says that the law was given through Moses, and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). This Truth is the great ‘I Am’, a designation that the Jewish hearers of Jesus would have instantly recognised as nothing other than the outrageous statement of someone who is claiming to be the living God. No wonder they tried to kill him. How dare he make such claims in front of those who claimed to have a monopoly on truth!

I wonder how society would react if He made those claims today. I don’t think it would be much different to 2,000 years ago. We live in interesting times. While we live in a time when modernity seems a relic of the past, there are still strong glimpses of it. People know integrity when they see it. You will not meet many people have major problems with the church who will also write Jesus off. As Dan Kimball has noted in his book of the same title, ‘they like Jesus but not the church. And, as N.T. Wright says, “we generally know deep down what is good. When we see someone living out a Christian life, we don’t ask ourselves if it’s good or not; we just wish there were more people like that around.”

Throughout the ages, from modern days to these postmodern days, actions still speak loudest. If we want to find out whether or not Christian faith is relevant in the 21st century, we need only look at the actions of those Christians who are walking their talk. The fact is that Christians have had a profound impact on society. I have written elsewhere of the massive contributions that people of faith have made over the centuries. It is that more than anything that has convinced people of the reality of God in the world.

If we want to see what Scriptures speak best to a postmodern culture, I think the relevance of Christ today is seen most profoundly in those magnificent words of Colossians 1:15-20. This is what brings it all together for me. Check it out:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

I think this is one of the most radical passages we can think of for the 21st century. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And, contrary to popular church opinion, God did not make everything for our glory. Colossians tells us that it was all made for Him. The creation and all that is in it was not made for us. We don’t own it. We are stewards, and stewards take care of what they have. If the church would only grasp this and get over its mind-numbing superficiality and obsession with growth and success, we would be more of a fragrance of life than a fragrance of sameness and conformity. And we would actually have something powerful to say to a society that is drowning.

We need to be more aware that society has largely given up on modernity and its failed promises of the good life and inevitable progress. But, as alluded to above, people still want to believe in something bigger. Witness the extraordinary outpouring of hope in Barack Obama in 2008. It’s interesting that such an outpouring of emotion and hope occurred in a country with Christian roots, nominal though its Christianity generally is now. It has largely been overtaken by a consumerism that has taken it to the eve of destruction, as Barry McGuire put it so many years ago.

In such a consumerist society, with so much choice, we suffer from choice anxiety. When our only commitment to life is the commitment to – in that postmodern catchphrase – ‘keep our options open’, we become confused people. We become terrified of missing out because we’re addicted to experience. As a result of this we become wired, unable to settle with being committed to something for the long term. That’s why I think Facebook has taken off like it has. It is a service that both reflects and shapes our times. On the other hand, as I have said previously, it is why marriage is so good for the soul: it’s about a commitment for life to one person.

When we ‘keep our options open’, we rarely take up any of those options and we miss out on much of the joy of being alive, of standing for something, of living with purpose. The line from a John Mellencamp song from the 1980s rings true today more than ever: “if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.”

Having said all this, some thinkers, notably Mark Sayers, believe we are moving away from postmodernity back into something more akin to modernity. Sayers adds though that while there has been a decline in the concept of postmodernity in the wake of 9/11 and the rise of the ‘New Atheism’ with its modernist catchcry of ‘celebrating reason’, the reality of postmodernity is being lived out by average people in the suburbs. Consider this comment by Sayers:

“Postmodernity is seen most clearly in the ethically incoherent lives lived by Western people. Its beat of relativism is heard most clearly in the contradictory hedonistic/altruistic, nihilistic/optimistic, spiritualistic/materialistic lifestyles of average people everywhere in the West.”

Sayers goes on to say that therein lies the challenge of mission in the 21st century. We do well to remember that postmodernism too has made the same mistake as the church. It too still has traits of modernism about it in that it still sees truth as a concept. It just sees truth as relative instead of absolute.

Whilst in our conversations, the use of modernist concepts like reason (an essentially Christian idea by the way) and logic can have its place, there is a challenge to be given to those who live a contradictory lifestyle. But the challenge first has to be faced by people like me who often decry the subversive effects of the very materialism we secretly still hang on to at times; in my case the very technology I secretly want more of. We too need to walk our talk. That will speak louder than anything.

I wonder if we have let ourselves be walked over by the claims of postmodernism. Can we say that truth still has a claim on the hearts and minds of people today? Can we talk about truth in a world where there is no meta-narrative, no greater over-arching story anymore? We can, but only if we remember the nature of truth, that truth is a Person, that it is about relationship, something that goes to the very core of our identity as human beings. Jesus never spoke in abstracts; he told stories, and people respond to stories because there is usually something in them they can relate to. The Christian message is a story. It is the story of creation, fall, Jesus, redemption, and new creation. Stories touch something deep in us. That is why the Christian Gospel will always touch the deepest part of our soul, that part which wants a place to call home, which wants to know absolutely that all will be ok, that there is love in the universe, and that good will triumph in the end.

My conviction is that Jesus makes internal and external sense. Internal in the sense of giving meaning and real hope as well as joy and the ability to become more loving and more whole. And externally in the sense of being the initiator of the new creation, a world where justice rules, where everyone knows both their own and everyone else’s dignity, a world where all is renewed and in its rightful place, where people are truly humble – seeing themselves rightly in relation to God, a world where grace rules. And it is all because of Him, it is all for Him. He satisfies the hungry soul with goodness (Psalm 107:9) and fills our cups to overflowing (Psalm 23:5). A postmodern culture longs for such Truth.

A Life Uncommon

January 23, 2011 / / 0 Comments

‘Fill your lives with love and bravery and you will lead a life uncommon’ – ‘Life Uncommon’ – Jewel

The life Jesus lived was a life uncommon. In fact it was so uncommon that no one has been able to lead a life like it before or since. It is a life which gives us the ultimate guide on how to live in a godly manner. And now we have the Spirit to give us power – the power to do what is right. That is why Jesus said that when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth (John 16:13).

When we live this life, a life lived in total devotion and commitment to Jesus, we too live a life uncommon. Romans 12:2 says to not be conformed to the pattern of the world but to be transformed by the renewing of your minds. It is a life lived against the grain, a life of swimming against the tide of popular opinion and cultural norms.

Martin Luther King talked about this when he spoke of living the life of a transformed nonconformist in his magnificent Strength to Love. Most of us don’t live this life, preferring instead to live a life of maximum comfort. As we think of people like King, Gandhi and JFK – the latter having told his countrymen fifty years ago this week to ask not what their country could do for them but what they could do for their country – we remember that such people inspire us, but how many of us would actually go as far as to take that life seriously and actually live it?

When Jesus talked about coming to give us abundant life (John 10:10), he was not referring to simply enjoying the life we live here and now (although life certainly is to be enjoyed). He was talking about living a life of following Him, which starts by denying ourselves and taking up our cross. The life uncommon that we then lead, the counter-cultural life, the life of swimming against the tide, is the only life worth living.

Running up the white flag

January 8, 2011 / / 4 Comments

‘Surrender’ has been a dirty word since time immemorial. Ever since Adam defied God by refusing to continue to submit his life to the One who created him, we have a natural tendency to baulk at the idea of giving up control. The irony is though that giving up means gaining. We surrender to live.

Surrender is about pleasing God above all else. It is about having an attitude of not being rebellious at all, of not running life our own way, for that is defiance. Surrender comes out of a deep realisation that our own way of doing things has not been working. Countries surrender in war when they are forced to, and they realise the game is up. While God never forces us into surrender, we only do so when we realise the game is up with our lives and we choose to give up control and surrender our will to the Higher will.

The way of surrender is completely counter-cultural. In our individualistic society where we are told that we are the most important person in the world and we have to be in control of our lives, submission is weak; control means power. This is just the way it was 2,000 years ago when Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers. When they had all sorts of problems in their church community because of people coming in and questioning Paul’s authority, Paul reminded them that God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the foolish things to confound the wise. He had to remind them that it was not about knowledge and power; it was about the ultimate paradox in their thinking – a crucified messiah. This was how God has overcome evil and death, and this is why it looks so ridiculous to everyone else. In fact it is ridiculous, when you look at it from the point of view of the prevailing culture. We even find it difficult in the church when we have constant talk of success, growth and slick worship – the main concerns for most pastors.

I wonder what Paul would say to the church of the 21st century. I reckon it would not be all that dissimilar to his first letter to the Corinthians. Life in Christ is about victory in defeat, submission and surrender to a God who dies, and a God who calls us to die as well. In our Western lives we will rarely, if ever, be called upon to literally put our lives on the line for our faith, but would we be willing to if it came to that? I shudder at the thought in my own life. I’m not sure I could do it. After all, Jesus said that greater love has no one than to lay down their life for their friends (Jn 15:13).

There is a sense in which I wonder if it is actually harder to be a Christian in the West than it is in places where life is a daily struggle. In the West we have so many distractions, so many enticements to live the easy life, whereas in other places, God is all they have. I have mentioned before, Tim Costello’s observation that when the tsunami ravaged parts of Asia in 2004, it was the people in the West who asked that great theological question of how you could believe in a God who would allow this to happen. The people who experienced the disaster firsthand though were asking a different question. They were asking how they could not believe in God for He was all they had left.

Surrender and submission are totally ludicrous concepts in a world of power and control. But take a look at what it has produced. Are not our conflicts primarily about power? Are they not about control of resources? Are not our relationship problems primarily about feeling like our needs are not being met or about losing control over our lives, be it financially or emotionally?

Please understand though that this is not about pleasing people necessarily. If you are like me and are a people-pleaser by nature, you will likely believe that submission and surrender to God is all about being nice to people. It is not. Loving someone does of course involve being nice, but it also might mean pressing charges against a husband who is physically abusing you. Christian psychologist Dan Allender reminds us that Jesus said we would be known by our love, not by our manners.

Surrender to God doesn’t always feel like surrender. Living the Way of Jesus, having your heart submitted totally to Him, having your will surrendered to Him, is swimming against the tide. It is swimming against the tide of popular opinion in our culture, and it is swimming against the tide of our own prevailing mindset (which of course is constantly being shaped by our culture). That’s why Paul’s advice in his letter to the Romans is so crucial: ‘do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but let yourselves be transformed by the renewing of your minds. And then you will understand His will – His good, pleasing and perfect will’ (Rom 12:2). Notice how Paul doesn’t say ‘transform yourselves’, but ‘let yourselves be transformed’, or simply, ‘be transformed’. It is about allowing God to work in your life. And God will not work in your life unless you let Him (some would say here that God is a gentleman in that sense. I’m not comfortable with that idea. For me it conjures up all sorts of images of God in a top hat and suit who is all about opening doors for ladies and helping old people across the road. Not that those things are not godly; they most definitely are, but God is much much bigger than that).

Becoming a ‘transformed non-conformist’, as Martin Luther King put it in his book Strength to Love, might not feel like you are surrendered to God. On starting out on this journey, you may be confused by your emotions. I experienced this when I was nineteen. I was going through a time when I was faced with the fact that my timidity and self-pity were not the way of the Jesus I wanted to follow. I was more of a boy than a young man. So over some months as I gradually opened myself more to God, I became more Christlike. But at the same time I felt like I was becoming less loving, and I couldn’t reconcile the two. I was being more assertive and learning to stand up more for what I believed in, because I was inspired by these aspects of Jesus’ character in the gospels. Passages where he told off the Pharisees and where he went through the temple and drove out the money-changers (Lk 19:45-46) moved me deeply. God became more real to me than He ever had been before or since. Passages like where Jesus says that ‘ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you’ (Matt 7:7), and ‘you will know the truth and the truth will set you free’ (Jn 8:32), and ‘if the Son will set you free you will be free indeed’ (Jn 8:36) all spoke to my experience of God at that time. It was truly something of a conversion experience. I had a knowing that this is what I had been looking for all my life. Suddenly I knew what Jesus meant in the above-mentioned passages about being free. But at the same time I felt like I was losing my love, and so I was confused. In my thinking I was becoming more Christlike but less loving. It didn’t make sense.

Pleasing people is about timidity and fear, but pleasing God is about joy. And interestingly it is about love and trust. Perfect love drives out all fear, and if we are confused about our emotions we need to trust the character of God and know that being more Christlike is being more loving, even though it might feel like the opposite to a people pleaser. It took me years to grasp that. I had to learn to trust God at a deeper level. And the more you trust God, the more you come to know that there is nothing that surpasses the joy of doing what is right and wanting to please God. That is where life lies.

All this is difficult, and it involves brokenness. It is only when we surrender ourselves in absolute brokenness to the Lover of our souls that He enters in and transforms us into something beautiful. It is said that God can only enter a heart that is broken. If our hearts are closed and there are no cracks, there is no opening for God to enter in. It is in running up the white flag in surrender, coming to the end of ourselves, that we are able to allow the amazing grace and love of God into our lives. Day by day, hour by hour, God can expel the selfishness that has us trapped on the purposeless treadmill of life, going ’round and ’round but going nowhere. Then can he transform us into people of the Way, living for love, living for the ways of the kingdom and its King. Truly living. Life in all its fullness.

Big Googler is doing the thinking for you

September 30, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I found this article on the John Mark Ministries website today. It’s taken from The Age. I so relate to it. I find myself doing what this article says, in terms of scouring over articles for bits of information. I think one of the reasons we are like this is that, for all the internet’s wonderful benefits, it gives us too many choices. We suffer from choice anxiety.

I think the cure for this is to trust that we will be more at peace when we take in and absorb what a good book can offer. The anxiety that we experience when we fall into what this article refers to is not worth any extra knowledge we might gain. Further to this last point, I would argue that any extra knowledge is not real knowledge anyway; at best it is surface knowledge. The more we submit ourselves to this way of thinking, the more we are dumbing ourselves down.

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