Faith and relevance in the 21st century
I just saw this story of the sisters in the USA who made the trip to Idaho to claim their $1million winnings with their ticket locked in a fireproof safe. Is this wealth producing happiness? The more we have the more we fear that someone is going to take it from us. Check out the story here.
If Jesus is coming back to renew all things and we will be reunited with loved ones who have died, why are we sad when they die? Shouldn’t we be glad that we will see them again?
Such an attitude reflects a denial of the reality of life as it is in this fallen world. If ever we needed an example that it is right, proper and actually healthy to grieve, then Jesus’ weeping at the death of his good friend Lazarus is it.
I went to a funeral a few years ago for a person who had taken their own life. The pain of family members was of course palpable. This person’s death could be described as nothing else but a tragedy. Yet at the memorial service, someone sang a song with a smile on their face which suggested that, as this person is now with Jesus in heaven, we should be rejoicing. What is there to be sad about? Something just didn’t sit right with this singer’s attitude. Someone else at the service agreed with me when I made that suggestion. Why is it that many Christians have this unrealistic and frankly, cruel, attitude?
Some months ago, in an article on death, I wrote that “Death is terrible. The fact that a loved one is now in the arms of Jesus is comfort, but it does not fully take away the sense of finality that we experience when someone we cherish is taken from us.” There is no denying this fact. Anyone who is never moved by the passing of a loved one has severe emotional problems.
I’ve been fascinated with the idea of death recently. I know that sounds somewhat weirdly morbid but I’m now in my early 40s and halfway through the lifespan of the average Australian male. One of my pastors remarked to me recently how he is in the twilight of his life. I quickly reminded him that any one of us might be in the twilight of our life. There are no guarantees about living to a ripe old age. As Martin Luther King said on the night before he died, longevity has its place but it really doesn’t matter to an extent.
Recently I’ve also been fascinated by accounts of Christians who have had near-death experiences. I don’t know why; I don’t believe I’m about to have one soon. I used to have a fascination with these events when I had doubts about God, but I think my recent interest reflects a desire for something more in life. Maybe it does also reflect some doubt, maybe I just want some reassurance that it’s all true. Most of the accounts I have read don’t give me any reason to think they’re not true, so they do provide some reassurance. In fact, the experience of one person that I read – Dale Black – changed his life so much that it was about 40 years before he even told his wife about it.
Stories like that of Dale Black and others like him, do give me reassurance that it really is true, and they do make me think about the idea of death and mourning over it. What I can say is that death is not the natural order of things. It is often said that death is a natural part of life. It may be a natural part of life, but it is not the intention of God. Jesus provides the assurance of hope, hope that this is not all there is, that there really is something more. But hope does not mean we should rejoice and sing the hallelujah chorus when a believing loved one dies because they are now safely with Jesus. Such a response is not Christian and is simply delusional. As I have mentioned, Jesus wept at the death of his good friend Lazarus, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t infused with hope. It also doesn’t mean this hope was reason for him to be happy because Lazarus was about to come back to life. Jesus was God in the flesh, a God who is filled with compassion and mercy, a God who weeps with those who weep, a God who cares deeply. This is also a God who is the Resurrection and the Life, a God who conquers death and renews creation so it glories in this God who made it all and remakes it all.
Sometimes you need some inspiration in life. It can come from anywhere, and when you get it, you realise that your life has been a little dull of late. A friend recently sent me this slideshow of photos taken by the Latin American writer, Gabriel García Marquez, and it did the trick for me. I have never heard of Marquez until now, but I feel like I want to thank him. Along with some simply stunning photos of Paris, he has written his thoughts on life as he struggles with lymphatic cancer.
Reading his musings, as well as having been to Paris in 2003, it gave me the type of inspiration I had when I was a teenager and read the advice to young men in the book of Proverbs for the first time and realised that that was the sort of person I wanted to be. This is just the sort of thing we need in our Facebook world where we struggle to concentrate, are constantly rushed, and where we are paralysed with the amount of choice we have. And it will only get worse in this silly season. Hopefully this slideshow will give you some inspiration like it gave me. Check it out here.
What a wonderful day for freedom today was, with the release of the one they call ‘The Lady’ – Aung San Suu Kyi.
Widely respected for her dignified stance while under house arrest for 15 years, I believe she is the Nelson Mandela of the 21st century. Now, if only the Burmese junta can show the courage that F.W. De Klerk did after he released Mandela and initiate free and fair elections. Of course Suu Kyi’s release was specifically timed by the Burmese generals to happen just after elections when they had been confirmed in their power for who knows how long. But free she is, and hopefully this will be a catalyst for an unstoppable wave of pressure on the military junta in Burma.
Now is the time for the world to apply more pressure than ever to this suffering country and push hard for elections that are not the sham that the recent ones (and the ones before that in 1990 when Suu Kyi’s NLD party won a landslide victory) were.
This is a day to remember and a day to pray – to pray that the generals won’t find another pitiful excuse to put Suu Kyi under house arrest again and that they will show courageous leadership and have the elections that the vast majority of people in that country want.
Watch this news report of The Lady’s release, and rejoice:
In my current studies one of the questions we have looked at is what the Revelation is about. We are asked to give brief responses. Here is mine:
Revelation is a fascinating book which looks at a number of separate issues. It is highly symbolic, it is encouraging and it is forthright. It also has been and still is used by many Christians as a way of somehow reading the future by interpreting it in the light of particular world events that may have happened or are believed to happen in the future. This has led to a whole lot of very bad and dangerous theology which has its outworkings in doing much damage to people and the planet.
The main themes from Revelation are that it is a book about perseverance in the face of extreme persecution, the fact that Jesus is Lord over everything (which in the time it was written meant that Caesar wasn’t), and the fact that, as N.T. Wright says it, Jesus wins in the end. The wonderful story that we get from Revelation is the future hope of the renewal of all creation when heaven and earth come together and, as it says in Revelation 21:4, there will be no more tears and no more pain.
I have always found Revelation so encouraging in the sense of it speaking to people who are undergoing great suffering. It was when I was going through suffering as a teenager that Revelation 21:4 spoke to me so warmly. So, if it could speak to me like that, how much more must it have spoken to the Christians it was initially directed at, facing as they were persecution that was constant and life-threatening.
As Paul wrote in Romans, our present sufferings cannot be compared to the glory awaiting us. Jesus will ultimately triumph in the end. Indeed he already has through the cross and resurrection.
Hope is a recurring theme spread amongst that of suffering when we read through this engaging letter. What Revelation means for us today is that same hope; that when we follow Jesus, what we work for is not in vain. We trust that God will triumph in the end, but we still have battles to fight here and now. However, trusting that God will triumph gives us confidence, courage, and perseverance. I think it was C.S. Lewis who gave the analogy of the D-Day battle in World War 2 to describe the story of Revelation. D-Day was a battle that ultimately decided the war, but the war went on for another 12 months until the final victory was won. As with D-Day, so with Revelation; the war has been won but there are battles still to fight and suffering still to undergo. But move on we do, in the sure hope that our suffering is not in vain.
During the week I came across an interview that Rowland Croucher gave to Australian Missionary News about the main issues facing the Church as a whole at the moment. What he said makes interesting reading. Some of his thoughts were as follows:
Theological issues:
Interestingly, Rowland says homosexuality is by far the number one theological issue. I wonder if that would have been the case 20 years ago. Back then the issue of social justice was pretty high up there. I remember going to seminars which had topics questioning such things as whether or not the issue of human rights is a diversion from the Gospel. Fortunately many Christians today have moved on from that.
Main church issue:
Rowland explained that the main issue for the church in the West and for mainline churches was ‘losing customers’. In 2003 Barna Research revealed that more committed Christians were not attending church on most Sundays than those who were. This was the first time in history this had been the case. Seven years later I would say it is more so.
Rowland also singled out the Pentecostal church, saying the following:
“Several Pentecostal denominations are growing but it is not uniform…Pentecostals expect a high degree of personal and spiritual commitment and young adults are attracted to that. But there is a lot of moving around in the Pentecostal scene (between Pentecostal churches and in and out of their churches). But they are growing and its mainly for those two reasons, the worship and the commitment required.”
That’s an interesting observation too, and quite encouraging. I would have thought that commitment is one of the things that Gen Y in particular shy away from. John Smith has said that one of the catch-phrases you often hear from Gen Y is ‘keeping our options open’. If commitment is something that is expected then that is good to hear. I remember someone saying to me about 20 years ago that the best way to keep young people in the church is not to entertain them but to get them involved in service for others – the type of commitment that will touch them much more deeply than any entertainment ever will.
On church growth, Rowland said the following:
“In the West, one of the key reasons is that people watch on average 20 hours of television a week. Compared to what they see on television, church is frankly, boring. Pastors have to compete with telegenic personalities and unless a Pastor can preach with charisma and is worth listening to, with a style like they see on television that is both interesting and answers questions people are asking, Pastor’s will battle.”
This is too true. When it’s all about entertainment rather than hard thinking (that’s generalising I know), then ordinary churches struggle to keep up. It is also reflected in the Facebook phenomenon. I have seen a couple of articles recently which have described research showing that social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter are actually changing the way our brains are wired, to the extent that many people now find it difficult to sit down and read a book.
The insights from this interview are hugely relevant for the mission of the church. What does it say for your church and its mission in the 21st century?
Check out more details from this interview at http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/25404.htm
Recently, Sight Magazine asked me to post a response to a reader’s question about how the Fall cracked the tectonic plates that caused the Haiti earthquake. Myself and Mick Pope were asked to provide a 200 word response. Such a brief response was quite a task for such a major question, and a couple of days ago I mentioned that I would be putting up a more detailed response. Well here it is. I started off by suggesting that the question is based on a wrong premise, that is, why must we assume that it was the Fall that cracked the tectonic plates?
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I recently came across a book called Creation Untamed by Terence Fretheim which puts forward a convincing argument about how we can reconcile natural disasters with a loving God. The book starts by suggesting what Genesis really says about the creation.
The automatic assumption by the vast majority of Christians is that the world was perfect before the Fall, and that when the earth is renewed at the end of all things, creation will be restored to its pre-Fall state. However Genesis does not say that at all. It says that God created the world ‘good’; nowhere does it say that the world was created perfect (and what is ‘perfect’ anyway?). Even when God made humans He said we were made ‘very good’ but again we were not made perfect. For instance, God told Adam to name the animals and to subdue the earth. The fact the earth needed subduing suggests that it was not made perfect. As well as this, after the Fall, God said to Eve that her labour pains would increase, not begin; the implication being that the birth process was already a painful one.
If we take it that natural disasters occurred as a result of the Fall, then we are faced with only two possibilities that I know of to explain why God would allow these to happen:
1. The earth really is only about 10,000 years old. This would correlate with the idea of the Fall being the cause of all natural disasters. With this idea you could also say that the Fall had cosmic consequences which would explain events such as meteors crashing into the earth.
The problem with this proposition though is that the idea of a young earth flies in the face of the opinions of the vast majority of the world’s best scientists. I am totally committed to the authority of the Bible, but I am convinced that it is not meant to be used as a scientific text book. There is overwhelming evidence that evolution over many hundreds of millions of years is the process by which life developed on earth. When we are presented with such evidence, it is our interpretation of the Bible which must adapt. Please understand that I am not questioning the authority of the Bible; what I am questioning is our interpretation of it.
2. God is not loving. If we accept that the earth is indeed about 4 billion years old and that humans came onto the scene relatively recently in comparison, then we have to deal with the problem of natural disasters happening before humans appeared. It is widely accepted for instance that the dinosaurs were wiped out as a result of a giant meteor crashing into the earth. If this is indeed what happened, then, as an atheist colleague said once, what did the dinosaurs ever do wrong that God would destroy them? You could say that God destroyed them as part of the whole plan of preparing the world for humans. Maybe, but we are still faced with the problem of explaining why natural disasters occurred before the Fall.
The inevitable question that arises from all this then is that of why an all-powerful, good and loving God would create the earth without it being perfect. The answer as I see it goes to the very heart of who God is. What if God wanted us to participate with him in the creation? God is a relational God and his greatest desire is to be in relationship with us his creatures. This approach makes a whole lot of sense and explains some of the difficulties faced when dealing with issues like natural disasters.
I wonder if our struggle to reconcile the fact of natural disasters with our belief in a loving God is misplaced. I wonder if our penchant for believing that the universe must have been made perfect in terms of everything being in proper order comes not from a proper belief about God but from a post-Enlightenment idea that is based on a scientific and mechanistic view of the world. Biologist Darrel Falk, in his book, Coming to Peace with Science, suggests that God is more of a creative artist with a passion for relationship than a designer or some sort of engineer.
The main passage in the Bible that is used to explain the consequences of the Fall is Romans 8. This is the passage in which Paul speaks of the creation groaning as in the pains of childbirth.
Having read it a number of times, I don’t see anything in Romans 8 which explains that the creation’s groaning is a result of the Fall. Rather, this passage sees Paul alluding to the anticipation of the new creation. The creation is eagerly awaiting being set free from its bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children (Rom 8:19-21).
As well as this, Jesus’ resurrection is the forerunner to the new creation to come. Therefore everything we do now matters. Our acts of care, for both people and the rest of creation, will have their place in the new creation at the end of all things. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 8, not the consequences of the Fall.
Having said that natural disasters are not a consequence of the Fall, I do believe that our human sinfulness nevertheless can contribute to such disasters in a significant way. With the effects of climate change, we can even say that, as the IPCC has declared, there is a 90% likelihood that our human activities are contributing to some of what are still called ‘natural’ disasters. I would now call many events such as extreme floods and bushfires both natural and man-made disasters, due to the detrimental effects our pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is having on the earth’s climate.
Our human sinfulness, brought about by the Fall, also contributes greatly to the effects of natural disasters. I would presume that we would generally only call such an event a disaster if there were human casualties. For instance, if there was a major earthquake in a region of the world where there was no human habitation, then there is less likelihood we would call it a disaster. In fact, if we take earthquakes as an example, many scientists argue convincingly that plate tectonics are essential for the continuation of life on earth, and that life would probably not have originated without plate tectonics. This is a far cry from them being a result of the Fall, and shows that they don’t necessarily have to lead to a disaster.
Regarding Haiti, which was a major disaster as a result of an earthquake, a link could be made between the huge death toll there and the fact of human sinfulness in that it is often the poor who are forced to live in such vulnerable places. If you think of the vast majority of natural disasters that happen, it is overwhelmingly people in poor regions of the world who are the victims. For example, the Christchurch earthquake was just as powerful as that in Haiti but no one died in Christchurch, probably in part because they had better infrastructure. The only natural disasters I can think of in recent memory which inflicted heavy loss of human life in affluent areas were Hurricane Katrina and the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria. And you could say that the majority of victims of Katrina were low income African-Americans.
The issue of God and natural disasters is a difficult one for those of us who believe in the loving God of Jesus. I don’t claim to have answered it here, and some readers will probably find flaws in the arguments I have put forward. Part of the life of faith is accepting that ultimately there is mystery. But two things we can say. One is that, as C.S. Lewis once said, when we face God on that final day, one of the things we will say is “oh, now I understand”. The other is that, as N.T. Wright has said in response to the question of why God doesn’t seem to intervene, He already has in the resurrection of Jesus. Through Jesus’ bodily resurrection we have the hope that one day there will be no more disasters that cause untold suffering for millions of people. We have the hope that there is coming a day when there will be no more tears and no more pain (Rev 21:4). Until then we can respond with the compassion of Christ when such events happen, following Him into the place of pain to bring healing and the hope of a new tomorrow where all is well and we will thank God for all He has done.
Jubilee Centre, one of the best websites I have ever seen, put out their list of the best Christian blogs about a month ago. There are some rippers on it, as you will see from some of the links I have put on this website. If you want to know more about good theology, then some of the blogs on this list are worth following.
The extraordinary media outpouring over the canonisation of Mary McKillop this week shows that there is still a deep yearning for something spiritual in the Australian psyche.
Despite our insanely hedonistic and materialistic outlook on life in this culture, there is still something deep in the hearts of Australians that is searching for something more. Whatever we might think of the theology of having someone made a ‘saint’, the fact that it has created such an outpouring of interest is evidence that Australians are not satisfied with what we can simply see and touch. We have a longing for something more than what this life offers. There is a yearning deep in the heart of everyone – a God-shaped hole as it has been called in the past.
The irony of all of this though is shown in the fact that the marketers have been cashing in big-time on the whole show. You could buy anything from Mary McKillop t-shirts to jewelry to keyrings in the last couple of weeks. The Sunday Age even had a poster of her. As Midnight Oil sang many years ago, who can stand in the way when there’s a dollar to be made?
Another observation from the canonisation of Mary McKillop is that is refreshing to have a good news story come out of the Catholic Church. When there has been so much pain from the stories of child abuse to come out of the Church, the story of someone like Mary McKillop, who specifically stood up against the sexual abuse of children, is one to celebrate.
I also wonder if some of the appeal of the canonisation of Mary McKillop comes from the fact that there is something uniquely Australian about her standing up against authority. She was excommunicated for uncovering sexual abuse – she stood up for the underdog (including the poor), and she was a local. She was one of us, someone who we could all relate to.
The canonisation of Mary McKillop reveals much about the Australian soul. There is hope yet for Christian faith in this country. If only we could do a better job of showing Australians that Jesus would also have fit right in amongst Australian culture. He too was a rebel against authority, not just for the sake of being a rebel, but for standing up for the underdog and a fair go, to show that all are welcome in the Kingdom of God. We would do well to pray that the Australian soul will be awakened by the story of Mary McKillop.
“Days turn to minutes, and minutes to memories. Life sweeps away the dreams that we have planned” – John Mellencamp, Minutes to Memories
There is a scene in the movie Up in the Air where George Clooney’s character is trying to convince his brother-in-law-to-be to not jilt his bride on their wedding day. The groom has cold feet and isn’t sure he wants to go through with such a huge commitment. And Clooney, who is starting to realize the loneliness of his own 24/7 casual jetsetting lifestyle, asks the groom to remember all of the happiest times of his life. As the groom starts to think, he realizes that they were all spent with other people; the happiest times of his life were when he was not by himself.
I was being shown some photos of the family of a friend the other day. This person has 8 siblings and the family gets together often to celebrate birthdays and other special occasions. As I was driving home that day I felt a sadness come over me. I am one of 3 brothers who all live in different cities. Soon we will all be living in different countries. I don’t have a large family to see here. I was then reminded of some family friends whose extended family now spans four generations. The first and second generations of this family have spent every summer holiday for the last forty years at the same place. Some would say “how boring!” but I think it’s wonderful. This family can associate that place with the best moments of their lives. I have sometimes joined them on their holidays and I have always felt just as much a part of their family as the blood relations themselves.
We have been sold a lemon in our busy 24/7 lives. We have been taught to believe that our happiness actually lies in having more stuff and not having people bother us all the time. Many of us would rather live on our own than go through the hassle of sharing a house with someone else. And many of us would rather the all-fun-and-no-responsibility of casual sex than the hard work and struggle of a committed relationship.
We live a lonely existence in the western world. I heard someone say recently that we know more of what is happening on the other side of the world than we do about our next-door neighbours. We build our fences higher and spend more time online than we do getting to know people face-to-face. I remember growing up in suburban Melbourne and knowing every person or family in our street. I still have memories of our next-door neighbour passing some of our kitchen chairs that he had just fixed back over the fence to us. I wonder how many of our children today will have those memories when they look back in 30 years’ time.
I was talking to a colleague on the bus during the week about this. This lady is African and has been living in Australia for about a year now. As we were discussing what life is like for her compared to back home, she remarked that one of the things she has noticed is the number of people who either live alone or who spend time alone. She said that in her country it was a duty to introduce yourself to your neighbours when you moved into a new area. It is just part of what you do. And sure enough, people quickly get to know each other and there is a lot less fear in their neighbourhoods than there is in much of suburban Australia. We are poorer for the fact that we generally don’t do that as well in this country.
Our deepest and most cherished memories are indeed of those times spent in relationship. It is often difficult but it far outweighs the pain of the lonely crowd, of not feeling connected to the people closest to us. Dave Andrews has said that community is somewhere where there is always someone you don’t want to be around, and some friends of mine once said that anything worth doing is never going to be easy. Our lives in this world are short and we never know when our time is up. The writer of Ecclesiastes was right – our lives are vanished in an instant; we come from the dust and to the dust we will return (Ecc 3:20). And it can all seem like a chasing after the wind. Life does indeed sweep away the dreams we have planned.
The hard work of bringing in community, of getting to know our neighbours, can be so simple. A friend of mine said during the week that just having a kick of the footy in the street can bring other children out. Then all of a sudden conversations start, people get to know each other and walls of fear and mistrust break down. Jesus did this when he broke all the social conventions of 1st century culture by associating with tax collectors and ‘sinners’. Jesus knew how to have a good time, and he told his disciples of the joy he had within him. His life was about relationship and the early church followed in his footsteps. They endured the daily struggle of living in community, they shared all they had; they passed their kitchen chairs over the fence to each other, if they even had fences. And their lives were so attractive that they added to their number daily those who were being saved from their own loneliness and self-absorption to life in the community of Jesus.
Does all this stir up a longing within you, a longing for things that once were? Do you have similar childhood memories to the ones I have related and wish they could be the reality once again? One day when the new heavens and the new earth come together and all things are made new, we will enjoy that community again. But this time it will be complete and we will create new memories, memories which will live forever. And the wonderful news of the Gospel is that Jesus calls us to that new life now. He calls us to deny ourselves, to do the hard work of relationship and to put our lonely, selfish ways behind us. He came that we would have life in all its fullness. And that life is only found in community. It is found in community with those who are also living for justice and peace, those who struggle with each other in the now but who also live in the hope of the not-yet, that time when all barriers will be broken down and all things reconciled in the glorious world to come.
There is much more to say about these profound lyrics by John Mellencamp. Memories can be cherished and they can be painful. Far too many people have memories that are just too traumatic to raise again. All of us have dreams that have been shattered, expectations that did not eventuate, and hopes that were never realized. One of the best pieces of advice I have heard, from two different people, is that life is mainly about how we deal with loss, ultimately to the loss of our life.
Psychologist Larry Crabb says we can use disappointment to drive us to hope. What Crabb is referring to is the ultimate hope of the renewal of all things. When days turn to minutes, and minutes to memories, and life sweeps away the dreams that we have planned, remember that we are destined for more. This life is not all there is. Remember too that everything we do in this life matters. What Martin Luther King called the beloved community starts now. The greatest things in our lives are those done in relationship. When we live this out we will be able to look back and have memories that move us to gratitude – gratitude to God for giving us the courage to follow the One who calls us to remember, to remember what He has done in sacrificing His all and giving us the privilege of working with Him to bring in the kingdom where our dreams of love and justice, and forgiveness and grace will finally be realized.
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