Understanding The John 14:6 Trump Text

The dudes at Homebrewed Christianity are about to do a podcast on John 14:6. The "I am the way the truth and the life" text. This passage often gets used against more peace love and mung bean Xns when they are doing their "God love everyone man" thing. Kind of like a trump card to discount of God being overly inclusive. When someone pulls this trump card what they usually mean is not "Jesus is the way the truth and the life" but, if you haven't said a prayer to invite Jesus into your heart and then followed that up by attending a church whose theology roughly coincides with that big selling books at that persons favourite cheesy Xn bookshop, then you are not in with God.

Here are my thoughts on this verse. Following Jesus would have been theologically confusing for the disciples. Tax collectors and prostitutes were in but the Pharisees were out. The first were made last and the last, first. In Jesus' Sheep an Goats parable even those who call Jesus lord don't even get in.

At the beginning of John 14 Jesus announces that he will be leaving the disciples and they want some assurance. In John 14:6 Jesus tells them that he is the gate keeper it is he who decides who is in and out. There is no magic prayer to get Jesus in your heart. There is no ritual or sacrifice to be made to make sure that you are in with God, just the assurance that Jesus is the way and that he will continue to declare the tax collector, the prostitute and people like the sheep in the sheep and goats parable who don't even know Jesus as part of the kingdom of God.

So, yes I fully embrace John 14:6. But, any theological ideas that come from what we think John 14:6 means must concur with Matthew 25:31-46 (the sheep and the goats parable) and not from our own desire to be the gatekeepers of who is in and out with God. That we are not that gate keep is precisely what we learn in both passages.

Experiencing God Or Not

This week I read a post by theologian Tony Jones where he expresses a profound lack of experiencing or hearing from God. I also heard the story of someone on their death bed who had a profound experience of God. I feel an urge to embrace and affirm both experiences. I know you are supposed to fall down on one side or the other as to what should be the "normal" Xn experience but right now I'm trying to formulate something that embraces both experiences. Something that does not say that one is correct and the other means either you're not really a Xn or you are somewhat delusional. 

Personally I can relate most with the silent nothing (Tony Jones) experience of God. Perhaps other people have a different make up. An imaginative (not imaginary) make up where they are able to experience the reality of God through a far more imaginative or mystical experience. This is not to say the experience is not real just because it might not be able to be recorded on a video camera. Like the often very visceral experience of falling in love the revelation of God may also be very real. But for those of us with a different make up, it doesn't make our experience less real (perhaps like the love of a couple who've stuck at loving each other decades after the giddy excitement of first meeting has died down). For people like me it only seems less real or less "normal" if I have enough people telling me this is not the normal Xn experience or that I'm missing out. For people who experience God differently perhaps it's all about what sort of a person they are and how they experience the world rather than that God has arbitrarily chosen to speak to some people in one way and other people in another. 

To be honest I love how I experience life, love and God in all it's complex vagueness and I wouldn't change it for the world.

The Importance Of Alain de Botton

I've just listened to the NPR interview with Alain De Botton and it struck me how important Alain and his brand of atheism might be for Xns. 

More popular atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris tend to have grown up in explicitly Xn environments. Whether that be home, school or community. They have had Xy foisted upon them and unsurprisingly they have aggressively rejected it. 

De Botton is different. Raised in an athiest household he grew up outside of any Xn influences (much like many under 30s are doing today) and, approaches Xy with sense of curiosity rather than any sense of certainty and conviction. He has no interest in debating Xns but would rather just pick and choose the bits he likes from Xy. The way he treats Xy is much like the way most of us treat political parties or indigenous spiritualities. We rarely agree with the whole package a political presents to us, we pick the bits we like from each and then, because we have to, we vote on one. Similarly we might have a great quote from an American Indian cheif on our wall or a beautiful Aboriginal dot painting but, we have no interest in signing up for all their respective religous practices. 

I predict this is exactly how the vast majority of Australians will treat Xy (if they are not quietly doing this already). They might like our weddings and funerals, or like our stance on looking after the homeless, or like the schools we run and it will rarely cross their mind that someone should completely commit to the faith or be completely against the faith. They could believe in a God or not (like De Botton) but that will have little bearing how much of the Xn faith and it's practices that they pick and choose from. 

This will be a great challenge to Xns. We generally think in terms of people who either sign up for everything or reject everything. How will we respond to people who are happy just to pick and choose? (Trying to convince them they can't pick and choose will be like trying to convince someone they can't vote for a particular political part without becoming a signed up member) And, how do we coherently show the interconnectedness of all the various aspects our faith? 

This will be a far tougher and more important challenge than how could we "beat" someone who's just read "The God Delusion" in a debate will ever be.

Backyard Missionary

For seven years or so I've been trying to work out how to connect with the people in my suburb. There are no parks that anyone actually goes to. We have a supermarket, a chemist and a bottle shop and soon we will have another bottle shop. I get on fine with the neighbours but we don't have much in common. And I can't fake a passion for footy, cars, ACDC and rum. We have a local public school and we've chosen not to send our kids there. See this post for exactly why.

Anyway, right now there are eight kids from four different houses in my backyard. Playing with our chickens, cubby house and home made swing set. I haven't seen this in any "thinking missionally" books. I have no idea where all this might go.

Apologies to this guy for stealing the post name.

My Men's Meet Talk: Agnostics Anonymous

My Father in law runs a men's get together. There's warm food a fire on a back patio and there's always a wise man who share's something honest and encouraging. Last month my father in law asked me if I could be that man who did the sharing. I said yes and after acknowledging to the men who had gathered that I couldn't come up with something honest and encouraging I shared something honest. This is what I said...

---

Welcome to AA.

My name is Chris and I'm an agnostic. This is agnostics anonymous and it's been 3 weeks since my last doubt.

Now I know what you're thinking... C’mon, it's ok to have the odd doubt every so often. Maybe you could have one with dinner. Or go out with friends after work and have one. But me, I'm more of a binge doubter, once I get started it's hard to stop.

Now I know that usually these kind of talks are supposed to start with me telling you about how I used to have all these doubts but then God did something miraculous and now I'm certain that God exists and that God has some grand plan for my life. That I no longer believe that my life is a series of random crappy events but that there is a great plan and I now know exactly what it is. Well, I’m sorry. It doesn’t.

In the past I suspect that people have thought that I don’t think God has some sort of plan for my life. That I thought my life was a series of random crappy events, and they have put arms around me and said “Chris, God has a plan for your life” and I've smiled and thought well it's a pretty friggin’ crappy plan so far.

Now, I should say, for your sake I hope you disagree with me. I think it’s probably easier going with “God has a plan for my life, and I can see God working things out to make this plan happen”. To be honest, thinking that way will probably just make your life easier all round.

So you might ask why would I think that my life is just a series of meaningless random events? Why would I think that God has no grand plan for my life?

Well here's a quick sketch…

At this point in the talk I gave a short overview of my life focusing on all the crappy things that have happened to me. About ten different main events. Some of which I'd rather not publish on a public forum like this blog. So you'll just have to imagine.

So that is why I think that life is just a series of meaningless random events. Now, by giving you this quick sketch I’m not trying to show that I’m exceptional or deserving of extra sympathy. In fact quite the opposite I suspect that many of you could sketch out your life in similarly depressing terms.

Now whilst most of the time I remain convinced that my life is just a series of random meaningless events every so often something happens. Something that makes me think "hang on, maybe God does have a grand plan for my life"

One example was about 4 or 5 years ago.

We as a family felt called to leave our suburb. We couldn't find a church, couldn't connect with our rum drinking footy loving rev head neighbours. Our kids didn't get into the local schools we wanted and, the church we found, my wife's job and the school our kids were going to were all right near my wife's family who we were increasingly relying on after my son's autism diagnosis. It felt like God was clearly telling us leave the suburb.

The other example was a couple of weeks ago.

We had chosen to take our kids out of the school they were in (mainstream education was starting to clash with my daughter) and put them in a school closer to where we lived, the bank had rejected our loan application (so we could move house and live closer to my wife's family), quite a few of the local kids had started playing in our back yard (there are no decent parks walking distance from our house and we've got some fun things in the backyard). It felt like God was clearly telling us to stay in the suburb.

When these things happen I get this warm fuzzy feeling and I wonder is this God showing me the plan for my life? Am I experiencing the divine? But then I also wonder maybe, maybe it was just the dodgy left over pizza I ate last night. I just don’t know.

A few years ago I started thinking where did the whole idea of “God has a plan for your life” come from? I’d heard many people argue that in Romans 8:29 Paul describes us as predestined and therefore that means it was God’s plan for me to marry my wife, it was God’s plan for me to have two kids, it was God’s plan for me to be a stay at home Dad. But, yet this is what that verse in Romans says. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” God’s plan is not for what I would do but what I would be like. That I would become more and more like Christ. And that is all. I might thank God every day that I met my wife and somehow convinced her to marry me, that I have beautiful kids and get to stay at home with them. I just don’t think it was part of a grand plan.  

Further more, a life littered with crappy random events is exactly what many of our Biblical heroes experienced.

• Moses: After meeting God on the mountain came down to see the golden calf

• John Baptist: After baptising Jesus ends up in prison, as his disciples recount all the things that Jesus is doing, all in line with his original calling, I can just imagine John thinking the one thing that is missing is the captives being set free. Then he is beheaded

• Paul: After preaching the gospel discovers that the razor gang has been following behind him corrupting all his work telling people they had to be circumcised.

• And Jesus famously cries “My God My God why have you forsaken me” I've heard many people downplay this as just a wink to Psalm 22, Jesus saying everything will be cool. I think it's left in Aramaic and not Hebrew or even Greek deliberately to show it is a very human cry for help. All the nightmares that he worried would happen as he prayed and sweated profusely in the Garden Of Gethsamne are coming true

Random crappy events and painful disappointment is the standard experience of our biblical heroes.

And if I'm honest with myself, my plan of a comfortable life in say Fremantle with a six figure income doing a job where I can be creative and independent and a family who unconditionally adored me. That kind of life probably would not have made me more like Christ. It would not have helped me identify with the poor, unemployed, divorced, disabled and all the people who Jesus identifies with. 

Now, you may wonder given this rather depressing sounding perspective on life what keeps me going? Simply this. The more I try to live and love as Jesus did the more I feel human. The more I try to be like Jesus (failing as I often do) the more I feel like this is who I am supposed to be. Despite prayers to the contrary God has not spared me from the storms of life instead he has taught me how to dance in the rain. God does not have a plan for my life which I can relax into and know it’s all under control. God is shaping me to become more like Christ and that does not exclude me from experiencing the painful, disappointing random events that everyone else does.

A few years ago Mother Teresa’s journals were published and it was revealed that she had doubts. To me that seemed completely unsurprising. As the levels of poverty around her, that she felt called to alleviate, would have seen insurmountable. I bet she had doubts when all the second hand shoes for her order arrived and I bet she had doubts while she we waited for everyone else to take shoes and she squeezed her feet in to the last ill-fitting remaining pair. But, I also bet as she put the ideal of last first and first last in her bones she felt like this is what it means to be like Jesus, to be fully human. I’m not the sort of person who can argue evidence that demands a verdict and convince you of the Christian faith that way. But I can tell you that there is something in my bones tells me this is what it means to be human and to live life abundantly.

The big thing I have learnt in my life is that God's plan for my life is simply to be more and more like Christ. To be like Christ means that like Moses, John and Paul to be faithful is often to follow God to a place where I too will be screaming "My God My God why have you forsaken me." Where things are random, painful and make no sense.

In my best moments I try not ask God please give me a child without autism, a better salary, a house in a suburb without a methamphetamine lab across the street and without a school with a bullying problem. Instead I try to pray “Lord fix my soul” make me more like Jesus “Lord fix my soul”.

Now, because Mike usually asks me “did you bring your guitar” we’re going to finish singing a song called “Lord fix my Soul” Would you be up for that? I love this song as it’s not a cry for God to fix everything else and make it more like my image of heaven but a confession that I am the one who needs fixing to become more like Christ. Ok, now this song comes with a warning. It’s very theologically correct. In Philippians 3:8 Paul describes the things we usually value as excrement. The message describes translates the word as “dog dung” but in the original Greek the word is the roughest colloquial term for poo? Can anyone guess what that might be?

(Then we sang this song together)

Now when you go home and your wife asks "what did you do" you can say someone told us God no plan for your life, sang a gospel song with lots of swearing and everyone was smiling by the end.

Why My Wife Should Submit To Me

It's on again. The Sydney Anglican Diocese has put "submission" in as an option for the wifely wedding vows. Battle lines are being drawn. And much of the debate I've heard seems to suggest you either believe the Bible and agree that wives should submit to husbands or you say it's culturally irrelevant and we can just forget about it.

Let's start with a pop quiz. When Jesus around was he...

A) The new Jewish King the people followed as he led them on a great victory over Caesar and the Roman Empire

B) A man who submitted himself to death on a cross to show his love for us (the church).

(if you're unsure of the answer check Philippians 2:8)

OK with that in the back of our mind of what Jesus was like let's look at Ephesians where all this submission shenanigans takes place. Ephesians 5:28 says wives submit to your husbands (or words to that affect depending on your translation). There is no getting around it. In Paul's time husbands weren't just  the head of wives they were the owners of their wives. They were their property, possibly akin to the way I might own a dog I own the dog I can be nice and loving to it but it's my property. Now given Paul had history of saying things like there is no female and male (Galatians 3:28). Paul slips in a great ironic twist he tells men, that they are to be the "head of their wife". He tells them go and be the head of the wife but, (and here's the punch) do it just like the way Christ is the head of the church. Of course, Christ as the head of the church submits himself to death on the cross for his church. It's like telling a singer "you're great a singing harmonies, like Posh Spice is great at singing harmonies" It's a complete inversion on the surface meaning. But, if you don't know who Posh Spice is you miss the joke and you could be fooled into thinking you've just received a compliment. Just in case someone has somehow missed the joke, Paul would probably assume Christians had some idea of what Christ was like, he prefaces the whole passage by saying "Submit to each other" (Ephesians 5:21).

So yes my wife should submit to me, but I should submit to her. We should be in a ever spiralling battle over who can love the other more. So I'd be more than happy for my wife to have said "submit" in her wedding vow but only if I said "submit" in mine.

Ezra And Nehemiah – A Minority Report

Right now I feel like crap. The church I am hanging out with is looking at building a building and having a time of "hey lets pledge some money to a building". It's not as horrible as you might think, for a church that never passes an offertory plate the leaders up the front doing the asking always look far more awkward and uncomfortable than anyone in the congregation. Any way one of the things we're doing during this time is a study of Ezra and Nehemiah and whilst many people seem to be encouraged I feel like I am reading completely different books. Whilst sitting at home reading what it all might mean for us I found myself saying to the wall "but but but..." I started to write a response of sorts with some of my thoughts and below is what came out. To be honest it’s a mess. Some parts are too long, some parts to short and not referenced well. But, rather than polish it to proper essay standard I've chosen to publish it here in its very rough form.

How We Read The Old Testament:

Before reading Ezra and Nehemiah it’s important to look at how we read the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. As Christians We read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus and that colours what we read. For example, if we read that someone in the Old Testament made a sacrifice for sins we don’t necessarily go out and do that. Paul and the early church struggled over whether to let gentiles into Christianity and if they did should they be circumcised. Despite all that was written in the Old Testament and that Jesus said nothing about circumcision they decided there was no need for gentile Christians to ritually become Jewish first. When we read books like Ezra and Nehemiah we need to ask both, does this apply to us, as well as, how does this apply to us? It could be that the Christian response could be to do the exact opposite of what an Old Testament character did. This is really important for Christians to recognise as the Old Testament does not always have one consistent voice. For example 2 Kings 15 describes Uzziah as a good King but 2 Chronicles 26 describes him as a horrible King.

Some Background To Ezra and Nehemiah:
Historical:
Throughout Israel’s history the Jewish people have struggled with the various Empires that have dominated their region. Firstly with the Egyptian, then Babylonian, then Persian, then Greek, and finally Roman Empires. For a small tribal confederacy like the 12 Jewish tribes the wisest course of political action was to become a vassal (servant) state to the dominating Empire. Which meant paying tributes or taxes to the ruling Empire, being submissive to them rather than trying to stake out their own independence. This is expressly what God calls them not to do. They are called to live a very different life than those around them. Israel is told to have no King but God. On top of the Ark of the Covenant, where normally a King would seat, the people of God had an empty throne. Symbolising that they have no King, no King but God. When it came to worship, the surrounding cultures would do this in ornate temples. But, YHWH was happy to for God’s people to worship at a pile of stones. Specifically an unhewn (uncarved) pile of stones (Exodus 20). God could be met simply in nature itself. Accordingly, Moses meets God at a Burning Bush, Elijah meets God after a whirlwind, and Jesus goes out into the wilderness (rather than into the temple) before carrying out his mission. If this wasn’t hard enough in and of itself. God’s people are called to welcome the stranger and establish a Jubilee tradition that would ensure that no empire or ruling class could be established amongst themselves. No matter who had gained land and therefore the means of economic production and power, every 50 years it would all go back to square one again. 

This was a hard calling and time and time again the people of God would find themselves enmeshed with the ruling empire. During the reign of Babylonian Empire Jeremiah rallied against the ruling religious elite wearing a yoke to protest military alliances for purposes of national security (Jeremiah 27), or his purchase of land on the eve of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem to signal that hope lay not in futile resistance but in God’s power to preserve the people through exile (Jeremiah 32). In this way the prophet Jeremiah fulfilled his vocation “to pluck up and break down” kingdoms (Jeremiah 1:10). Jeremiah would go on to claim that Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians was YHWH’s punishment for the elite’s reliance on imperial politics rather than on YHWH alone.

Throughout the ages Empires have sort to co-opt the indigenous religious elite to support the imperial program. These were the most powerful political people and perhaps the only people who could retain their power whilst dropping political ideals this is what happens in Ezra and Nehemiah as it did with the Babylonian Empire and will happen with the Pharisees and Roman Empire.

At the time of Ezra and Nehemiah it was the Persian Empire dominated. Having defeated the Babylonian empire the Persians were the super power of the region but, they continued to face pressure from Egyptians from the south. Persia needed military outposts at strategic locations. Jerusalem was on the edge of the Persian Empire just above Egypt, an ideal place for a military outpost to shelter troops, goods and weapons in the event of a campaign against Egypt. A rebuilt Jerusalem with a fortified wall would serve purpose perfectly. This is why Persia wants Jerusalem restored and why at the hint of a possible resistance the reconstruction is stopped or later (in Esther) the Persians would consider wiping out the entire race at the insolence of just once person.

Ezra Nehemiah and the New Testament:

As mentioned previously how we respond to various passages in the Old Testament is shaped by and viewed through Jesus. With that in mind it is worth noting neither Ezra or Nehemiah are never quoted in the New Testament (2 of only Old Testament 5 books. Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon being the others). On the other hand Isaiah (chapters 56-66 written during the temple reconstruction) stands in stark contrast, as we will soon see, to Ezra Nehemiah and is the 2nd most quoted book in the New Testament after Psalms.

It is also worth noting is that the Roman Empire modelled there way of controlling other peoples on the Persian Empire and later we will contrast how Jesus related to the religious elite and the empire with how Ezra and Nehemiah act. Like Jeremiah was to the Babylonian Empire, Third Isaiah and Micah is to the Persian, we will see Jesus will be to the Roman Empire.

A selected overview of Ezra and Nehemiah

Christians are usually pretty good at highlighting different texts throughout a book of the Bible in order to espouse a particular theological point of view. So we could read parts of Ezra and Nehemiah focusing just on some parts and walk away with a story about how the people didn't have a temple and through faith in God they got one. On one level that's fine, but what is not fine is too assume that this is the only thing that is being said in the text or that no other ideas or competing ideas are also in the text. With that in mind below is a summary of four important things happening in Ezra and Nehemiah (which before the 3rd Century AD were treated as one book). This is a minority report if you like. During this Minority Report I will refer mostly to the Old Testament books Ruth Esther Micah and Third Isaiah as they were also written during the time of the Persian empire.

Filthy Lucre

In the first chapter of Ezra all the riches that Solomon had gained and put in the Temple start coming back to them. Firstly it’s important to remember that Solomon built the temple using slaves to do it (1 Kings 9:15). He’s was also arms dealing, trading horses and chariots (1 Kings 10:29) and he was amassing store houses of Gold. 666 talents to be exact. (1 Kings 10:14), 666 in the Bible it is usually not a good omen, and here is that gold coming back again. But it is not the Jewish people who have got this gold back. Persia has taken over all that Babylon had and now they are “giving back” all these riches. I cannot imagine that The Persian Empire is giving this newly acquires wealth over because they feel sorry for the Jewish people. As we will see in Ezra chapter four, as soon as there is even a hint or rumour that these people will not be completely compliant with the will of the Empire construction is immediately halted. And, in Esther (the sequel to Ezra and Nehemiah) the refusal to comply, by just one man, triggers an order of genocide for the entire race of people. No the Persian Empire is ruthless and want a military post where they can keep an eye on the Egyptians which is why they don’t want just a temple but a temple with a  fortified wall.

In Ezra Chapter 7 the Persian King Xercies describes himself as the "king of kings" and then later Nehemiah says may the King live for ever. Partly this is just towing the political line to get things done but they are also phrases that the Jewish people identified with God rather than some earthly King. The people are given a lot of money but it comes with conditions and compromise.

Throughout the ages Empires have sort to co-opt the indigenous religious elite to support their imperial programs. Ezra was the Persians’ man and they sent him back to Judah with royal silver and gold and imperial authority to rebuild the city in accordance with the Persian plan (Ezra 7.11-26).

Like the temple elites did with Babylon, despite Jeremiah's cries to do otherwise, they were doing again with the Persian Empire. They were getting cosy with the Empire. I can just imagine them thinking that it was the only way to “get things done”, to keep peace to keep order. Again the temple elites (Pharisees) would side with Roman Empire, if they didn't it is unlikely that they would have let them keep their temple. It is exactly these people that Jesus clashes with just like Jeremiah, Isaiah and Micah did. The Roman Empire like the Persian empire works through the religious elite, tolerates religious practices as long as they don’t infringe on the control of the Empire. The Pharisees will say we have “no king but Caesar” and like the religious elites in Nehemiah’s time they will become obsessed with cultic purity. More practical matters of justice like charging interest are not addressed in the initial reform as we will later see in Nehemiah 5.

Ethnic Cleansing

In the second chapter of Ezra, Ezra calls for an ethnic cleansing. It is as simple as that. Anyone who is a foreigner are kicked out. Anyone who does not have a pure lineage (had a foreigner somewhere amongst their ancestors) are kicked out. People without the correct documents proving their ancestries are kicked out. Refugees, widows and orphans are created. This is exactly the biblical triad of stranger/foreigner, widow and orphan that Jewish people are called on again and again to take care of. Those who refused faced forfeiture of all their property (Ezra 10.7-11). The Persian Empire found purer races easier to control. In chapter Ezra 9:1-2 the Persian leaders will complain that race not pure enough. Even people who had ancestors who had converted to worship YHWH long before they were born are excluded by order of the King (Ezra 4:3). The call from the Empire to ethnically cleanse happens again and again always by order of the King.

This is not unlike the Australian Aboriginal communities who do not have the same concept of half cast that westerners do, people are either in or not and on occasions an outsider can become part of the clan. But for the government it’s much easier to control Aboriginal once they are dived up into pure bred and not pure bred.

It is at this time in history that the story of Ruth is written down. At its heart Ruth is the story of a foreign woman who not only converted to Judaism, but would become part of the line of David and eventually Jesus. So in Ezra we have an ethnic cleansing that would have excluded King David and then Jesus. Jesus who would then go on to famously teach about the Good half-caste Jewish man (the Good Samaritan) the kind of person would of undoubtedly be excluded in Ezra’s ethnic cleansing program. But there are people who oppose. Amongst joyful shouts in Ezra chapter three there are a handful of people weeping, and in Ezra chapter ten Jonathan son of Asahel and Jahzeiah son of Tikvah opposed the decree.

It is also in this environment that Isaiah 56 is written.

 Thus says the LORD: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed. 2 Happy is the mortal who does this, the one who holds it fast, who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it, and refrains from doing any evil. 3 Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say, "The LORD will surely separate me from his people"; and do not let the eunuch say, "I am just a dry tree." 4 For thus says the LORD: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, 5 I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. 6 And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant-- 7 these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. 8 Thus says the Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.

About this passage theologian Ched Myers writes “More than four centuries later, a young Jesus of Nazareth, preaching his first sermon, looked hard at his audience and proceeded to read from the heart of Third Isaiah’s oracle (Luke 4:18 parallels Isaiah 61:1). Jesus may have staked his entire ministry on a reappropriation of this prophetic tradition. He invokes it again at the culmination of his struggle with the public authorities in Jerusalem: In the midst of his dramatic “exorcism” of the temple, Jesus quotes directly from our text: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Luke 19:46 parallels Isaiah 56:7). It was this vision of radical inclusion that animated Jesus’ constant transgressions of the social boundaries of his day: eating with lepers, hanging out with women, touching the impure, teaching the excluded. More than anything else, it may have been what got him strung up.

Jesus most clearly addressed this issue in an oft-overlooked parable found in Mark’s gospel. “There is nothing which goes into you that can defile you; only that which comes out of you defiles you” (Mark 7:15). This teaching is another prophetic skirmish with the social function of the purity code. Mark’s Jesus is defending his disciples’ practice of sharing table fellowship with the “unclean” outsider (Mark 7:1-5) by insisting that “What goes into a person’s body from the outside cannot contaminate it” (7:18).” (Sojourners Magazine April 2006)

Ritual Triumphs Over Justice And Israel’s True Calling

In Ezra chapter three the sacrificial regime restored. This is in painful contrast to what has happened in the previous chapter. It clearly establishes that more important than looking after the foreigner, the widow or the orphan is ones ceremonial cleanliness. At this point Christians should be thinking “this is just like the Pharisees”. Caught up in the desire to see the temple rebuilt the religious elite have declared that what goes into your mouth is more important than what comes out. Fascinatingly for me we also have Older (and in ancient culture wiser) priests who know the history of the 1st temple weeping allowed as the temple is built. (Ezra 3:12-13). Later Jesus will cry “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.” (Matt 23:23) The overwhelming majority of people Jesus heals were those excluded from the temple, those who were ritually unclean. Those excluded in Ezra and Nehemiah.

It is in this environment that Micah is written. Chapter 6:6-12

6 "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" 8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? 9 The voice of the LORD cries to the city (it is sound wisdom to fear your name): Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city! 10 Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is accursed? 11 Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights? 12 Your wealthy are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, with tongues of deceit in their mouths.

Micah is clearly juxtaposing temple practice against acts of justice and that the Jewish people are giving away justice and mercy in order to obey the temple purity code.

In Ezra chapter 4 a subversive letter surfaces warning the King that if the Jewish people were to live to their calling of having no King but YHWH then “if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be reduced” (Ezra 4:13) Instantly the King of Persia stops the building. This underlines that the only reason to build is that it satisfies the needs of Persian Empire and first and foremost the temple is to be an asset to be used for their domination of the region.

A Temple For The Elite Made By The Elite

Not all of the Jewish people were part of the rebuilding program. The rebuilding was done by the elites while the peasants stayed behind to till the soil in Palestine. People who returned to Jerusalem were primarily of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi (it was not the 12 tribes) the tribe of Israel is excluded in Ezra chapter 6. In Nehemiah Chapter three in the list of who repairs what we see Goldsmiths, Perfumers, Priest, Rulers and their daughters, are doing the rebuilding it is a temple being built for the elites by the elites. We also hear exploited workers cry out in Nehemiah chapter four.

One of the characteristics of Nehemiah is that he starts off life enmeshed with power. In the stories of Joseph, Daniel and Moses the characters have roles of leadership and power foisted upon them and it is obvious that this is something they are not comfortable with.

In chapter four of Nehemiah when the poor are brought in to work they are working on the wall all day standing guard all night. They are not able to tend to their crops, they have no income and therefore are not able to pay their taxes. So, in chapter five we see people having to pledge or sell their fields to pay the tax, and after that end up as slaves.

Nehemiah Chapter 5:1-5

Now there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish kin. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many; we must get grain, so that we may eat and stay alive.” There were also those who said, “We are having to pledge our fields, our vineyards, and our houses in order to get grain during the famine.” And there were those who said, “We are having to borrow money on our fields and vineyards to pay the king’s tax. Now our flesh is the same as that of our kindred; our children are the same as their children; and yet we are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been ravished; we are powerless, and our fields and vineyards now belong to others.

What is often reported as “Nehemiah’s great act of kindness” to halt the Kings tax, a tax the elites did not have to pay (Ezra 7.24), and stop charging interest on loans (taken out to pay taxes and something Nehemiah did himself 5:10 even though it was expressly forbidden under Jewish law) is more likely a tactical move to quash an impending rebellion.

Theologian Wes Howard Brooke writes “Nehemiah ordered his elite colleagues to stop charging interest on loans of money and grain. While this is sometimes interpreted as an expression of how politicians can be persuaded to “do the right thing,” it actually only served to reinforce Persia’s stranglehold on their new province of Yehud (the former Judah).4 Nehemiah’s own imperial function was to supervise the city wall-building project, a necessary component of Persia’s hope of making Jerusalem into an imperial military base (Nehemiah 2). His outrage against his elite comrades among the project’s general contractors (note that Nehemiah admits that he, too, has been charging interest, Nehemiah 5.10) is aimed not at restoring justice, but at preventing a rebellion among the poor that would bring the imperial project to a halt. This is underscored by even the deeply pro-Nehemiah text admitting that the governor said and did nothing to stop the enslavement of people and the rape of women. He provides only what relief was necessary to keep the imperial machinery moving, much like raising minimum wages or the provision of food stamps does today to provide an escape valve to dampen the outrage of the poor and working class.” (http://www.jesusradicals.com/resisting-the-religious-elite%E2%80%99s-collaboration-with-empire-part-i-jerusalem-under-the-persians/)

Of course later on Jesus goes on to clash with both the temple authorities (behaving much like the religious elite in Nehemiah) but with the temple itself. Telling the woman at the well (a half caste) that one day everyone will not worship at the temple and describing his own body as the temple.

Conclusion

Now two and a half thousand years later the question is should a Christian church, like Ezra and Nehemiah, build a building? Maybe, maybe not. Ezra, Nehemiah, Micah, Isaiah, Esther, Ruth and then of course the Gospels warn us that we can become so obsessed with what a building could mean that we might lose focus on what is really important, what our true calling is.

Ezra and Nehemiah teaches us that it is easy to get caught up in a building program and tainted money should not be used no matter how much good we think can be made from that. In Mark chapter 10 a rich young ruler approaches Jesus. He is someone with power and influence and capital. Someone who can get things done. Someone who could turn Jesus’s rag tag bunch of wilderness wanderers into a serious movement. But, Jesus knows that the rich young ruler has got this money by defrauding others and he won’t have a bar of it. The money has to all be given back to the poor. 

Part of our calling in the rich west is a call to love the poor, the widowed, the orphan and the refugee. To love the 98% of the world who don’t have things as good as we do. Our own wealth has far more to do with our place of birth than how hard we have worked. We are born into a system where our trade system defrauds others. An hour of labour from someone in the third world is worth a mere fraction of our own. With everything we individually and collectively spend our money on there is an opportunity cost, there is something else the money could have gone to. To give money to a project that will benefit those in the tiny minority who are better off than is something I cannot do. Not until the cost of building is less than the cost of renting now or in the foreseeable future and when there is no other conceivable way of being church together.

Why Australia Needs More "Queue Jumping" Refugees

In Australia the stereotype for the worst kind of unemployed person is something like this... They sit around sometimes for years, sometimes for generations waiting to hear from someone agency offering them a job. They just fill out all the necessary paper work but apart from that they just sit and wait for a job to turn up no matter how unlikely that might be. They don't think outside the box, they have no entrepreneurial spirit, they don't even think of another way of getting a job, they just trust the system alone.

By contrast...

In Australia the stereotype for the best kind of refugee is something like this... They sit around sometimes for years, sometimes for generations waiting to hear from someone agency offering them a place in Australia. They just fill out all the necessary paper work but apart from that they just sit and wait for a place to turn up no matter how unlikely that might be. They don't think outside the box, they have no entrepreneurial spirit, they don't even think of another way of getting a place, they just trust the system alone.

If you had to choose between refugees who are labelled "queue jumpers" or  those who have waited for a place to come up, it strikes me that maybe we could do with a few more "queue jumpers".

Debunking the Myths on Asylum Seekers

Middle Class Christian Economics Applied To Middle Class Sexual Morality

Jesus said some pretty hard things about sexual ethics (If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. Matt 5:29) and some pretty hard things about money (go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. Mark 10:21)

When it comes to putting these into practice Xns, particularly those of us in the evangelical west, are often hard on the sexual ethics but pretty lax or money.

I was just wondering what if we applied some of the attitudes we have about money to sex?

Scenario 1.

Version 1.

Your husband goes to the shop and purchases some choclate, you usually buy fair trade, but this time regular choclate is half price so he buys that instead. You think it'd be nice if he'd bought fair trade but the budget is tight and you can't afford to not save money where ever you can. You eat the choclate together.

Version 2

Your husband goes to the DVD store to hire a movie, you ussually hire a nice hollywood movie, but this time all of the movies in the pornographic section are half price so he hires one of them instead. So, will you be thinking "it'd be nice if he'd hired a hollywood blockbuster but the budget is tight and we can't afford to not save money where ever you can"?

Scenario 2

Version 1.

Your wife admits to some friends that she has a good income and talks about giving money to people in need but just ends up spending it all on shoes, clothes, and eating out. Her friends console her, assure her that she needs to look after her needs and what is really important is her attitude to money not so much what she actually does with it.

Version 2.

Your wife admits to some friends that she has a good husband and talks about being faithful but constantly ends up cheating on him with other people. Her friends consol her assure her that she needs to look after her needs (these other men are obviously giving her something her husand can't) and what is really important is her attitude to marriage not so much how she lives it out.

"Yer but it's different"... Yes and no. The main difference is we can see how the sexual ethics can hurt someone but the money stuff is not so clear. Right now there are more slaves around the world than ever before. A couple of hundered years ago we might have had slaves making our dinner and washing our clothes now they live in another country picking our coffee, coco and making our clothes and gadgets. Responding to this is hard but surely no harder than to give up slaves when no one else around you does.

A Rambling Review Of Blue Like Jazz

Excluding historical bioppics like Romero or Molokai, Blue like Jazz is the best Christian movie I have ever seen. It's better than cross over films like The Blindside too. Before you say have you seen ... Does that movie involve a lesbian character character dispensing advice that starts "if you ever want to see a vagina without a credit card"? If not I probably won't like. That might be one of the cruder lines in the film but it nicely illustrates how the non Xn characters in the film can be flawed, in smaller areas like talking politely, but are often genuinely caring good hearted people.

I liked the book but I wasn't a huge fan, but that was partly due to my own theological journey (Book Review here). I have faced similar questions to Miller and come to slightly different conclusions. Unlike the book the movie is far more open ended, questions are asked Jesus is embraced but exactly how the theology of it all is worked out is yet to be sorted out. And comes across as something that might forever be a work in progress anyway. Like the characters in the film I too have a thing for John Coltrane's album "A Love Supreme". I went to University and was the only Christian (apart from one overseas student who avoided talking to anyone) in a large dormitory with Uni sex toilets. It was the early 90s and I owned the Tori Amos album discussed in the unisex toilet scene.

Finally one of the best elements of the film is Penny, the sort of the love interest character. She doesn't spend any dialogue swooning over boys or wondering how to catch a mate. She is who she is and doesn't change, bend or soften to win a man. If someone wants her they have to take her exactly as she is. If only more Hollywood films could write female roles like this.

I've Worked Out Why I don't like Hillsong Songs... It's The Guitars

This Sunday I got asked to play guitar at Church. The usual players were away or doing other roles in the service. We were doing the usual mix of Hillsong type songs. I'm sure that they might not all be all songs that have come out of the Hillsong church but to me they sound like they do. That is, they all have that ubiquitous contemporary soft anthem rock sound which, it's fair to say, the vast majority of the congregation really seem to like. 

Anyway, Saturday night and I started listening to and learning the songs. All well and good, but then I tried to emulate the sound of the guitar. I've got an idea how to get the contemporary worship sound, compression distortion a bit of chorus. It's all very controlled, very understated, very clean. The guitar will never surprise you like a Jack White guitar riff, knock you off you feet like an ACDC guitar riff or make discordant noises you're not sure are supposed to be part of the song like a Sonic Youth guitar riff. No, the sound is predictable, controlled and anything but wild. And for me this is the rub. For me, the guitar gives so much emotional potency to a song that more often than not I feel like I know what a song is exactly about without understanding the lyrics. Niravna's Smells Like Teen Spirit is just one great example of this. 

The guitar is the source of all those wild raw emotions we posses that we would want to unleash but it's just too impolite to do so. In contemporary worship it's these emotions that must be subservient to the harmonious singing, the constant solid bass line and the triumphant drums (that sound like they are from the last song in a movie where everything works out fine). The problem is sometimes things in life are not harmonious, they are not constant and things definitely don't work out fine. That's when the guitar needs to scream and wail. It needs to scream and wail when we cannot and this is why I don't like contemporary worship music. It's not the lyrics (as obnoxious as they can be) it's the guitars. It's the suppression of those wild raw emotions that I cannot suppress, especially if I'm being honest before God. 

In the end I found a sound that was half way between Jack White and the contemporary worship sound. Apparently, according to one person, reminiscent of early Radiohead.

Your Denomination Is Dying

Census data is out and chances are if you’re a Xn in a church that is part of a denomination your church is dying. At the moment I'm with the Uniting Church and at the current rate the will denomination will be empty by 2046. To be honest this might prove to be an optimistic projection. The Xn social service agency that provides services to the community under the denomination's name might survive but the functioning body of Christians? I don't know.

A friend of mine said we should just work out how to die well. Of course dying well rather than surviving is no problem if you believe in resurrection.  But, we don't do that well. We will fight to the bitter end to hold on.

Personally I like the quote I've heard Pete Rollins cite "The only church that illuminates is a burning one." I suspect that the more we paid scant disregard for the institution the greater it's chance of survival. Imagine if the Roman Catholic church sold all their buildings, gave compensation to all the sex abuse victims then on top of that gave money to victims from other institutions who had not been properly compensated. This sort of radical move would both destroy and revitalise that denomination all in one go.

Maybe the question denominations need to ask is not how do we survive the membership decline? But, how can we burn and burn most brightly.

When Life Hands You Lemons Trite Sayings Are Infuriating

Sometimes life hands you lemons and you have to make lemonade but some days life hands you a steaming pile of dog poo and matter what clever cooking technique you apply no one will ever eat the dish you serve.

For many of us in the first world a trite saying is almost all we ever need to get over all the little hurdles life throws at us. But sometimes things are just hard and no amount of bootstrap pulling is going solve the problem. This week I felt like I was handed a pile of dog poo and asked to make a three course meal and no amount of "have you tried cooking it with..." is going to help.

Sometimes we need people to be around us and not cook the dog poo. To agree that tonight we all won't eat in solidarity we will suffer together because sometimes that is all you can do.

Sometimes in a world where pursing love, mercy and justice gets you crucified there is nothing you can do but be crucified. Be crucified and trust in resurrection.

A similar saying is “Whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger” I recently heard Monica A Coleman answer this by saying, “sometimes yes but sometimes it makes you a weaker poorer empty shell of who you used to be.” Life can be harsh and it can be cruel and it can be damaging. For those of us in a more privileged background it can be easier to overcome adversity. For others it can be damaging and it is the damaged and the weak (the poor, the widow and the orphans – the phrase often used in scripture) that God calls us to walk alongside of.

My Faith Is Going Wild

I played Hoods up, The Low-Down Technified Blues by theillalogicalspoon to my wife. "just listen to the first verse" I said. 

I don't wanna get up for church in the mornin,
church in the mornin, souls alive!
Heaven come to earth and there won't be no church
we'll meet down by the riverside,
there we'll swim with all creation,
never get tired never bored,
don't worry someday there'll be no dam between us and our Lord  

She listened, smilied and said "that is so me". It is also more and more me too. Not just the "I don't want go to church" bit but, the sense that nature is where we commune with God. That it was nature in it's raw state (the wilderness) that the Israelites fled too (away from the civillised egyptians) and where John Baptised Jesus outside of the established civillised religion. It is where Jesus the discovers his mission. The more aware of it I become the more I see it in scripture, from the Cedars of Lebanon (that were cut down to build civilisations) to the tower of Babel which saw people move from a concentrated city population to spread out tribes. Even Cain's offering, a result of farming, was rejected in favour of Abel's hunting and gathering offering.

This sense of returning to the wild as a central part of connecting with the divine is never explicitly stated in scripture. It's just a constant under current. Even domesticated Paul says that we all have an understading of God not because of what God has done through humans and how clever we are or, because of how Xns love each other, or even because of the story of Jesus but, because we find God in creation in the wilderness.

My faith is not longer just about caring for creation but going wild in it.

"Thanks for your prayers, I've upped my medication"

"Thanks for your prayers, I've upped my medication" is the summary of what a friend said to me recently in one of those brief "we gotta leave in 2 minutes" exchanges. I've got no idea what the medication was but I'm going to guess it was antidepressant medication. It's one of the few medications we talk about "upping".

In a recent Richard Fidler interview Ethan Watters suggested is that one of the reasons there are currently so many people diagnosed with depression is that this is how our generation and our culture exhibits psychological distress.

There is something about what he said that really resonated with me. I suspect that for many of us who have suffered depression it is much more than just the medical explanation of a chemical imbalance in the brain (although it is of course that too).

For me, I believe I experience a psychological distress manifesting in depression when my spiritual ideals do not match my material reality. Which being an affluent white male is quite often. Jesus strongly confronts my own way of life and change is hard. This is perhaps one of the reasons Xns are tempted to divorce the "spiritual" world from the "material" world.

Surely, if any group of people should be struggling with depression it should be Christians. As my friend said "Thanks for your prayers, I've upped my medication" my urge to take the kids home trumped my urge to say we (a collective of Xns) should do something about this. This is pretty normal, it's also pretty lonely. But, if you're a Xn and you're taking Jesus seriously, I'm going to venture and say, it should be expected. If we are called to swim against the tied of what our culture dictates as "normal" we will have to expect some level of psychological distress.

Love and grace to anyone on, upping or about to start medication.

Building A Church Building, I've Realised I Just Can't Consent To It

About a month ago I put my hand up to say "Yes, I support the idea of building a church building". Since then I've been feeling like this was not the right thing to do. Over a couple of weeks I trashed around some ideas and wrote this to the head cheeses of the church I hang out with.

---

I’ve decide I can no longer support building a building. Not this building and probably not most other buildings. I have come to this conclusion not because of anything the leadership has done or decided but because of an evolution in my own thought about the issue. In other words  “it’s not you it’s me”.

In short, I have decided until such time as we have no other way of being church other than a way that costs us more than the cost of building a building; I would rather not build a building.

I have written a quick explanation of the thinking behind my decision which is mainly for my own benefit so feel free to skip it.

The church component of the building
In the past I have thought we have to build a building the question. I no longer believe we have to. The church in China, the early church and most of the churches I've been a part of have all thrived or at least survived without a building.

Not only is God of course outside of a building but God asks to worship God without a building. 

Exodus 20:24-26 You need make for me only an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your offerings of well-being, your sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you. But if you make for me an altar of stone, do not build it of hewn stones; for if you use a chisel upon it you profane it. You shall not go up by steps to my altar, so that your nakedness may not be exposed on it."
The eventual building of a temple was inherently problematic. Solomon resorting to slave labour is but one example.

When Jesus set up his ministry he went outside of the temple system and was baptised by John in the wilderness.

The early disciples had no desire to recreate a temple like building for their own worship instead using their own houses.

Today, house churches continue to thrive in places like China, many churches meet without buildings.

The community centre component of the building

I realise the building is much more than a place of worship but also a gift to the surrounding suburban community. Simply, out of all the needs that our world has I cannot in good consciousness prioritise the need for the people of our suburb to have a community space above so many others. The opportunity cost of this gift to the community of our suburb is what could be gifted elsewhere, like a "gift" for a community in the third world.

Nothing would make me prouder than being part of a church community that owned property that generated income which was given to those in need. Each week we could hang a picture of the hospital, school or housing our money had bought with "Church Building" written underneath it.

When I look at the cost of the building and compare that to the cost and hassle of hiring space I just cannot justify it.

In Conclusion

I realise that this is not the view of the rest of the church community and I have annoyingly come to this conclusion "mid process" so to speak when the question of should we build has already been resolved (although perhaps not irreversibly so). Therefore in future meetings I will abstain from voting.

The Real Education Divide (It's Not Public Or Private)

A slightly off topic post today.

Post Gonski report I've seen a lot written about the "educational divide" in Australia. Almost all of these articles, I think, falsely put this divide between public schools and private schools. There is a divide but it is not here.

From 2003-2009 one of the roles I had in my job was to give seminars in high schools. The topic (drugs and alcohol) was pretty universal so it meant I got to visit and interact with students and teachers from the most elite private schools through to students in the most notorious public schools.

At the time I had very young children so I was often thinking would I send my child to this school? Having been educated in a public school I always thought that this is exactly what I would do with my own children. That was until I came across the education divide.

There is an education divide and it is not across the private and public divide but purely across the socio-economic divide. Really there are three tiers. Tier 1: Elite private schools: these are the ones with high fees, each kid has to bring their own laptop and the year 11 excursion will be somewhere in. Tier 2: Public schools in affluent areas and low fee private schools. Tier 3: Public schools in poorer areas.

In my job it got to the point where I was pretty confident I could be helicoptered in and could tell which tier a school fell into. I've seen 2nd tier public schools with architecturally designed facades, landscaped gardens, excellent IT resources and even a gym (one good enough to charge the public to use). Above all these schools (public and private) had experienced teachers and students who have grown up in a family where education was valued, it was seen as highly important that students do well and students were asked to think about what university course they will do.

On the other hand I've seen schools in the third tier where there was a 10cm floor to ceiling gap a the staff room. A staff room where the broken fridge was used as a cupboard and the microwave was used to boil water because the kettle was broken too. I've been told not to use words on a  power point presentation for year 11 students because "they don't read" (yes that is a quote). The teachers were a mixture of new teachers (you can't just get a job at a school in an affluent area), not particularly good burnt out older teachers, and experienced older teachers who choose to stay at a school in a poorer area. These teachers often have low expectations for their students trying earnestly to funnel them in to a trade. They are often exasperated, teaching students who come from families who do not feel that they benefited much from their own education and don't believe their children will benefit much from theirs.

This divide becomes even more pronounced with proliferation of low fee private schools. Many parents like me have chosen to put our kids in to a lower fee private school (a school chosen in part because it achieved similar Naplan results to the public primary school I went to as a child). This means that where there might have been 15 kids in a class who's parents have high expectations on what their child might achieve at school, there might be only 5. I believe this profoundly shifts the culture of a school. The greater the percentage of students who don't have a strong motivation to learn from home teachers either lower expectations or burn themselves out trying to motivate a whole class to do better. These burnt out teachers will eventually move to a school where this motivation is instilled in a higher majority of students - that is, usually a school in a more affluent area. As these things happen the reputation of a school falls and parents avoid sending their kids to the school. It's a spiralling ever widening divide.

Personally I am currently looking at moving out of the area I live in. Schooling is a big factor in the decision and when buying a new house I'll be adding the cost of two private school educations on top of the cost of any house outside the boundary a 2nd tier public school.

The Cheese Card: Christians Can't Write Scripts

I've seen some fictional Christian plays and watched some fictional Christian films in my time and they have all been bad. Last night I watched "The Grace Card". It had reasonable reviews, good production, reasonably good acting but the script... We (my wife who has a greater sympathetic tolerance to these things and I) couldn't bear to watch the end to see how even more cheesy things could get. The script was awful.

There were at least two problems with the script. Firstly, the inability to let the actors just silently act something out, without giving an extended dialogue including theological motivations for their actions. Secondly, and for me more striking, the Xn characters don't even remotely correlate with people I've met in real life. They are pious and serene beyond belief. Sure they'll often have some flaw to overcome but it's usually something others don't consider a flaw and by the end of the story you know how they're going to overcome it. Currently I have my fingers crossed for “Blue like Jazz” if that fails then I will only ever watch historically based films like Shadow Lands (CS Lewis), Amazing Grace, Luther, Romero and Molokai (these last two are brilliant). These films are often directed by non Xns who insist on catching the humanity of the people rather than the idealised theology of the people. Not only much more real but much much more compelling.

Victim Or Fighter?

A column in last weekend's Australian Newspaper gave the advice that people are either victims or fighters. This one central piece of advice was highlighted and put in bold in the middle of the article. I couldn't bring myself to read the article because this is exactly what I think is wrong with the world and exactly why I would rather opt out of those two options and be a hermit.

In every abusive relationship there is a fighter and a victim. Every victim is the victim of a fighter and every fighter is victorious only when there is a victim. It is a zero sum game. On average half the world will be victims and half will be fighters.

Obviously I don't want to be a victim but equally I do not want to be a fighter. I don't want to battle, to beat down, to victimise. Screw that. I'm happy to be a lover. I can do that. But if I can't do that I'll be a hermit a self sufficient conscious objector to the paradigm that says you must either be a fighter or victim.

The Hunger Games: Closer To Reality Than Fantasy?

Being one of those stuck up people who generally looks down his nose at pop culture I tried to avoid the hunger games but over the last few days I sat down and read the first novel and I'm about to start the second. I loved the first third of the book and the world that Suzanne Collins creates. As I read I wondered if one of the reasons the book resonates with people is the way it echoes the current state of the world.

In the hunger games kids are dying for our entertainment. In our world whether it's kids making electronic devices, clothing in sweat shops or picking coffee and coco beans kids are dying for our entertainment. In both worlds there is a one in a million chance they can leave their oppression. In the Hunger Games it's winning the games in our world might be becoming a movie star (slum dog millionaire) or being discovered as a model. In both worlds the capitol (like our first world) has an excess of food and the districts (like our third world) is starving. In the hunger games it is perhaps more obvious the way that food is moved from one place to other. It happens in our world too but sometimes more subtly. Like when we  force a third world farmer to give up land previously dedicated to food production and replace it with coffee (if you drink one coffee cup a day you’ll need 9 trees just for your own addiction) or replace it with a water intensive cotton farm to make us t-shirts that will only last a season.

Perhaps most of all I liked the Hunger Games as it connects with my own anarcho-primitivist urges. The urge to reject all that the first world has to offer and hunt and gather food in the forest much like the book’s hero Katniss. Idealistic? Impractical? Of course! Just like ending slavery or ending apartheid was also impractical. I feel like so much of our technology is just like building our own tower of Babel and we are say to ourselves "nothing that we propose to do will now be impossible for us" (Genesis 11:6) I wonder if one of the reasons many people are not too worried about climate change is that many of us believe that if we were to run out of oil or, the world got significantly hotter that we will just find some way to get around it. We don't just wonder "will nothing we propose to do be impossible?” we believe it and we depend on it. I just don't share this confidence. That's why I'm not comfortable in the Capitol and long to live like they do or rather would do in District 12 without the oppression of the Capitol.

Sunday School Lesson: Jesus Will Fill That Sad Hole In Your Heart

Yesterday I got to help run Sunday school. Having the ability to play guitar meant I got the easy job of doing the music. After the music I got to learn that if we have a sad hollow feeling in our lives Jesus can fill that void and make us feel better. To some extent I have found this thought to be true. My Christian faith has given me a framework to look at the world that can make everything seem that little bit easier to bear. But, as I got to the end of high school and beyond, whilst Jesus did seem to be somehow filling a sad hollow ache in my heart, that sad hollow ache continued to grow and grow, but Jesus's ability to fill it did not. There are plenty of parallel experiences. Finding a girlfriend, having a child, getting out of a bad job into a good job, even buying a new guitar. For a while the joy of these things buries the pain and sadness but the joy is limited. It is like in the picture of my life I get to zoom into that one new thing and all I see is joy. But, eventually I will zoom out I will take in the whole picture where that new joy is but one small part.

Perhaps this is what rubs me the wrong way about this Sunday school message. The messssage that we can keep living our lives exactly as we have been and continue to live our lives exactly as the world recommends and as long as we pop a Jesus pill every morning or put Jesus in our hearts everything will be fine. Maybe, we also need to repent. Not in just the moralistic sense (as it is so often exclusively framed) but in a wholistic sense to turn our whole lives around and live in a new way to question the long work hours, high mortgage, high consumption lives that have been handed to us. Maybe we don't need to just add Jesus to the picture but to follow Jesus means completely redrawing the picture.

Joy: A Reflection For A Small Group

Last night I went to a small group (Bible study) where we looked at the concept Joy (one of the fruits of the spirit).  We were asked to being something to share. This is what I brought.

---

Nothing makes me grown more than the concept of Joy. Being thankful or content I can do. Being at peace or having hope I can do but Joy can just get stuffed. When I hear someone sing "I've got that joy joy down in my heart (where?) down in my heart" I just want to slump and start singing "I've swept all my troubles under the carpet (where) under the carpet" or "I've put the world's problems out of my mind (where) out of my mind". 

We live in a world where every advertisement stars someone with an everlasting smile that we too can have if we buy a particular car or buy a particular brown fizzy liquid. Most films end with an everlasting smile on the face of the stars, a smile you too will have once a rich beautiful man sweeps you off your feet or once you secure your fortune and the girl of you dreams falls in love with you. 

I have found my dream partner and compared to most of the world and history I am insanely rich. I have bought hundreds of gadgets and toys to give me that everlasting smile and they have  not worked. When I look at the pain and brokenness of the world I can't help but be melancholic. Melancholic but thankful. Thankful because there but for the grace of God go I and for that I feel thankful and blessed.

Charis is the Greek word translated as joy. It is from the same root word that we get grace (charis) as in the grace of God. Another translation of joy could be "grace recognised" and that I can do. God's grace makes me feel thankful, content and at peace, just not joyful. Not in that everlasting smile sense of the world, not this side of heaven.

Road Tested Valley Songs: Peacemaking

A few Sundays ago I got to do four songs at church on the theme of peacemaking. Looking at your average church song list you could be forgiven for thinking that after saying "blessed are the peacemakers" Jesus said "what ever you do just don't write any songs about it". While hunting for songs on peacemaking, I was keen to avoid songs of the "Jesus gives me peace in my heart" variety. The four songs I chose were...

Down By the Riverside

D

I feel so bad in the morning,

                     A

I feel so bad in the middle of the day

  D                  G

I feel so bad in the evening,

       D                    G        A             D

That's why I'm going to the river to wash my sins away

(verse 1)

          D

I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside,

A                      D

Down by the riverside, down by the riverside

                       

I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside,

          A            D

I'm gonna study war no more

(chorus)

                G                                  D

I ain't a gonna study war no more, I ain't a gonna study war no more

                A            D                     G

I ain't a gonna study war no more, I ain't a gonna study war no more

D                                  A            D

study war no more, I ain't a gonna study war no more

(verse 2)

Well, I'm gonna meet with the prince of peace, down by the riverside (Oh)

Down by the riverside, down by the riverside

I'm gonna meet with the prince of peace, down by the riverside

I'm gonna study war no more

(chorus)

I ain't a gonna study war no more, study war no more

study war no m ore, study war no more

study war no more, I ain't a gonna study war no more

(verse 3)

Well, I'm gonna feast with my enemy, (Where?) down by the riverside

Down by the riverside, down by the riverside

I'm gonna feast with my enemy, (A-ha) down by the riverside

I'm gonna study war no more

(chorus)

I ain't a gonna study war no more, study war no more

study war no more, study war no more

study war no more, I ain't a gonna study war no more

© Traditional – arrangement Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Prince of Peace

G  Bm7  C  C/D 

G  Bm7  C

C/D          G    Bm7  C

This is the moment

C/D             G        Bm7  C

This is the time to pause

C/D             G     G/B     C    D             G  C  G

This is the time to understand and think of peace

C/D            G   Bm7  C  

Who can we turn to?

C/D           G      Bm7           C  

Who can we ask to put things right?

C/D             G     G/B       C       

Is there someone above the fray?

  D               G  C

A Prince of Peace?

G                       D 

Someone speak of the Kingdom

C                        G  C

And not the warfare State

G                     D       

Someone talk of forgiveness

C

And not this tribal hate

G    C          D    

This flesh that bleeds

C/D          G     C          D

These bones, these bones that break

C/D         G    C          D

This heart, this heart that cries

           C/D            G/C  D  C/D

There is a Prince of Peace        (Start verse)

Lay down your weapons

Lay down these eons of distrust

Lay down revenge that never ends

Please make this peace

In the name of the Father

In the name of the Son who bore our shame

In the name of the Spirit

Let there be peace

CHORUS

© Copyright Paul Gioia, 2002

Do Unto Others (The Prayer)

Oh lord must I do unto others,

 before they do unto me

Must I arm myself to protect myself,

 from pain and misery

oh no that is not the lesson i learnt,

 upon my mothers knee

When she told me to do unto others,

 only as I would have them do unto me

© Y.M. Barnwell

Carry Us Over

C               G               Am

Jesus turn this wine back in to water

   C                 G            Am    

So we can quench our poor thirsty souls

     C                G                Am

This dessert's dry as hell and getting hotter

        C             G                 Am

And the truth is only your love makes us whole

   C                 G                       

So carry us over the finish line

               Dm                      F

we can see the end but our feet are so tired

     C             G              Am 

It's Obvious we're useless on our own

   C                 G                       

So carry us over the finish line

               Dm                      F

We can see the end but our feet are so tired

   C          G         Am   

We don't know how to be sober

   C           G   C

So Jesus Carry us over

But if this wait is gonna kill me

well kill me then and bring me home to you

But if my destiny’s amongst the heathen

Well time me to your rope and pull me through

                C    G  Am

We want to come home

                C    G  Am

We want to come home

                C    G  Dm  F

We want to come home

                C    G  C

We want to come home

© Kelli Schaefer

The lasts song isn't about peacemaking but about struggle. If we are going to seriously involved in any kind of peacemaking it will be a struggle.