Monthly Archives: October 2016

The Squeeze

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squeezeIts been a year of transition.

The kids went back to school at QBC, Danelle has picked up some work there and by virtue of having to fit into school schedules we have started to live a somewhat ‘normal’ life.

We now have children to get to school every morning, and home every afternoon… there is homework… and lots of it… Our lives have become governed by school hours and school terms.

I realise this is how most people live, but I’m not enjoying ‘the squeeze’. I’m not enjoying the sense of conforming to the rules of suburbia and there is a part of me that is wondering how long we can sustain this kind of life, or if we even want to.

‘Oh don’t be silly – of course you can sustain it – just look around you – everybody does it!’ I hear someone say.

And I’d say ‘so what?! Who said it has to be this way? And what impact does it have on those people?… Is it all good?’

Obviously we made these choices for a reason. One of my life’s mottos is that ‘life is a series of compromises’. You just can’t have everything you want all the time and sometimes you simply have to be willing to trade ‘x’ for ‘y’. We have made a choice to trade some of our freedom (and Danelle’s sanity) by outsourcing education to a third party.

But I didn’t actually realise how much of a family life change it was going to be having the kids back in the system. We originally made the decision because Danelle was struggling to cope with the demands of two kids in more advanced schooling and by sending them back it took that load off her plate. And it has done that… she has not struggled with anxiety anywhere near as much and the sheer weight of planning their education is no longer hers.

For the most part we are really happy with their school situation, but lately I’ve been noticing the squeeze – the forces being exerted on us that are shaping us into the predictable patterns of suburban life (and I get that they aren’t all bad – people need to know how to ‘fit in’ as well as how to think for themselves.)

That said, for the last 6 years I have always liked that at any time I could say ‘hey let’s down tools and take off for a few days down south!’ And we could… Or ‘Hey the surf looks good today Sam. Forget maths this morning and lets hit the beach’ And he could…

Earlier in the year I offered Sam a day off to come surfing with me and he told me wasn’t allowed. ‘What?!… I’m your dad boy! If I can’t give you permission then who can?!’

‘Yeah… we aren’t allowed to wag school dad,’ came the autobot reply. My butt cheeks clenched tight.

The squeeze… literally…

It started right back then. Sam is a natural law abider anyway, but what kid wouldn’t take their dad’s offer of a day off school?!

As part of our arrangement with the church we choose to take a lower salary in exchange for an extra two weeks holiday each year. It was partly to help the church with the $$, but it was always my intention to make sure we spent plenty of time on the road travelling.

That was great when we could shoot off up north for a month over July and then slot another couple of weeks in at other times, but now the mid year break is just two weeks. Exams come at the end of term and apparently it isn’t cool to skip them… And then it’d be tough on the kids for them to miss all the start up stuff in the first week of term.

So we fit in.

Part of the challenge is running a seasonal business, and yes – that’s my choice. So we can take 4 weeks over Christmas, but apart from the crowds and the premium prices its also the prime time to make some good $$.

Perhaps this is just how it is and we need to suck it up and slot in. For the next 4 years our life revolves around our kids’ education and their adolescent years. I do think there is an element of inevitability about that. But I also hope that when we (and they) come out the other end we haven’t become so entrenched that we have lost the ability to think for ourselves and choose our own path.

Or in the immortal words of the not so well known philosopher Forrest Griffin, I really hope the juice is worth the squeeze…

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Bright Lights and Bullshit

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txf_logoI don’t know Ezereve, the woman who wrote this post, but I enjoyed reading her down to earth, open handed assessment of her experience with X Factor.

If you wonder what happens on these ‘talent’ shows then this report gives a good insight. Goodonya Ezereve for writing your real experience.

 

So You Want to ‘Convert’?

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Yesterday I was reflecting on the life and death of Eric Cooke and whether he genuinely found faith in Christ or not. I’m glad I’m not the one having to make that call.

But it does raise the question of what constitutes a genuine and substantial conversion. Is it even still ok to speak of ‘conversion’ or is that too un-PC these days?… Its a topic that interests me because it really is the pointy end of mission. Ultimately the end game of mission is to see people follow Jesus and live in the kingdom of God, but how do you get there and how would you know if you are ‘there’ anyway?

I had thought this would make an interesting post-grad research area, but instead it was an 8hr sermon prep and some wide and varied speed reading that led me to the conclusions I offered this morning in our teaching at QBC. So its hardly an in-depth analysis, but even a scan of the scriptures offers some intriguing insights.

Scot McKnight has a helpful book entitled Turning to Jesus – The Sociology of Conversion in the Gospels where he looks at how people come to faith when Jesus is around. It is often as simple as ‘follow me’, and it ends up with life changing encounters eg Zacchaeus where the person’s world is upended. He also looks at the ‘healing conversions’ (if they are that) and the response evoked from the person being healed who is unable to stop speaking of Jesus.

In Acts it is the diversity of conversion experiences that is interesting, from the Pentecost ‘mass evangelism’, to group conversions (Cornelius/jailer), the Areopagus where a philosophical debate leads to conversion or even Simon the magician trying to convert for reasons of personal gain – a reminder that not all conversions are genuine (as if American politics hasn’t already taught us that…)

I didn’t have time to smash thru the letters, but what I was trying to do was form a sense of the common elements in a conversion experience – recognising that conversion is both event and process.

So I finished with 1 broad idea that captured the essence of conversion as well as  5 elements that seemed to be essential in all conversions to Christ.

The broad idea is that of ‘turning’, as per 1 Thess 1:9 where the people turn from idols and to God. ‘Epistrophe’ seems to be a word used to describe this action and it is common to all experiences. If there is no ‘turning’ there is no conversion.

Then the five elements I picked up on were:

  1. An encounter with truth – the ‘gospel’ is proclaimed – spoken and communicated to the listener in such a way that they can understand. For Jesus it was as easy as ‘follow me’ (no doubt accompanied by some experience of him), but in Acts we read many sermons or verbal messages that contained the good news of the kingdom of God. For people to make a choice to ‘turn’ they need clarity around the message – the nature of the new life they are signing up for. So while we may advocate ‘speaking the gospel at all times, if necessary using words’ we have to acknowledge that we do need to use words.
  2. Repentance – this is the specific act of ‘turning’. Unless there is recognition that the current experience is a failed venture then it is again unlikely that there will be a conversion, Why would anyone turn from a life that is ‘working’ and feels just fine? More specifically, recognising brokenness as having its roots in sin is one of the great challenges for our mission in this time. While we may acknowledge that we are flawed, maybe even messed up, we live in a time when it is more likely for us to believe that we have the power within us to fix ourselves.
  3. Change of Allegiance – if repentance is problematic then offering someone else the title deeds to our life is even more challenging, yet this issue of ‘lordship’ is at the core of what it means to follow Christ. If a conversion is to have integrity and longevity then it will be because we have come to grips with the idea that ‘we are not our own’. Yeah… another popular idea…
  4. Action – the common ‘action’ in the Acts accounts seems to be baptism, but action simply refers to living differently as a result of the change of allegiance. We no longer get to opt out of offering forgiveness, or expressing generosity. We no longer fiddle taxes or watch dodgy stuff on TV because we are living with a whole new paradigm of life. James didn’t say ‘faith without works is ill’, he said ‘faith without works is dead’, so if a conversion does not show itself in a new way of life then perhaps it is questionable.
  5. Community – if we just convert to ‘go to heaven when we die’ (a truncated and flawed gospel at best) then there may be no need for community, but if the gospel is really the good news of the kingdom of God then it is unavoidably communal. To convert is to join the community of faith – to be part of the church and to live in a community of like minded people seeking first the kingdom of God. There is no faith outside of community. Yeah that’s a big statement, but its one I hold to. I get sick of hearing people tell me they don’t need church – as if ‘church’ was a pep talk each week to give a boost to their life. It negates the fact that when you choose not to be in community the rest of the church misses out, but it also reflects a deficient understanding of discipleship which is by its very nature communal. If you want to follow Jesus, but don’t want anything to do with the Christian community then I think there is something suspect in that decision.

What’s interesting is that these are not one off events, but rather ongoing commitments that both begin our journey in faith and also sustain it over the long haul. My observation of those who ‘de-convert’ or simply drift off into secularism is that one or more of these elements is allowed to become unimportant.

  • A rejection of the message – or supplanting with an easier message…
  • No longer a need to repent – feeling like we have evolved to a new consciousness where we are growing in our own ‘perfection’…
  • Deciding that you are running your own life in ‘this area’ and that area… taking back authority? Jesus becomes an advisor rather than the lord.
  • Choose not to do some things that a disciple would do – not into forgiveness or generosity – revert to practices more akin with a non-disciple? You slowly become a religious, church going person who lacks the traits of a disciple.
  • And move away from the community – take yourself out of a place of shared values and practices and you will slowly cease to own those values because that’s what community does – it earths us.

My Calvinist friends may well be shaking uncontrollably that I haven’t mentioned the work of God in conversion, his choosing, calling etc, but that isn’t the focus of what I am writing here. Conversion is unquestionably the Spirit’s work, as well as being our own decision, but my concern is more with what happens at our end to authenticate our experience.

What’s the point of this?

I asked the question this morning how many people would feel confident leading another person thru a conversion experience and not many hands went up. I sensed as much. I think its because we live in a world where we are (by and large) less certain about things and less willing to call people to the life of faith Jesus speaks of.

At every level we get met with objections – the sheer idea of ‘truth’, of the need to admit failure and repent, of giving away personal autonomy, of choosing to act in ways that are not convenient or self serving and then to submit myself to another bunch of people are all counter-cultural and difficult ideas, but then the kingdom of God is always intended to look radically different to western suburban life, so maybe that’s where it all gets tricky…

The Conversion of Eric Edgar Cooke

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The years 1959-1964 were a unique time in Perth history as they marked the Eric Edgar Cooke years – the period during which the city’s first serial killer was making his mark. If you want to read an intriguing account of this time then Robert Drewe’s Shark Net is well worth the time. 

Drewe recounts living in close proximity to Cooke and observing him as he worked at his father’s Dunlop factory. He devotes a whole chapter to the 1959 Billy Graham crusade in Perth and his insights are valuable. An aspect of this story that has always left me both curious and chilled was his account of Graham’s evangelistic altar call:

He kept quietly urging and beckoning us to join him. It was hypnotic. It was contagious. The people getting up from their seats didn’t look like religious maniacs. The looked like your average movie audience on a Saturday night. I recognised neighbours and a contingent of boys from Wesley College whom I’d played sports against. I saw my friend John Sturkey. I saw the chemist’s wife and my old maths teacher. Two rows along I saw Eric, the Dunlop delivery driver, sitting by a sign saying ‘South Perth Methodists’. People stood up all along the rows or chairs and people began sliding down from the roofs of the cattle, horse and pig pavilions. The chemist’s wife stood up. Eric stood up and joined Billy Graham. People were having conversions all around me. p.174

Aside from it being a beautifully crafted piece of writing, it is an account that raises some enormous questions.

So Eric Cooke became a Christian at the 1959 Billy Graham crusade… shortly before he went on his 5 year rampage of 22 violent crimes and 8 murders?… What exactly happened there?

Eric Cooke hanged in Fremantle prison on October 26th 1964, the last man to die by capital punishment in Western Australia. Will we see Cooke in the next life?

I’ve been pondering questions of conversion and this is one that has stuck in my craw since reading Shark Net back in the mid 2000’s. Perhaps the broken, messed up person that was Eric Cooke did have an encounter with the grace of God that could never be undone, no matter his crimes. Or maybe Cooke was just another casualty of an evangelistic methodology that sought to herd ‘souls’ like cattle rather than disciple real people into the kingdom of God.

More ‘conversion’ reflections to come after I’ve done some teaching on this issue tomorrow.

And here’s a link to the trailer for the TV mini series that was made from the book.

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‘What’s the point of theology if it doesn’t help is us come to grips with real life? So asks Danelle when I explain a little of the book I have been reading. And she has a point… surely one major aim of good theology is to help us understand the intersections of the divine with the everyday. Surely theology should help us grapple with the difficult questions of life and suffering is right up there with the biggies.

Husbands Should Not Break by Shane & Elly Clifton was loaned to me by a friend who told me it was about a theology lecturer’s reflections on coming to grips with spinal injury and that it explored the issues of theodicy and suffering. Kerryn had heard Shane present at a recent conference and as a result bought his book. She shared a little of it as we took communion yesterday – enough for me to say ‘I’d like to borrow that…’ and having been laid up with the flu since yesterday afternoon I have had time to read and finish it.
As it’s written in journal style, some of the content are blog entries and Facebook posts. When I was half way thru I started to think ‘This is good, but it’s not theological reflection…’ however the further along I went the more I felt like it was some of the best theological reflection – honest, gritty, expletive laden, at times hopeful and at times totally despairing and certainly unafraid to express stark emotions.In this book you won’t read a systematic theology of human suffering complete with Harvard referencing, but you will hear an earthy, articulate, theologically educated 40 year old man grapple with the life that was foisted on him. It doesn’t hit much on theodicy per se (big subject…) but it certainly does grapple with personal issues of suffering and pain.
That said, it doesn’t offer any clear theological paradigm for making sense of suffering, but nor does it advocate hopelessness. If ‘mystery’ is a paradigm then it probably best fits here. The author is from a pentecostal background and was prayed over/for/under/around by all and sundry but to no avail. If anyone was going to be successful at healing then you would think it would have been his ‘mob’, but he simply has to accept the reality of unanswered prayers (as well as the bizarre oddity of then praying for bedsores to heal while he is still unable to walk…) Clifton hovers between gratitude that he is alive and anger at the way his life has been turned on its head. I liked the absence of trite answers or the call to ‘just trust’. He makes an excellent point in that while God is able to bring good out of suffering we are mistaken to suggest God inflicts suffering as part of his purposes.
The value of the book is in its detailed (some may say explicit) descriptions of living with a spinal injury. Unexpected poo and wee feature prominently in the narrative and are one of the challenges for people in this situation. I found this extremely helpful – the difficulty – the shame – the helplessness… the reminder to look out for folks who are disabled because even as they regain autonomy there simply are times they can’t do what others can. Reading the account of Shane trying to find someone to assist him because his catheter was about to explode and being rejected at the first few attempts was pretty gut wrenching.
I found the chapter on sex really well written and commendable for its boldness and candour. So many Christian authors would shy away from the more intimate issues because they are somehow deemed inappropriate for public consumption, but Shane Clifton and his wife Elly took the risk, opened their world to us and said ‘here’s how it is…’
Shane has a blog here for those who want to read more of his journey.