I’ve been following Don Heatley’s blog Creatio ex Nihilo lately. Don’s an American pastor who has captured my imagination lately with some very thought provoking sermons.
Here’s a thought from his most recent offering:
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats. The story sets the scene of a Final Judgement in which Jesus is portrayed as a shepherd separating sheep from goats. The sheep enter his timeless kingdom, while the goats are sent to eternal doom. Surprisingly, the criteria which is used to separate these flocks is not what we might expect. What differentiates a sheep from a goat is not their faith. It is not their beliefs about the Bible, Jesus, the cross, heaven or hell or even about gay marriage, abortion or taxes. The differentiating factor, says Jesus, is whether they fed the hungry, gave a drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked or visited the sick or imprisoned.
This parable isn’t a throwback to the idea of salvation by works. The point of this story isn’t to motivate us to rack up brownie points with Jesus by feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. Whether it’s performing good works or believing a particular atonement model, doing either merely to gain a reward or avoid punishment would make us the shallowest of creatures. Christianity is at its worst when it preys on those sinful human motivations.
Instead, Jesus is pointing us to a much bigger reality. Here’s a whacky thought: I think Jesus told this story, not to give us the magic formula for getting into heaven or avoiding hell, but so that the hungry actually would be fed, the thirsty actually would get a drink, the naked actually would be clothed and the sick and imprisoned actually would be visited. Jesus portrays his presence not just as some wrathful judge who returns at the end of time, but as a constant reality in our lives right now. He tells both flocks, when you did this for least of these, or when you did this for the ignored and forgotten, you did it for me. In other words you weren’t doing all this to accumulate rewards on your Jesus Mastercard. When you did it, you were serving your Master and the Master is just beneath the surface of this world.
Don’s quite right, of course. Service is all about putting the needs of others before our own. Now that I think about it a bit, the idea of serving others in order to gain eternal rewards seems quite offensive. The ‘less fortunate’ become nothing more than stepping stones to heaven. It might seem heretical to say it, but sometimes we’ve got to look at the here and now and forget about the eternal perspective.
I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.
I’m pretty well at a loss to figure out how to say this, but last week’s episode of the Drabblecast was absolutely awesome. In summary, a robot goes back in time to witness the building of the Tower of Babel, and, well, you’ll have to listen to the story for the rest.
If you’re at all interested (and even if you’re not) I strongly suggest you head over and have a listen. You can download an mp3 from here (42 MB) or go and subscribe to podcast.
I’m telling you, it’s the best half hour you’ll have all week!
Today’s ASBO Jesus is brilliant on a whole lot of levels.
freewill
(For what it’s worth, you can check out the Naked Pastor over here.
A few months ago I asked the question: Should Christians send their kids to non-Christian schools? I also asked the same question around Facebook and continued the conversation on the mailing list I mentioned. The discussion was quite eye-opening.
Generally speaking, there were three types of responses.
First, there were the Christians who are strongly opposed to secular education. In fact, a lot of these people believe that home schooling is the only real option for Christians. I had a real time dealing with these guys—they didn’t want to engage with me. When I pointed out that home schooling would be very difficult in my situation, I was told that it wouldn’t be. How could this guy know what is possible for me and what isn’t?
Not all the replies in this category were from people like this. Some were surprised—why wouldn’t I send my kids to a Christian school? Isn’t that what Christians do?
Second, there were the Christians who are not opposed to sending their kids to a secular school, but prefer the Christian ones. The main motivation seems to be the quality of education available there—Christian teaching is a secondary consideration.
Third were the Christian parents who are quite happy to send their kids to public schools. Some see this as a mission thing. Others can’t afford private schools. Yet others hadn’t ever thought about it.
There were also non-Christians who responded. Their responses were broadly similar, but without religious motivation.
I’m in the third category. I send my kids to a public school. I don’t find any of the arguments against it compelling. In fact, some of the arguments against tell me I’m doing the right thing. Allow me to explain (WARNING: the following paragraphs are largely based on conjecture, speculation and quite possibly fabrication. Apparently I’m allowed to be opinionated for no good reason in a blog, so here goes!)
To begin with, I’m not convinced that the secular system is anti-God. I have heard this a lot, but in my experience it is simply untrue. My kids’ school has a chaplain, they are taught religious education every week. There’s even a reference to God in the ‘pledge’ they recite at assembly every Monday morning. I’m not sure I like all that. I don’t think kids should be forced to participate in religious observance in school. Still, I find it hard to make the claim that the school system is inherently evil.
Neither am I sure that the education is substandard. Private schools generally score better than public schools in testing. Yet I don’t think it is all that straight forward. Private schools tend to attract brighter students and in many cases will provide scholarships for the very brightest who might otherwise go to public schools. Public schools can be far less picky about the students they take. None of this means the education is better or worse in either system—it simply means that one system has more students who are likely to do well.
Even if that theory is discounted the high test scores mightn’t indicate better education. When I was at university there seemed to be a common belief that students who had been to private secondary schools struggled a lot more than students who had been to public schools. The received wisdom was that private schools taught their students how to do very well in their final year exams at the expense of teaching them how to learn. I suspect there was some truth to this, but my hazy memory suggests that this only really affected those who went to the most expensive schools. Those schools had a strong financial interest in the final results of their students, so if the students weren’t as good as they’re results suggested, the more cynical of us weren’t surprised.
Ultimately, we each have to do what we think is the best thing for our kids! Christians also have to ask, ‘What would God have me do?’
In my case it boils down to this question: What is God trying to do in secular schools?
If he has washed his hands of the system, it would probably be wise to remove my children. There’s no point sending them there. But I don’t think he has given up on the system. Sure, it’s got a lot of problems, especially in some other districts. There is a lot of work that needs doing.
If God is doing something in the secular system then the very last thing I want to do is get away from it. Sure there are lots of bad kids there. Is the answer to remove the good ones? That might be the only safe solution in some cases, but those would be quite rare. And sure, public schools don’t seem to do as well educationally when compared to the private system. Is the answer to take the best students (of course, this includes my kids!) out of the school? Of course not!
Let me also say that those certain groups of Christians are right when they say that I am responsible for my children’s education and up-bringing. That doesn’t mean I can’t send them to school It does mean that I will do everything in my power to make the school a better place. It means that I will closely monitor my children’s progress and speak to teachers if I have concerns. It means that I will be involved in different activities at the school. If there are bad influences there, there’s no reason why I can’t do my darndest to be a good influence.
From what I can see God is doing some amazing things in my kids’ school. It’s not necessarily the sort of stuff that would get many evangelicals excited, but they’re good things nonetheless. I want to be involved and I want my family involved.
Hmm, this post seems to have gone on long enough. I’d love to hear other people’s opinions on the issue. Please bear in mind that it is not my intention to criticise those who have a different take on the issue. I’ve had enough criticism over this, and I don’t want to do the same to anyone else!
…but it also has its perks!
A week or two ago I bought a Star Wars themed game for the Wii. It follows the story of all six movies fairly closely, and Trudy and I would frequently compare it to the canonical story. Our daughters would often look confused. Then we realised.
Our kids have never seen Star Wars.
Thanks to my sister-in-law Lisa we actually own a DVD boxed set of episodes IV to VI. The girls know who some of the characters are—Charis even has a Darth Vader costume and a Darth Vader doll that says Never underestimate the power of the Dark Side of the Force! Yet they’ve never watched the movies.
The big question for us was whether to show the movies in the order they were released or simply start at The Phantom Menace and work our way through to The Return of the Jedi. We went with the latter, so things would make a little more sense.
So today we sat down and watched the first two movies. We have a public holiday on Monday so we’re going to get another one or two knocked over then. By the end of next week we hope to have knocked over another important milestone in the education of our children!
Parenting can be so hard.
I’d love to hear a few stories about how readers remember their Star Wars experiences, as well as the experiences of their children. Please, comment away!
Before I was an officer I went to a church in an area with many ‘halfway houses’ for people who had recently been released from psychiatric institutions. Given that a lot of those institutions had been closed down recently, and the residents just turned out on the street with little thought for their ongoing care, you can imagine what our neighbourhood was like.
A lot of these guys (I don’t remember any women) would come to our Sunday evening meetings. There would always be one or two coming in in various states of sobriety and psychosis. They didn’t know how they were supposed to act. And they added a certain… tang to the atmosphere.
It seemed to me that we needed to do something for these guys. They lived (almost literally) next door, whilst the rest of the church came from miles away. Why weren’t we doing something during the week? They obviously wanted to be involved in our community. We could organise a drop-in coffee lounge, or put in a pool table. We could organise a Bible study for those who were so inclined. I spoke to my officer about it.
“No,” he said. “These folk will always be welcome here. But you can’t build a church on people like these.”
“That’s funny,” I thought. “I thought the church was built on Jesus, and we are just the stones.”
We never did do anything for those guys.
Years later—in fact, just a few weeks ago—I was having a chat with another officer. We were discussing some of the issues we were having with leadership in our churches. I mentioned how we had quite a few simpler folk at our church. On the whole, we have a very faithful bunch of people, but very few of them are capable of any serious leadership roles.
The conversation continued. I made the observation that these folk were very good at bringing their friends to church. I remarked that this didn’t help the leadership problem at all, because the friends that were brought were normally just as simple as the folk that invited them!
“Yes,” replied my friend. “You have ants in your church. The problem with ants is that ants only attract other ants.”
I could see the point, but when it was put that way I could also see how wrong I’d been. When I look at all the dreams I have for our church I see lots of white middle class people with good educations coming along and worshipping in a particular way. In other words, I want a church full of people like me.
Yet as I thought years ago, I’m not the one building the church. God is. It’s not for us to tell him what stones he should use. And let’s face it, the gospels are the story of how Jesus became an ant among ants, and attracted even antier ants to himself. He didn’t show his power by strength. He showed it by being weak.
The Salvation Army has always identified itself as a church for the poor and simple. I’m proud of that fact. Yet sometimes we lose sight of it. We’ve had people advise us to not to grow churches in poor areas, but in affluent areas that are near poor areas. Once you have a good sized middle class church you will have the money and people to start working in the poorer area.
That makes a lot of sense. But it misses the point. The poor aren’t some funny group we have to help once we get our church sorted out properly. They are the very reason the Army was established.
Jesus can make a church out of anyone he jolly well likes. If they’re not all like me, that’s my problem. If he wants to use those whom common sense tells us to shy away from, so be it. Perhaps he knows something about ants that we don’t. I think it’s time we start letting Jesus build the church, and get our own petty egos out of the way.
There’s been an interesting discussion going on on Scot McKnight’s blog about the problems evolutionary theory presents for traditional Christian theology. I won’t go into the details, but the idea is that if there was no literal Adam and Eve, how should we understand the Fall? What are the consequences for the doctrine of Original Sin?
It’s a very interesting discussion, and there’s some pretty good but readable discussion of the issues involved. I just want to draw your attention to one of the comments, which concisely captures how we should view mythical content in the Bible.
(It’s author is Michael Kruse of the Kruse Kronicle. If you’re interested in a well-balanced and refreshing look at economic theory, or even if you’re not, do yourself a favour and check it out!)
So all I’m saying is that People in Moses’ day had an exceedingly limited understanding of what we would today call medicine, biology, geology, astronomy, etc. This presents a challenge from the standpoint of special revelation at those points where such revelation touches on issues related to these bodies of knowledge. Does God,
A) bring the hearers of the story entirely up to speed on these bodies of knowledge so he can give them a precise accurate accounting of something like how life came to be? (Keeping in mind that the “how” is peripheral to the revelation.)
B) present the timeless truths he needs to communicate to hearers of the story in concepts and forms that will be comprehensible to them but imprecise and sometimes inaccurate to an audience more knowledgeable on these bodies of knowledge?
I’m saying it is the latter. Revelation is always delivered into a socio-historical context. When we read scripture we are not reading something written to 21st Century westerners. We are “listening in” on a conversation from another socio-historical context, the record of which was superintended by God so that, as Doperdeck wrote in #69, “God does not err and the scriptures accomplish every purpose for which they were given without leading us into error.”
Therefore, we can boldly and confidently claim that this record of revelation is an authoritative accurate account of God revealing himself into a particular socio-historical context. We live in a different socio-historical context and it is reasonable to expect that if God was giving such special revelation today he would use different concepts and forms appropriate to us. It would have to accommodated to our level of understanding on many issues. Since he is not giving special revelation in the form of new scripture, we read scripture, ever mindful we are “listening in” on revelation in another socio-historical context accommodated to their ignorance of medicine, biology, geology and astronomy.
The strict literalist position makes no allowance for the contextual accommodation for ignorance of these scientific bodies of knowledge and ends up making the accommodating explanations the supreme measure of truth for all time. It metaphorically sets up the story given to the four year old as the measure to which all scientific knowledge must now conform.
Brilliant.
One of my themes over Lent are the words of Jesus about discipleship:
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? (Mark 8:34b–37, NRSV)
I think the application to Lent is fairly clear. Taking up the cross is about sacrifice, hardship and ultimately death. If we want to be Jesus’ disciples, we know what to expect.
If you want to read a good book about this subject, get hold of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. Be warned, it’s not an easy book to read.
I have often wondered where I’d be now if I wasn’t a Christian. I have the intellectual ability to do pretty well any job I’d like. I could easily have been a lawyer or a doctor. I would certainly be quite rich. I’d have a very nice house, a very fast car, and I would take holidays in very exotic locations as often as possible.
However, following Jesus has led my to be a Salvation Army Officer. It’s a pretty strange deal. I can’t even moonlight as any of those things I really would like to have been. I’m looked after fairly well, but many of the nice things in life are simply out of our reach.
And there’s the problem. I am looked after fairly well. I have a good car to drive, a nice house in which to live, and I get more than enough mnoney to cover the basic necessities of life. It’s not a lot, but I can afford to go out once in a while and buy a DVD or a video game.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is that it’s too easy for me to remain a disciple of Christ. There’s a barrier to leaving. If I decided I’d had enough of this caper and wanted to give it away, it would actually be a hard thing to do. It would have a big effect on my family–the way the Salvation Army works means it mightn’t be that easy for Trudy to continue in her role as an officer. We’d have to move out of the house and probably back to South Australia where our families are. We’d have to start paying rent. We’d have to find jobs. We’d have to buy a car. Our standard of living would probably decrease quite substantially.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining! I am very grateful that I am able to enjoy the lifestyle I do. It just seems somehow wrong that it’s easier to be a disciple of Christ than not. I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant!
This post is part of the Australia Day Synchroblog.
Australia Day means many things to Australians. For most, it’s a public holiday that marks the end of the holiday season. Christmas and New Year are distant memories and the kids will return to school in the next week or so.
Over the years a few traditions have grown up around Australia Day. The ‘Aussie’ thing to do is to have a barbecue with your mates, watching the cricket and tennis with a cold stubbie in one hand and a burnt sausage in the other.
Australia Day has a more formal side as well. Most local councils conduct Citizenship ceremonies, National honours are given, municipal awards are bestowed, speeches are made… you get the idea. Australia Day is about thinking about the meaning of ‘being Australian’ and we celebrate it by doing very Australian things.
Over the last couple of years this seems to have taken a slightly new form. We seem to have become more nationalistic. People have taken to wearing flags (a quick trip into any department store will confirm this) and trying to be very ‘Australian’. This isn’t a problem, but it all seems a little, well, unAustralian.
Australians have never been overly nationalistic. That doesn’t mean we’re not proud of our country. We routinely hit far above our weight in sport (for a nation of 20 million people we seem to bring home a lot of Olympic medals!) and we have an awful lot going for us. Why wouldn’t we be proud?
Yet the idea of having to wear the flag seems very new. I wonder why that is. Perhaps we’ve lost our sense of identity as a nation. Or maybe we simply want to celebrate our sense of Australianity the way we see people in the US celebrate their USAness. I don’t know.
I do know, however, that celebration needs to be more than just vacuous symbolism.
Funnily enough, I belong to a denomination that suffers from many of the same problems. The Salvation Army is very proud of its heritage. We have a flag that symbolises much of what we believe. There is a section in the Salvation Army Song Book (our ‘official’ hymnal) dedicated to songs about the flag, not to mention many shorter songs in an appendix in the back.
Flag songs are very much out of vogue at the moment, but there is a push to revisit a lot of our older traditions. In part this push is a reaction to the fear that we have forgotten what we are about as a movement. A lot of those traditions were born when we were first forming an identity as an organisation. If we’ve lost that identity and drive, the theory goes, we might be able to ‘reset’ ourselves as a movement. In other words, we need to get back to basics.
I have no problem with this as far as it goes. I think the Army has a lot to learn from our forebears. However, we live in a different time. Whilst the old traditions may be instructive, they are not what we are about. The genius and identity of the early Army lay in understanding the times and adapting themselves to suit. Being the Salvation Army in the 21st Century will involve adapting ourselves to the 21st Century. And we do that by doing it, not panicking about ‘losing our distinctives’ and lengthening our list of ‘non-negotiables.’
We will not find our identity by making sure every Corps and social centre has a flag. We’re not going to do it by making sure that every soldier wears a uniform.
Our identity is wrapped up in what (and who) those symbols point to. The symbols themselves have no value. We will only rediscover what it means to be the Salvation Army by being a Salvation Army, not just looking like one.
John Gowans, a previous General (world leader) of the Salvation Army, summed up the mission of the Salvation Army in three phrases. We are, according to General Gowans, to
- Save sinners
- Sanctify saints
- Serve suffering humanity
There’s nothing in there about wearing uniforms, marching in bands or calling our leaders ‘Captain.’ If we want to be a Salvation Army we should be doing these things. If banging a tambourine helps doing these, fine. If it becomes no more than a clanging cymbal or sounding brass we are just participating in an exercise of ecclesiastical masturbation.
Australians have to do much the same sort of thing. We all understand what being Australian is about. This is the nation of the fair-go, of looking out for your mate and living-and-letting-live. We don’t do that by wrapping ourselves up in a flag and shouting ‘Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!’ We do that by giving everyone a fair go, looking out for our mates and living-while-letting-live.
Oh, and throwing a piece of lamb on the barbie. Snag, anyone?
Click here to get Spirit Cry in your favourite feed reader!
