Oh to be a Free Radical

Free radicals are known in chemistry as atoms or molecules with unpaired electrons on them. Electrons most 'comfortably' exist in pairs, but in these radicals they are alone. Because of this, they are a highly reactive bunch. They're always looking to complete the pair you see.

I'd like to be a free radical, to be highly reactive in this way. Augustine defines freedom as to only be able to do the good; free will put to good use as someone else put it. And to be radical is to be someone who gets to the roots of a thing (radix = roots in latin). So to be a free radical is to be someone who is singular in their pursuit of most essential type of good, God Himself.

If this is what we pursue, we can be sure this is what we will find.

MLK

"...In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust…”

Taken from Martin Luther King’s letter from a Birmingham Jail and sent to me by Katherine Dunn

Laying it on the line

The God revealed to us in the New Testament is a God who lays it all on the line, a God who can't help but roll up his sleeves and get involved; A God interested in providing solutions, not focussing on problems.

It is this facet of God's nature that gives us our mandate to be world changers and Kingdom bringers. We are to be people who lay it all on the line. Just as God has done, so we must do for the world, irrespective of whether those we help acknowledge God or not.

Jesus is what it looks like when God lays it all on the line and it is God's intention that we become like Jesus in every way.

Unity of purpose

If we are to be really effective in living for God we have to find a unity between our means and our goal. That is to say that we must match up our ultimate purpose with our values. Too often there is schism between where we eventually want to end up and how we percieve we might get there. Either the goal is lovely and the means awful, or the goal is greedy and the means nice and fluffy.

Neither situation is capable of bringing the Kingdom of God in the context of our personal or professional lives. Our goal for everything must be as godly as the means by which we achieve it. This is Kingdom living through and through.

What am I to you?

Who am I to God?

Not what can I do for God or what are my gifts, but who am I to God? Who am I when I am nothing but me, when I am naked and vulnerable before God? Not what does the world say that I am, but who does He say that I am?

Jesus was asking this very question and he received the definitive answer at his baptism. We can be confident that the same answer will be given to us, that we are his 'sons and daughters, in whom He is well pleased.'

Gospel Entrepreneurship

You may have noticed the change in emphasis in the tag line at the top of my blog. I have - as you can see - chosen to describe myself as a gospel entrepreneur (in the making). It's a term I haven't heard before, which is partly why I am using it. I think it also has some value to it too.

You may have heard of or even know a social entrepreneur. For those still in doubt, this is someone who makes it their business to use business for good ends. Somebody who delivers services often given by charities through entrepreneurial means, rather than by writing off for donations. The results are often broadly the same as those of the third sector, although they should also be self-sustaining. Therein lies the genius of social entrepreneurialism.

However, I don't think it goes quite far enough. I don't think social entrepreneurialism yet embodies the fullness of the gospel call. I think that taking care of the poor is wonderful and is right at the heart of the gospel, but there is more too. Jesus quotes Isaiah in Luke 4. 17-19...

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

I want to find ways to do all of this stuff using all the tools in the box, including enteprise, but not exclusively enterprise. I believe that what Jesus said of Himself here is true of me and you too. So, I want to make it my aim to fulfill it all and to be as artistic and creative as I can along the way. I haven't attained any of it yet, but I really want to.

If we start doing more and more of this stuff in new ways, we will truly "rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated...renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations." (Isaiah 61.4)

Nothing else is a big enough aim for the God filled life. God Himself is the end, everything else simply the means.

Being a control freak...

"We create artificial fullness and try to hang on to that. But there's nothing to hold on to when we begin to taste the fullness of the now. God is either in this now or God isn't at all.

As we grow older, we tend to become control freaks. We need to control everybody and everything, moment by moment, to be happy. If the now has never been full or sufficient, we will always be grasping, even addictive or obsessive. If you're pushing yourself and others around, you have not yet found the secret of happiness."

Richard Rohr - Everything Belongs

The Least and the Last

The health of any society is best described by how it treats the least and the last within it. Most often the least will be the elderly and the poor, although there are certainly other categories which would fit quite readily within this description, not least the unborn and uneducated (see 2 posts previous).

This test can in fact be applied to any group of people and also to the individual. In fact, this is what Jesus is getting at when he brings up the startling story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew's gospel (Mt 25.31-46). In this story, Jesus tells one group that they have been made right with God because; 'I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

The righteous respond with genuine surprise to this. They don't remember responding to the King's need in this or any other way. The King replies; 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

The converse is also true. What we fail to do for the least in our midst, we also fail to do for God. If Jesus really meant this, and we should assume that he did, we need to start praying for his compassion and love for the poor. When our lives are weighed at the end of all things, the powerful works we have performed will count for nothing, the rousing speeches we have given will be weightless and the most detailed and impassioned prophecies will no longer count for anything. All that will remain is the love that we have shown to each other.

"And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor 13.13)

The Hoff

"The world is overcome not through destruction, but through reconciliation. Not ideals, nor programs, nor conscience, nor duty, nor responsibility, nor virtue, but only God's perfect love can encounter reality and overcome it. Nor is it some universal idea of love, but rather the love of God in Jesus Christ, a love genuinely lived, that does this."

Dietrich BonHOeFFer - Meditations on the Cross

Abortion

There are many arguments for and against abortion, which I don't want to get into now. Leaving these aside, the tragedy is that abortion takes the most sacred of things (life) and can make it out to be something disposable.

God has lovingly given us the right and responsibility to procreate, to participate in his creation and re-creation of the world, and we must take this seriously. The consumeristic attitude of "If I don't like it, I can just take it back" just isn't right when applied to human life. Of course there are complicated reasons for people making the decision to abort their child and life is never that simple. The thing is, there are no receipts. This is human life. This is God's gift and these things can't be undone.

In this sense, I don't see how abortion could possibly be the best course for creation. However, those of us that like to talk about such matters should start providing some alternatives and quickly. We must be part of the education process and offer solutions for mothers who wish to bring their children into the world but don't feel able to do it alone.

Meditation

http://www.mindandsoul.info/Publisher/Article.aspx?id=116107

See this link for some ideas on meditation. It is basically an extended email conversation I had with Rob Waller of the Mind and Soul website. Trawl through the website while you're there. It's a great resource in spite of my contribution.