War and Peace

"Someday they'll give a war and nobody will come"

Carl Sandburg

Fishermen

"Follow me and I will make you fish for people..."

Is this word given to Peter an absolute command or a personal one? In other words is Jesus saying something directly to us here or is this word uniquely tailored to Peter? I would venture to suggest we should be taking this as a direct command to us, a statement on the way things are, rather than just bait to get Peter on the hook (pun intended).

This means that if we follow Jesus we should naturally find ourselves fishing for people. We all fish in different waters of course, but we fish nonetheless. There are even different ways and means to fish. Some of us are deep sea fishers, others are restricted to rock pools. But we all fish. 

If we're not fishing in some way we must ask ourselves this question; how well are we following?

Barriers to faith

I have a hunch that the greatest barriers to faith are not what we think they are. From what you read in the press and hear in your churches you would think that sexual preference was the greatest barrier to knowing God in a transformative way. I happen to think that's a false assumption, one that Jesus would happily disabuse us of if we would allow him.

The greatest malaise towards God is to be found within the middle classes, who would prefer to consume than be transformed. This is my group so I know this by looking within myself. It's so hard for those of us with 'everything' to recognise our need for anything. But I would suggest we have become slaves to comfort and a misrepresentation of freedom. We think we are free but really we are more enslaved than ever.

I pray that God would set me free from the need to pursue comfort and security anywhere other than from Him. I encourage you to do the same.

Consumption

Consumption and discipleship don't mix. They're like oil and water. You can't get from one to the other. If you attend church to 'get fed', you will get sick. If you spend your time critiquing the 'worship experience' then you've missed the point. You've become a consumer. The tragedy is that the vast majority of the churches I have seen have been set up to point you in this direction. Why? Because they were set up by consumers who were happy to be the ones doing the feeding. That's the position of power after all. It's how I have spent almost all of my Christian life.

Jesus was the ultimate anti-consumer. He NEVER consumed in the way we do. Mark puts it this way.

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10.45)

If he didn't come to be served then why do we? Think of the way your church is physically arranged. I bet all the chairs point to the front where the experts put on the show. You may even be familiar with seeing their faces on the screen. Is this not a tragic symptom of consumerism gone mad? You come, get what you are given and then you leave. This format does not promote engagement with God or with the world. It's no surprise that the institution has grown fat, lazy and irrelevant.

Jesus calls us all to action, to a specific kind of action called service. This is where we recognise that church is not somewhere I go to receive, but the community I give myself away to. It's not a place I get fed but a group where I continually die for others.

Most churches aren't really serious about creating such communities - or at least they don't know how to - and so the quantity of people being discipled is at an all time low in both the UK and the USA. A new form is required, centred around service and a corporate expression of faith. 'More of the same' just won't work, neither will 'the same but better'.

Entrepreneurial spirit is required to re-birth the church and catapult it into the next generation. People need to be sought out and discipled where they are. The church as we know it may not survive for more than one generation, so we had better get finding some solutions, and fast.

Organisation or Transformation?

Organisation is OK, but it's not the goal of the Church that Jesus came to build. He set his life on transformation. I'm not even sure he gave much thought to how his band of merry men would be organised at the outset. In the gospel accounts it seems more like he just got on his way and collected people as he went. It's a beautifully uncomplicated way to live.

I'm not against organisation. I would rather have it than chaos, which I don't think is a particularly good thing, but I also see that there is no life in a clean stable. I'd rather have some mess around and lots of transformation going on. After all, transformed lives are what this is all about.

This perspective is a challenge to many churches, which pride themselves on excellence. Once again I think excellence is a wonderful value to aim for. We should seek to glorify God by doing our best in all things, but if we are squeezing out life as we do it we have utterly missed the point and we need to go back to square one again.

On Christ the solid rock I stand...

...all other ground in sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

One thing that moving to the USA is teaching Amy and me is that it is so easy to try and play the game of desperately scrambling for some identity, something to hide the nakedness with and cover up under. But the trick is to recognise that the only truly safe place to find who we are is in God and in who he says we are, rather than who the world would have us be.

For once I am not talking about theory but about practice. We're really doing this and it is so freeing.

MLK otra vez

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."

Martin Luther King Jr...who else?

Conflict of interests

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."

Freya Stark - The Lycian Shor

Bob Dylan - To Ramona

Ramona, come closer,

Shut softly your watery eyes.

The pangs of your sadness

Shall pass as your senses will rise.

The flowers of the city

Though breathlike, get deathlike at times.

And there's no use in tryin'

T' deal with the dyin',

Though I cannot explain that in lines.

Your cracked country lips,

I still wish to kiss,

As to be under the strength of your skin.

Your magnetic movements

Still capture the minutes I'm in.

But it grieves my heart, love,

To see you tryin' to be a part of

A world that just don't exist.

It's all just a dream, babe,

A vacuum, a scheme, babe,

That sucks you into feelin' like this.

I can see that your head

Has been twisted and fed

By worthless foam from the mouth.

I can tell you are torn

Between stayin' and returnin'

On back to the South.

You've been fooled into thinking

That the finishin' end is at hand.

Yet there's no one to beat you,

No one t' defeat you,

'Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad.

I've heard you say many times

That you're better 'n no one

And no one is better 'n you.

If you really believe that,

You know you got

Nothing to win and nothing to lose.

From fixtures and forces and friends,

Your sorrow does stem,

That hype you and type you,

Making you feel

That you must be exactly like them.

I'd forever talk to you,

But soon my words,

They would turn into a meaningless ring.

For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring.

Everything passes,
Everything changes,

Just do what you think you should do.

And someday maybe,

Who knows, baby,
I'll come and be cryin' to you.
Copyright ©1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music

Bring down the walls

"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

In the light of the above, I wonder why we maintain so many of the false boundaries we do. Questions such as 'can women serve in the church?' seem to me to be totally ignorant of the meaning of this passage. Here we are TOLD that now that we are in Christ Jesus, all the things that once made us distinct have been ameliorated. Our only identity is now in him. The self we once laid claim to has been crucified with him and he now lives in and through us.

So, women in leadership? Heck yes. Taking this issue specifically, I have heard it said that men are to be the leaders of the household/churches in the same way Christ is to be head of the Church. Yes, but in Christ leadership looks completely different. You want to lead like Jesus did? Then give your life up, be crucified, lay down your life for the others who have no life. Serve and don't look to be served. Can women lead in this way? I would suggest they are naturally better predisposed to it than men are!

God is a Lover, not a lawyer

The classic caricature of the evangelical message for conversion seems to me to be almost entirely useless. What I mean is the idea that when we come to know Christ our past, present and future sins are in some way obliterated and we can then carry on just as we were and expect to find ourselves in heaven when the whole thing is done. Behind this is the idea that God is merely a judge. Whilst this is certainly one metaphor to employ for God there are better.

I would suggest that a better and more basic metaphor is to see God primarily as lover particularly when we are dealing with conversion. We must recognise that sin is a state before it is an action. The good news is that we can be made new, that this fractured state will be gradually but inevitably reversed as the fruits of the spirit are unveiled in our lives. This is loosely speaking a Kingdom theology.

Firstly, the problems with the God as judge position...

1) It flattens out the concept of sin, making it 2-dimensional when in fact it is 3-dimensional. In other words it treats sin as a series of actions rather than as a state that leads to the actions. Whilst I recognise that the actions and the state are linked, I believe that the link exists in the state-action direction rather than the opposite way. The irony is that those that preach this message purport to be treating sin seriously but in fact are doing just the opposite. A doctor who only treated symptoms and never bothered with the root cause would be struck off before long.

2) Secondly and perhaps more importantly, I do not believe that the evangelical position deals with reality as people experience it. Does anyone ever really observe their sin being forever removed before God? No, of course not. What someone does experience at conversion is 'falling in love' with God and life and a corresponding knowing that life is good and that they are OK. This is my experience anyway.

3) Thirdly, the Kingdom approach is far easier to communicate to people who don't understand the outdated understanding of sin pedaled by the strict evangelicals. I think it makes more sense to this generation of people.

4) Fourthly, only the second approach is able to create a rich enough understanding of salvation. Salvation, as Dallas Willard says, 'is a life'. It's about the whole of our beings finding regeneration through meeting God in mind, body and spirit. It is not about some legal transaction in a far off and distant place, which we have no control over. Salvation is always something that is happening here and now or it is not happening at all.

Generally speaking, I think the gospel that Jesus preaches has more to say to the question 'who are we' than 'what are we doing'. Both matter, but he deals with the heart before the symptoms.

Do we still sin in the sense of committing sinful acts after we meet Jesus? Yes. But we recognise that as time passes we are being converted into the increasing likeness of God in Christ. In some ways this second approach is less neat and tidy but I reckon it fits the facts of experience far better. God is a lover before a lawyer.

Worry

The way to beat anxiety is to first detach and then attach. We need to learn to detach from the things we're holding too tightly to and instead attach to Jesus. This is something of what I think Jesus is getting at in the following;

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

The idea of a yoke is interesting as it implies that when we come to Jesus with our burdens he will place another different burden on us in its place. The difference is that his burden is light and we can carry it. A yoke also implies that Jesus will be directly guiding us along our way as we walk with him.