Doodling Life

I remember one particularly thought-provoking reflective prayer time at bible college. We were asked to draw a squiggle on a piece of paper representing our life. We were to use the line to express the high points and the low points, then talk with a friend about the line and what the peaks/troughs represented. It was very helpful. We could see at a glance the places where we had most needed God or had felt most blessed. As helpful as this was, I began thinking today how restrictive lines are. We have our liberal/fundamentalist spectrum on a line; we all have to somehow fall somewhere in the spectrum. We have our "progress towards sanctification line", which becomes difficult to express when we mess things up. We have our "progression of history" timeline, which must be linear or we're all Buddhist. So naturally we try to express our Christian life in linear terms. We read the 23rd Psalm and think of the Valley of Shadow of Death as a trough on a line. We read about pilgrimage (Ps 84:5-7) and the linear thought makes sense. But what if we read these verses and as well as the road we also saw the landscape. There is so much that goes on round about us that affect our vision of the road. It stops the road from being linear. There are so many dead end valleys we walk through, there are roads that criss- cross ours and though we believe we've followed the road we realise that something ahead of us looks awfully like the road we just travelled down, there are times when the landscape is urban, surrounded by people we don't know, focussed on a task we're uncertain of the value of, ... the valley of the shadow of death takes on new meaning then. There are times we are not just on a peak but we feel we are soaring above the landscape, grasped by the complexity of it yet also aware of the ease with which we are bypassing that complexity ... and there are the quiet waters ... interestingly probably also a valley experience. As we consider the landscapes of life, we see a lot more than "need of God" and "blessing of God", peaks and troughs. Rather we see etchings, carved routes, landslides and erosion, we see much of what God has done to surround our lives with people, circumstances, landmarks and himself, sometimes to support or protect us as we make our messy choices and follow a messy route, and at other times to form us or guide us towards him, and towards his Kingdom consummation. So not only does the landscape change, but we change, we are formed and moulded with the landscape. Of coure I am limited by human imagination so all I've done is taken the linear metaphor and replaced it with a 3D metaphor. Just a thought though.

Sin and Love Again

So, I need to go back to this topic. The week after my earlier post I heard two people talk about their journey to faith and how it was God confronting them with their sin that drew them to him. One of these actually made the same comparison as I did, although in a much more positive way ... she noted that our pastor had once told her that people seem to come to God in one of two ways ... being confronted with their sin, or being confronted with God's love ... she came the former way. And yes both these people do tend to go down the line of identifying specific actions as sin and look for ways to confront society with the horror of their sins. And now I 'm thinking that this is probably totally valid, but not a universal means of carrying out the Missio Dei. Its valid because that is how their stories unfolded, and doubtless countless others. My own story probably follows a line of looking for acceptance, and needing to know that the love of God was genuinely true and for me as much as for anyone else. I think that at the root of this is probably an insecurity that comes from awareness of personal sin, but is translated as a need for the love of God.
I think in general confrontation with personal sin requires a worldview that categorises actions as right or wrong. Where this is individualised or relativised, then the power of the confrontation is limited. However, along with any individualising or relativising of a worldview to fit one person there comes sooner or later a need for our worldview being legitimised. We do this by communally agreeing not to disrespect or subjugate the worldview of another if they don't disrespect or subjugate ours. However it doesn't work, we are always on the defensive for the one who will subjugate. This is because built in we have a feeling that our worldview doesn't actually hold up, because we know ourselves to be imperfect in judgement. Some have better natural judgement than others so many apparently successful judgements will also act to legitimise their worldview. But sooner or later our judgement fails, so we doubt ourselves, and the absolute legitimacy of our individualised worldview. This is where we look for outside help, outside legitimacy. And we are confronted with a God who sets the worldview in his terms, but unconditionally legitimises our existence and right to participate in that worldview according the the way he has made us. His love legitimises our participation in his worldview. What we to come to terms with is allowing him to own the worldview. We do not necessarily participate in it in the same way as all the others, but we do have to allow all the others who have accepted the terms to participate, and we must open ourselves to the possibility that yet more will participate.
How can there be terms and yet there be unconditionality. God has done something to allow us to participate with full legitimacy despite our fallible judgement and limited ability to define the worldview perfectly. God has taken on the role of defining the worldview, hence it exists and unfolds in his terms.
So some of us come to God because of his love. We need acceptance. We can't define sin as acts, but we can define our own need of something outside because we know we're not quite complete, or as capable as we'd like to make out.
So how can the "sin is abhorrent" and the "accepted at last" people be church together? More on that sometime ...

So the gate was open

Well after 4 years of soul searching, we have now been accepted as candidates for mission in Linz, Austria by European Christian Mission. My wife, Kristine and I had our interviews with ECM on 11, 12 Sept. It was a pretty intense time, but good fun too. I enjoyed talking through the way I had formulated my own theology through my time of study ... so I was able to test whether I had become a raging heretic through my time at ICC, or had had the opportunity to redirect my personal heresies towards orthodoxy. True to form, I never used one word answers if there was an opportunity for twenty. Perhaps they figured ' well lets get him into a different language zone, it'll force him to be more economical with vocabulary and sentence length.' We also had to confront the issue of how certain we were that God was calling us/ leading us in this work. That's been pretty hard to express. In one sense I guess I'm always wanting to keep a back door open in case I was wrong in reading and sensing guidance from God out of my devotional life and our circumstances over the last few years. In some sense certainty limits God to act only according to how I feel he's been leading. Yet uncertainty can also be a limitation on the power of the Spirit of God to break through human fallibility and convince me of God's leading. I guess the crunch question was "what would we do if ECM said no?" One angle on certainty of calling might be to respond, "if ECM say no, then God has another plan for us to serve in Austria, for this much we know, we must serve him in Austria." However, my own response was slightly different. What we as a couple have been certain of is that God has been leading us on a journey to apply to work in Austria with ECM. We have tried to divert from the journey in case the route we were following was of our own making, but each time we found ourselves led back to the route that headed towards Austria with ECM. This interview was a gateway on that journey. We knew with certainty that we needed to approach the gate and to see if it would open. We did not know with certainty whether it would. If it did, we would know with more certainty that we were to work in Austria. We knew with certainty that God had led us to the gate, so if the gate was shut, we would find a new path when we got there. That new path might lead to Austria by a different route, and it would make sense if it did, but it might lead somewhere else. But it seems the gate is open...

So now we move into language training, communicating our vision for the work to others to raise support, medicals and moving. Communicating the vision ... hmm sounds like I might need to economise on words for that. I'll have a think about that and maybe practice with a post here.

If Christians were Engines ...

If Christians were engines would they be fueled by a hatred of sin or by a loving concern for the plight of humanity? Do people become Christians because they share God's hatred of sin and seek the only way to be free from sin? Or is it because they are so truck with the depth of love God has for humanity?

First off, I don't think there are two independent options, but in general we Western Christians lean towards a bias in one of these two areas, and perhaps see them as two points on a one dimensional line.

A bias in the first direction seems to come from (or lead to) an understanding of God as primarily the punisher of sin. It leads to a preoccupation with deciding whether individual acts are sin according to Scripture. Once an act or practice is shown to be sin, it is then seen to be universally sin, ie for all time, in all places. A new law is written, and the church becomes the moral guardian of society convincing people that God is angry with them. The problem is that once people are saved by grace from sin, they either have to stick rigidly to this law code, or they find God once more angry with them. They know God forgives if they confess their sin, they know there is no new law in reality, but this does not square up with the motivation they had for becoming Christians, and their understanding of God's motivation.

A bias in the second direction might lead to seeing God primarily as lover of humanity seeking always the greater good of humanity. From a human viewpoint there is a danger of seeing God as a hedonist. The greater good of humanity is a fluid concept always changing as populations change, as dominant cultures rise and fall. Sin is anything that harms other humans, or the local community. Therefore a sinful act in one era is not a sinful act in another era. Since currently the right of self-determination for each individual, or each community within society, are seen to be essential to the greater good, there are less and less actions that can be considered sinful - certainly not universally sinful. The most sinful idea is the one that people need to be saved from something, since this implies an externally determined good.

Both of these are charicatures, but they are two possible trajectories for lines of thought that pass through one or other of the two motivations for being a Christian. This leads me away from the idea of a single dimensional line. Rather, these two motivations are supported by Scripture, (God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son. So that those who believe need not perish [when God punishes sin]). so perhaps within a multi-dimensional reality there is a trajectory (neither of the two trajectories illustrated) that passes through both of these points. If so, the trajectory would also pass through a motivation of "love for God", based on God's love for himself (or would it be sourced there?).

Did the Trinitarian God love himself so much that he tri-laterally gifted space within himself for creation, and its kingpin, humanity. Does God love himself so much that this humanity was to be given rights of personhood within the Trinity to fully relate to the Trinity in the fulness of its being? Is sin not anything that turns humanity in on itself to rely on itself rather than the Triune source of life. (Does this not include a new law as much as it includes the rejection of externally-determined good). Does this turning in on itself not deny the very life that sustains it, and rejects the interpenetrating love of God, making humanity a foreign body in the divine life. Did God penetrate anyway through the Son becoming man, taking on the rejection of the foreign body for himself and inviting humanity to participate in the interpenetrating love by giving up their own lives to enter into the life of Christ, making it clear that to do so would lead to the fulness of being and participation in the divine life, whereas failure to do would be to participating in the foreign body that would be rejected from the divine life.

I seem to remember once talking about concrete reality ...

Which Toolkit for Fixing Reality?

I've been away for a while. Seems really hard to find time to sit and write for a blog. Would be easy enough if I just kept a diary, but I never meant that to be the purpose of this. I wanted to share theological thoughts and get into theological discussions.

This seems to be happening quite a lot at work at the moment with one of my colleagues who attends a brethren assembly and holds pretty strongly to a Darby-esque theology, in particular dispensational pre-millenialism, and plenary inspiration of Scripture. It has been really challenging (and enjoyable) to chat with him, but I have realised how different it is to debating theology when the debating parties are using the same tools. He uses ultra-literal interpretation and proof texting, (with a very impressive amount of scripture memorised and cross-referenced mentally, albeit within a particular theological interpretive grid) while I tend to come at things with a more philosophical viewpoint - Scripture provides a springboard for speculating on theories to explain what isn't explicitly written. I think it reflects a difference in approach to life in general ... details vs concepts. (Perhaps one reason why I was going to have to come out of engineering eventually). It does help me to realise how quickly I can leave scripture behind once it is used as a springboard. This is fine as long as I am discussing in circles where "this is what might be the case, and I'm OK if it isn't" is an acceptable outcome for my meditation, but not much good in the concrete world where people are asking "what does God actually expect of us, and what part is he promising to play in my everyday life".

But our differences don't cause aggro, or disrespect, which has been great. I'll finish with a quote from CS Lewis which I hope you won't find to sentimental to be meaningful ...
"The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer." (The Four Loves, Collins 1960, ch4).

Reiki'n' Smouldering Embers

Last week at work I was given information on a "Back to Work" type course for people recovering from addiction. It was organised by a government agency. Each week of the 8-week course incuded a 2 -3 hr slot for Reiki healing. As I feel that Reiki is a "not-sourced-by-God" form of healing, I said that I would not want to recommend this to clients. Within this I was struggling with the whole question over whether I was denying the clients their right to choice by not notifying them of the option. However, what I did not realise was that my comments were also to stir up really hot feelings among my co-workers. The issue was not over the client's choice, but over my labelling of Reiki as "wrong". Other workers, who are also Christians, had used Reiki in the past and saw no problem with it. As I discussed their reaction to Reiki, and questioned their consistency I actually presented quite a condemning voice.
Afterwards, I apologised for having made them feel condemned (although I maintained that I also had a right not to recommend Reiki as a matter of conscience).
So how does a person deal with this situation?
I like the story in Acts 19:11-20, where many Corinthians who appear to be believers are continuing to practice forms of magic with a Christian veneer to them. But at some point the magic backfires, and the power of Jesus-centred, Jesus-sourced healing is recognised as something different from what they were doing. Confronted with this power, they reject their magic. I believe there is something in praying for believers to experience the true power of God at work. It is only in this way that other forms of power that seem good can pale into insignificance. To preach of evil when something like Reiki seems only to cause good, particularly in light of a normal church experience being devoid of God's healing power, is possibly a poor response. Rather, pray for a change in church experience.

Another thought. I was preparing a sermon on Ezekiel 47:1-12 (the River of God) this week, and also reflecting on how my work colleague had felt after I had tried to persuade her that Reiki was wrong. The River of God produced purity in polluted water. If John 4:14; 7:38-39 can be seen to be a continuation of the theme, the River is sourced in us through the Spirit. So when people are truly encountering the Kingdom of God through us, should they be going away feeling dirty, or thirsty for the life-empowering presence of God?

Work is tiring ... that's surprising!

I've just started work at Bethany Christian Trust as a support worker in their Supported Housing department. It is interesting and looks like it might be quite varied, visiting a number of different clients with very different support needs, to support them on their journeys towards "independent living" (is there such a thing?). I have a one year contract to allow me and my family to work through our application, and hopefully preparations, to work with European Christian Mission in Austria. This is our longer term goal, based on a sense that God is leading us this way, most recently endorsed by an excellent college placement with a church in Linz. (Now all my links on the right bar make sense.)
But I must confess that I am surprised how tired I am. I thought I'd be loving not having all this extra work to do in the evening and was thinking how creative my blog would become. But I get home and the thought of doing anything except crashing in front of crappy telly is beyond me. (Obviously not totally beyond me or this wouldn't be here!) Maybe its because I started work before Bible College term officially finished, so I got no break. Maybe its because working with people is quite tiring. Maybe its because working for a Christian organisation sets up all sorts of expectations for an office without politics... foolish expectation that!!!
Anyway, since I can't be productive, and I found my friend Richard has been, I'd like to recommend his theological take on work here.
(image: Tired Bloggers by Justin Pfister, 2005)

Ergo no ego

I was preaching at our church tonight as our pastor is on holiday. I preached on God as Trinity making sense of God's plans being "for the praise of his glory". Father glorifies Son etc, so "self"-glorification is an ultimate example and basis for human humility, rather than being divine inconsistency.

So God is not egotistical.
But my own ego, which might just have experienced some inflation from the opportunity to preach, was held well and truly in check. The congregation was almost a third of normal evening attendance. (Normal evening attendance is really low anyway!).
In such a small group (11 folk plus myself), preaching seems a bit strange. Perhaps it would've been better to have a discussion. I did offer ... but I think folks felt they had come to church and sothe correct thing would be to listen to a sermon, or maybe they felt it was hard enough for the "kid", never mind having folks heckling him too ... But it was fun ... Talking of egos, my wife bought me a T-shirt for Fathers day (from the kids obviously !) with the slogan "Admire the view" across the chest. So how does one wear a T-shirt like that? Wearing a mask I guess...

Image: The Trinity and All the Saints, by Jean Fouquet (15th c.)

Return to blog

The problem with me having a blog is that I don't like to feel I'm just asking the questions others are asking, without contributing something towards a possible answer. But when I stick to that I go weeks without a blog, whereas, if a blog is an honest record, perhaps I need to record the "not making progress" thoughts too.

In my last essay, I've been struggling with the question of whether approaching theology from something of a Social Trinity angle helps shed any light on the Open Theism/ Classic Theism debate. Ie does God's sovereignty necessarily require that he knows the future perfectly, or is the future something which genuinely doesn't exist yet, so to say God already knows it perfectly is as illogical as talking of round squares.

Is the future still being created in response to humanity's actions? Sounds very "potter's wheel".

If I'm honest I recognise Open Theism realistically reflects the way I pray and live in relationship with God (except when I feel lazy enough to want to be fatalistic.) However, for God to not know what's going to happen when he leads me out of a good job towards becoming a missionary ... I don't mind taking those risks believing God has it sorted, but I'm not so sure about God taking the risks.

I think Trinitarian thinking probably does help ... something about recognising the nearness of God in Incarnation and in the ever present Spirit helps us with relationship, but something about this being a way into transcendence of God helps us remember the mystery.

Also, Openness and Free Will represents God making space for humanity/creation within himself, allowing himself to be affected by humanity/creation. But in Trinitarian terms the Father is eternally making space in himself for the Son and the Spirit, the Son for the Father and Spirit, the Spirit for the Son and the Father. Since each of the persons are involved in making space for humanity/creation, then do they do so differently to be able to continue making space for each other?

Also, being in control and pre-creating all of time are not necessarily the same.

So like I said at the beginning, lots of branches but little fruit on this thought tree.

Fundamentally We're Emerging

Today we had a lecture on the History of Evangelicalism, looking at CH Spurgeon and his protest against a "Downgrade" in evangelical theology. He denounced the Liberalistic denial of the Deity of Christ, the Resurrection, the inerrancy of Scripture etc as obvious reasons for the increase in Christians going to the theatre and dancing, dead spirituality and the corresponding decline in church attendance. One line of thought was: while CHS's sequential pattern of downgrade was too simplistic, there was a downgrade and it might be repeating itself today. And from the class emerged a protesting line of thought... surely the word "downgrade" is not to be used of today's questioning of evangelical doctrinal formulations... and should it even have been used back then? Perhaps then as now, the questioning of doctrine was merely the outworking of contextual theology but for a late modern setting, even if looking back we would say they went too far in ending up with a Unitarian doctrine.

I also think the term "downgrade" is unhelpful, because it suggests the opposing party stayed on track, or even had an "upgrade". Instead the Fundamentalist reaction to Liberal theology was an entrenchment and rejection of all things liberal-sounding, also throwing away some values and practices previously thought as essential, like social action. The result was two schools of thought, each using the tools of the cultural context to engage with the culture, one accomodating, the other reactionary. (Incidentally this sounds to me a lot like Nicea, and one of those schools was called heresy while the reactionary formulation of orthodox doctrine lost sight of the human narrative of Jesus that is so important to today's understanding of faith.)

So what is happening today? The modernist questions stemmed from "Now that we know that we can know what we know, how can there be what we cannot know?", (So Scripture must be scientifically inerrant and fully reveal God, or God must be a figment of human idealism and Jesus merely human).

And perhaps the post-modern curiosity comes from "Now that we know that we don't know all we thought we knew, what else do we think we know that we might not actually know?". (Although I don't want to say thats it for sure!). And some of the current questioning accomodates this culture, leading to pluralism of religion, acceptance that any view of god(s)/no-god is true for the person that believes in god(s)/no-god in that way. Unitarianism is only one element of the poly-religious result.

But others use the contextual line of thinking to challenge the culture of uncertainty. If we can't prove God, lets not try, lets start with the story we believe. We believe God in Communion as Trinity has been working out his story by creating man in his relational image and relating to him in some way as he does with himself. Jesus is the link between humanity and Trinity so in the light of Scriptural narrative of Jesus, how do we relate to God, and to each other, and to the rest of Scripture. I guess this is why any doctrines might be fair game for post modern doubt, unless the conclusion of that doubt is to deny God as Trinity, as revealed by the story of Jesus.

So would it be fair to say that contextual theology that fully accomodates culture is doomed to result in a denial of God as Trinity? Liberal theology had no option but to deny Trinity, because it denied the supernatural or unproveable. Instead we would seek to use contextually cultural tools to present the message of Jesus of the Trinity in a form that is both incarnational and transformative to that culture.

If the above assessment is correct, the Emerging Church phenomenom is comparable to Fundamentalism rather than Liberalism, and rather than being a reaction to the failure of modernist Evangelicalism to engage with today's culture, as is supposed, it is actually a multifaceted attempt to remain orthodox in the reaction to the only alternative, full-blooded pluralism.

My question is, if contextually using the tools of a culture has lost something of value in previous times, (Fundamentalism, Nicea) what are today's tools in danger of cutting out in order to be incarnational?

I wonder if we are in danger of outlawing child-like faith and relegating non-intellectuals to feel like second class believers. I also wonder whether we pay heed to the warnings previously given to cross-cultural contextualisers, ie, to what extent does incarnationally contextualising the gospel result in a church that is still recogniseable as church within a global, historical and even eschatalogical, context.

An Introverted Welcome?

So one day I went to another church because my family were away and I didn't have transport to commute to my normal church. I just wanted to go to church and not get involved. (Watch "Hank Goes Church Shopping" on Jamie Davies blog (May 12 2006) ... am I the only one to see the megachurch and somewhere underneath all the well-placed cynicism, feel a tiny desire to sometimes just go to church and have no-one need me to do anything today, because today God's going to entertain me?!)

And so as I go in to this definitely-non-megachurch, I don't expect to go there regularly so I don't want to get embroiled in conversation about who I am, investing myself in relationships that aren't actually going to be developed. I body swerve the greeter, realising at the last minute I need a hymn book from him, so discreetly grunt, murmur and take one with minimum interaction. Then at the end of the service I work out the best route past him. I see him looking, weighing up how much he knows he should try to make me feel welcome against the unfriendly vibes I'm giving off. So I throw a nod as I skim past. And I feel his pain, because I am him. He's thinking, as I would, "did I just let God down?" "Have I just made that guy think we don't care?" How often have I felt like that when I just want to speak with my friends at church and so I watch the visitor hoping someone else will speak to them.

Aside ... Why do I hope so fervently to get a seat by myself each morning on the train to college, yet when I get to college I hope equally fervently one of my friends will be in the student common room to sit and chat with?

Back again ... Why is it that when I do speak with a visitor, we can talk for ages if they turn out to be a secure middle class evangelical christian, but we stumble over meaningless small talk if its someone not very much like me. So do I help them feel welcome or valued by our community, by my fumbled and forced conversation? Isn't my welcome a bit false if I struggle to connect with someone who is not like me. ("Like me" and "not like me" are both quite broad categories in my experience)

Perhaps the best way for a visitor to experience our community is through relationships built outside the church so if they do come in, they come already in relationship with someone from the church, hence the importance of being incarnationally missional. But in reality there will always be visitors who come alone, for hundreds of different reasons.

How do we genuinely welcome those different from ourselves? Is welcome always about conversation? Perhaps its freedom not to have conversation. Perhaps its an offer of a lift home. What is "welcome" for those who feel threatened by their difference?

Who gives a fig

So I'm looking for a fig tree ... actually, since I'm taking my blog title from the Bible verse, Micah 4:4, I'm also looking for a vine:

"Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree ..." (NIV, 1984)

Perhaps I'm attracted to this vision of the kingdom of God because, although I believe in community, deep down I'm inherently individualist. Maybe, or maybe I'm introverted rather than individualist ... but I do think its a vision of a pretty good home, and right now I don't feel quite at home. Its a vision of abundance without being ostentatious, a vision of simplicity that is sufficient. Its a vision where I and my neighbour share true contentment. But its not my current experience.

And so I do give a fig. I'm looking forward to the fig tree. But for this life, the fig tree is growing (much like a mustard tree I suspect) and the vine is being prepared. I been allowed to see some of the cultivation phase, but I'm pretty sure most of the growth and preparation I don't see. I'd like to use this blog to share what I do see, and to speculate with others on what we don't get to see.

PS. Maybe its a vision that reflects Eden, where the fig leaves are still on the tree! (In which case its a good job we get our own tree to sit under!).