rhythm of conversation

i've just spent a bit of time going through some old un-published drafts, and found these excellent quotes about paul's conception of christian life from mark strom's great book Reframing Paul: Conversations in Grace and Community:

"The coherence Paul saw in Christ did not single out any one exegetical procedure for using the Old Testament. Nor did it predispose him to any one way of dealing with Graeco-Roman cultures. Nor again did it imply any single path of Christian experience. The imitation of the dying and rising of Christ was not an alternative moral code. Imitation required new wisdom about one's actions and choices. There was no single formula for working out the implications of weakness-strength, foolishness-wisdom, poor-rich, slave-free and suffering-joy in any new context. Paul framed each pair to provoke conversations about what it might mean to imitate Christ. They were not a means of securing conformity to new ideals for behavior.

"This point is crucial to understanding the rhythm of Paul's conversation. He was not interested in uniformity of behavior. Paul's own life embodied the dynamic transformations that he believed the Spirit sought to bring about within the ekklesiai. His teaching was provocative, not legislative. It avoided the pettiness of religious and legal controversies (cf. 2 Tim 2:14-26; Tit 3:9). Nor did he prescribe any single pattern for the gathering. His advice left room for spontaneity and diversity (1 Cor 14:26-33). Clearly, Paul did not proceed from the coherence of Christ to reduce experience, relationship and learning to intellectual abstractions and formulas. There remained an open-endedness about 'walking worthy of one's calling' (Gal 5:13,16; Eph 4:1; Phil 1:27; Col 1:10; 3:1-5,17; 1 Thess 4:1; 2 Thess 1:11-12; 2:15). His message offered no formula to settle in advance which way to respond to contemporary intellectual and social patterns.

"New understanding for new circumstances emerged within the communities through conversation. Indeed, the power of the story of Christ only came to its fullness in the contingencies of social life. Paul, his colleagues, and the communities were each working out the message as they went. Yet even as his thought matured, Paul continued to show no interest in formulating final statements in the sense of the doctrinal debates and creeds of subsequent generations. He remained focused on specific people and contexts. New contexts continued to prompt new responses as Paul sought to remain open to the Spirit and to his own experiences and relationships to guide his thought." (pp.195-196)

and

"Paul's conversations bore the marks of his personality: pleading, strident, exasperated, affectionate, urgent, reflective, passionate and at times impatient. They bore the marks of his close knowledge of the popular intellectualism of his day and of the social systems of status and honor. If Paul had had his way, his ekklesiai would have remained creatively messy. But his opponents wanted neatness -- and they won. Twenty centuries later, we may look back amazed that we have drifted so far. Then again, perhaps we still don't get it. It remains profoundly difficult for leaders to let go of their need to control people. It is easier to impose order and conformity through prescribing belief and practice than to acknowledge the dignity and gifting of Christ's people. It is easier to disallow the conversation than to hear the hard questions. For many, it is easier to disallow the conversation than to join it." (p.197)

i don't think i can add anything to that, except to say i wholeheartedly agree and long for such an experience of christianity in conversation with others and the world around us. why is it so hard to find?

going catholic?

i recently read james alison's Undergoing God: Dispatches from the Scene of a Break-In, which is a brilliant and profound book.  one of its effects on me was to start to think seriously about 'changing sides'.

my most excellent friend paul wrote to me that he "can't see how it is possible to stay protestant after a thorough reading of JA" (JA being james alison of course).  i tend to agree, though i would put it in slightly different terms, that reading JA makes it almost impossible to not want to be catholic.

i wouldn't necessarily call myself a protestant (or anything really), but that would be the default christian label for me since i more-or-less attend a presbyterian church and all my previous church attendance has also been on the protestant side.  but i've started to think, "why are we still protesting?"  after 500 years, is a 'Protestant' movement still relevant?

it seems that, to a large extent at least, the protestant reformation arose out of a dispute over right doctrine and teaching, as exemplified by luther's 95 theses.  no doubt there was ample justification for it at the time with the institutional corruption in the catholic church, but the legacy of this focus on 'rightness', which became evident very quickly in the schism between lutheranism and calvinism, is a never ending, increasingly pedantic disagreement about just who is most right.

so now there are thousands of protestant denominations, not to mention all the independent non-denominational churches out there, because every tom, dick and harry (and of course it's almost always a man) thinks he has the true knowledge and only his way is the right way.  and you have sydney anglicanism and similar movements which have made right doctrine into fundamentalist legalism.

enough already!  it's just the blind arguing with the blind.

neither orthodoxy (right doctrine) nor even orthopraxis (right actions) are really the point.  it's ultimately about belonging.  the apostle paul wrote frequently about being 'in christ', such as in romans 8:1 ("there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" - niv).  jesus talked about being attached the vine (himself), saying "if you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit" (john 15:5, niv).  i don't think protestants really understand this, with their fixation on justification by faith, which is really just a subtler form of legalism.

of course, from god's point of view it doesn't matter what label you wear or what church you go to (or none).  but i do think it matters for us, for christians because we need to get beyond our childish arguments and to start actually loving each other as fellow stumblers trying to figure out what it means to be in this big, incredibly diverse family formed around the gratuitous love and forgiveness of god; and for non-christians because jesus was actually telling the truth when he said, "by this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another."

as i hinted above, i don't like labels, and maybe even more i don't like commitment.  i like to keep my options open, to dip my toes in but not to immerse.  so it's a very hard thing for me to consider 'converting' or even identifying myself as catholic.  not to mention the incomprehension (if not outrage) such a move would produce in my most definitely protestant family.

i really don't know how this will all end up, but i'd like to start moving in the direction of joining james and paul in the big old family...

the anthropology and theology of bladerunner

(with acknowledgement to IMDb).

it is the year 2019.  the setting is los angeles.  despite the advances in technology (including flying cars), the images are dystopian.  the landscape is heavily industrialized.  rain falls incessantly and people wear thick coats against the apparent cold.  the streets are dark and filled with rubbish.  the commercial areas are crowded with people, but a sense of isolation and loneliness pervades.  most people seem to live in very old and decrepit apartment buildings with few if any fellow residents.

genetic engineering technology has made huge advances, to the point of creating synthetic beings called replicants, sophisticated androids that are virtually identical to humans.  replicants are designed and built by the tyrell corporation, a giant conglomerate headquartered in two pyramid-like towers.  replicant technology has entered a new phase with the nexus 6 model.  they are at least equal to humans in physical ability and strength, but more significantly they now have human emotions.  some have also been implanted with childhood memories despite being created as fully formed “adults”.  however, a 4 year life span has been encoded into their genes.

replicants are mostly used as manual labourers, soldiers and entertainers in the "off world" colonies out in space.  because of their advanced nature and possible instability and tendency towards violence, replicants have been outlawed on earth. specialized police units, called "bladerunners", are charged with the difficult task of detecting replicants who come to earth and executing, or "retiring" them.

rick deckard, played by harrison ford, is a retired bladerunner who is brought back to hunt a group of nexus 6 replicants who have made it to los angeles to seek out a way to extend their life span.  the leader of the group, roy, played by rutger hauer, uses a tyrell employee, jf sebastian, whose speciality is genetically engineered eyes, to trick his way into tyrell’s penthouse apartment in one of the company’s pyramid shaped towers.  roy confronts his maker, demanding an extension of lifespan.  tyrell explains that artificial beings like roy have been permanently designed not to live longer than their lifespan and that no known biological process has yet been able to change that.  he patronizes roy, saying that he has accomplished great things, but roy responds by killing him.

roy discovers that he is the only one left from the replicant group, and there is a final battle between him and deckard in which roy has the decided upper hand.  the fight ends up on an apartment building rooftop, and deckard is finally left hanging off the edge by one hand, two fingers of which roy had purposely broken earlier in the fight in revenge for the killing of his companions.  but roy has been showing signs of his impending expiry, which he knows he is helpless to prevent.

what ensues is one of my all time favourite movie scenes.

whatever the entertainment value of the movie, the subject matter and story have quite obvious theological allusions.  the role of god is clearly represented by tyrell, the genius inventor, though his ‘divinity’ is supported by the corporation that he heads, as well as the government and economic system that have enabled his corporation to become so powerful (this is not alluded to in the movie, but it could be interpreted as a picture of religious systems/institutions which ‘support’ the ‘idea of god’ in order to maintain their own power).  tyrell, as the creator god, has developed a technology for artificially manufacturing living creatures, and at the summit of this “creation” are the replicants, artificial humans.  the pinnacle of replicant technology is the nexus 6 model, and is it a just co-incidence that the model number matches the day on which humans were created in genesis 1?

nexus 6 replicants are a wonderful creation, strong and capable even beyond their human creator, who is rightly proud of them.  but though they are physically very good, almost perfect, they can be mentally unstable and have a tendency to violence.

the image of human beings portrayed here has much truth to it.  we are amazing and wonderful creatures, but just like the replicants we are prone to emotional instability and have more than a passing tendency to violence - not just physical violence, but also emotional, psychological and social violence, which are no less harmful.

note that violence of any kind is always an issue of control.  we hurt others to try to control them, or because we can’t control them and they do things we don’t want them to, or sometimes because we can control them and we despise them for it.  a clear implication of this is that there is no violence in god, since god is utterly free of the need to control.  this can to be a hard thing to grasp, because for human beings the will to power is inextricably tied to the need to control our lives and our surroundings, so we can only imagine absolute power being used to exert complete control.  but god’s power is entirely ‘other’ (ie. non-human), and god is completely unthreatened by anything that happens, so to speak of god in terms of wanting or needing to exert or maintain control is not just wrong but nonsensical.  the true biblical picture is of god holding creation “in the palm of his hand”, imparting life and love, wooing and drawing, not controlling and manipulating.

getting back to the story… because of their strength but tendency to violence, the replicants are perceived as a threat to human beings, maybe even to tyrell/god himself, so they are outlawed from earth, allowed to only live and work “off-world”.  not just that, but they are genetically encoded with a fixed 4 year lifespan.  this appears to be a clear allusion to the biblical story of the banishment of adam and eve from the garden of eden and the removal of their access to the tree of life, hence condemning them to live apart from their creator in servitude and then to die, much too soon.

in many ways, this treatment of the replicants seems very straightforward and natural, even as it should be.  after all, people need to be protected from potential threats.  but something more is going on behind the scenes.  there is a clear though unspoken rivalry between human beings and replicants, arising on the human side from envy, mixed with fear, of the strength and ability of the replicants.  the rivalry is resolved by banishing the replicants, who are made the scapegoats of the potential or actual (we are not told which) conflict with humans – despite (or maybe because of) the fact that humans are at least as prone to instability and violence as replicants.

how true a representation is this of the story of “the fall” in genesis 3?  from a human point of view, it could be argued that god initiated rivalry with humans by placing a tree in the garden from which the man and woman were forbidden to eat (as if to say, “this tree will remind you that i’m the one with the knowledge and power, and you better not forget it!”).  the serpent played on this theme, stoking the pride and envy of the man and woman, telling them god was lying to them and they really could have the same knowledge and power as god if they ate from the forbidden tree.  after they took the fruit, god confirmed the rivalrous nature of the events by reacting angrily, cursing the man and woman and casting them out of the garden.  thus all human beings are banished from the presence of God because we are unavoidably tainted by sin, and we are condemned to lives of endless striving and strife, ending all too soon in inescapable death.

though it might never be narrated in exactly this way, it’s my experience that elements of this storyline form a significant part of the beliefs of many christians concerning god’s relationship with human beings.  but the true story is close to the complete opposite.  unique to ancient accounts of creation, the first few chapters of Genesis are devoid of divine rivalry and violence.  the first man and woman were put in a beautiful garden – pure paradise – where they could relax and trust in the love and presence of god, not knowing why god put a forbidden tree in the garden, but content to know that god’s purpose towards them was entirely benign and entirely loving.  but they believed the serpent’s accusations that god was keeping something good from them, and thus set god up as a rival (not the other way around) and decided to take what they decided god was unfairly keeping from them.

and what was god’s response?  in the genesis narrative, god came “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (genesis 3:8, niv).  knowing what adam and eve had done, god didn’t pronounce judgement from afar, refusing to be tainted by proximity with these now sinful creatures.  it was the man and woman who hid from god, not god who withdrew from them.  and they proved their now rivalrous, non-trusting nature by answering god’s questions defensively, and by extending their rivalry towards each other by accusing rather than confessing, ultimately trying to put the blame back on god.  i’d like to think that they still had a chance at this point to return to full faith and trust in god by admitting their wrong, and it may be that by going to them god also held out hope for this.  but…

so god saw that the relationship was broken, but the next part of the story is perhaps the most misunderstood of all.  we are so used to thinking of god’s response in terms of wrath and punishment, but in fact there is no anger in god’s reaction, no desire to punish the guilty or demand appeasement.  such would be the reaction of “one of the gods”.  instead, the one true god responds with incredible love and mercy, beginning immediately to sow the seeds of redemption.  far from being arbitrary curses or punishments, god’s pronouncements of toil and strife are just descriptions of the inevitable consequences of adam & eve’s sin, because the world of trust and love in the garden had been replaced by a new social order defined by rivalry, envy, hate and violence.  but despite the pain of our sinful lives, and god’s sadness to see the suffering we bring on ourselves and each other, to not save us from the consequences of our sin is truly a mercy, because we need to take responsibility for our actions, and unless we experience the consequences we would never learn and grow, but would continue in our destructive ways unchecked and without remorse.

it is pertinent to note here that whenever “the wrath of god” is mentioned in the bible, what it means is “god not saving us from the consequences of our sins.”  the common misunderstanding that it refers to ‘god being angry with us’ arises first of all because the consequences of our sin are always painful (though not always immediately) and so it seems very much like punishment, which we only understand in the context of anger.  we also tend to demand that god intervenes and eliminates (or at least limits) the damage, and when that doesn’t happen (at least to our satisfaction) it is easy to believe it is because god is angry with us.  the problem is that anger is an emotion, which is a human response to a situation.  god is not human and is thus not subject to emotions, so to interpret god’s actions in terms of an emotional response is to falsely attribute a human characteristic to god.  furthermore, we get angry when something happens that we don’t want to happen, something over which we have no control and which gets in the way of a goal or purpose we have (conscious or otherwise).  and our almost inevitable response is to use violence (of some kind) to get back in control.  but god is never surprised, fazed or threatened by anything that happens, is never out of control, and nothing that happens can ultimately block god’s purposes.  so it really makes no sense to speak of god being angry.  of course, it is absolutely true that god wants things to be different for us, but the energy behind the desire for us to change is love, not anger, and the hope that we also learn to love, not the determination that we are punished for our disobedience.

to use an analogy, saying that god is angry with the things we do is like saying the amazon river is angry about little rocks it encounters in its path.  the rocks may in some tiny way impede the progress of the river, but slowly and inexorably the river will have its way with those rocks, moulding them to its purpose.  in the same way, the tiny resistance we make does not deflect the inexorable purpose of god’s love, which is always calling to us to become a part of the huge, benign, creative flow of life divine, and will ultimately have its way with us regardless of our resistance.

getting back to the genesis story, the second act of mercy god enacts after adam and eve’s sin is to grant us mortality.  just as for the replicants, this is perhaps the greatest grievance we have against god, but it is a mercy in at least two important ways: firstly, it puts a limit on our wickedness and its impact on others (just imagine an immortal hitler, pol pot or idi amin); secondly, I believe that our mortality is the beginning of our fellow-creaturely empathy and compassion.  this latter point is wonderfully exemplified by the “death scene” in the movie, where roy, knowing his time is expiring, reaches out and saves decker’s life.  as roy is running out of life, it becomes enormously precious to him, and I think in the same way, our common predicament of being destined to die enables us to see each other as precious, having value to each other because of the enormous gift of life we share.

well, what ensues in the movie is the outworking of the rivalry arising from the humans’ envy and fear.  a group of replicants decide they are not content with their lot and “storm the ramparts of heaven.”  they manage to get to earth, and roy finds a way to get into tyrell corporation to confront his maker, killing him when he can’t satisfy roy’s demands.  but that doesn’t solve any problems, and before long roy’s life expires.

this is where humanity finds itself at the beginning of the 21st century: we have proved our amazing ability to shape the earth and to improve our lives in incredible ways, but we are still banished from paradise and bound to die.  so we demand more time, pouring our efforts and energies into trying to increase the length of our lives.  we rage at god, metaphorically storming heaven in our minds and by our words and actions, and finally ‘kill’ god by declaring our independence, convincing ourselves that god is of no further use to us.  but it hasn’t made any difference.  despite amazing advances in computer and medical technology, we are stuck with our mortality, and our inescapable death casts its long shadow, defining and controlling the choices we make and ultimately the meaning we give to our lives.

such is the story of bladerunner, and there is no real glimmer of hope for humans or replicants in the movie, despite the killing of god/tyrell (and notwithstanding the incongruously ‘happy’ ending of the original cinema release version).  and such would be the hopeless state of humanity, inescapably controlled by rivalry, violence and death, if the scandalously gratuitous love of god, in whom is no rivalry, violence or death, had not broken into our doomed world in the person of jesus christ, in and by whom was inaugurated a new creation, a new way of being and living based on love, mercy and forgiveness.

but that is another story…

universalism and all that

or, dave comes out of the closet...

to put it bluntly, i just can't believe that sending sinners to eternal torment in hell amounts to justice, no matter what the crime. it defies every principle of justice and punishment fitting the crime that we hold to as humans, and, as george macdonald says, if we don't think something is fair or right, it's tantamount to blasphemy to attribute it to god. god's sense of fairness must be at least as strong as ours, or else he's not the holy and just god we believe he is. on the other side of the coin, we also need to beware of attributing to god our human sense of revenge and wanting to get even. god's righteousness would mean nothing to us without his infinite capacity to forgive.

compounding the issue is the fact that we sin in ignorance: no child knows or understands before they start sinning that they will be forever damned for their actions. still further, even if we did understand the consequences, it wouldn't make a difference because of the innate sinful nature we inherit as descendents of adam. so we are in a catch-22 situation: we cannot help sinning but we are forever damned for it. how is that just?

this of course is an argument that has been made many times. i do not deny that we have been gifted (or burdened?) with free will, so we must take responsibility for our actions, but at the same time i do not believe god looks at us with a demanding, legalistic attitude, just waiting for us to slip up so he can get the rod out. i do not do this with my daughter, who i love more than my life, but instead expect her to be independent and (increasingly) rebellious, wanting to go her own way and do what she wants. in the same way, i believe god understands our rebellious natures and treats us with immeasurable forbearance, going so far as to give his son to provide a way out of our bondage to sin and into a new life of true freedom.

george macdonald put forward another argument against the eternal punishment doctrine which i find, if anything, even more compelling. if even one soul is separated from god for eternity, with no possible means of return, it means that satan has won a victory against god, and that is unthinkable. god must have the final, complete victory, but it would not be, could not be, an absolute victory if satan has succeeded in capturing any souls forever. when he died, jesus descended to hell and opened the gates, rendering it no longer an inescapable prison. if anyone chooses, they may simply walk out, and the eternal father is forever on the lookout to welcome each one with great celebration. since jesus' death, it is only our will that keeps us from god, but the way back will never be closed off. never ever.

obviously the implications of a universalist stance are many, going right to the heart of how we are to live as believers in this world. most importantly, i think, it puts a big question over many missionary and proselytising efforts. to my mind, that's not such a bad thing, because these kinds of endeavours have often had disturbing overtones of manipulation and coercion, if not downright convert-buying. at the more mundane level, i've always been at least a little uncomfortable with exhortations to befriend people in the hope of 'winning them to christ', because it smacks of false pretenses. don't we befriend people because they are fellow human beings who we can share our lives with and whose outlook and experience can teach and inform our own lives?

so why tell anyone about the good news of jesus, and why bother believing it and living it ourselves if it doesn't really make a difference for whether or not we go to heaven? after all, it's a lot easier and a lot more fun to ignore god and do our own thing...

well, no doubt it'd be easier, but since when was that the point? since adam and eve ate the forbidden fruit it's always been easier to follow our own desires, but that doesn't mean it's the better way to live. on the contrary, the bible makes it abundantly clear that the best way to live is according to god's law. as michael casey says in his book toward god:

"The ultimate truth of human life is that all our searching leads to God. In Saint Augustine's timeless words, 'You have made us for yourself [O God] and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.' This is something we know about every human being. He or she is made for God; there will always be an incompleteness until a person arrives at God.

...

"We were created with an orientation toward God, and so actions that direct us toward God accord with the imperatives of our nature. When we try to live moral lives after the example of Christ, and open our minds and hearts to prayer, we are not simply doing something 'religious'; we are fulfilling the most fundamental requirement of our humanity. By God's gift we can turn away from the intangible and immediate, transcend the attractions of sense and image, and stretch forth into the infinite sea of eternity. We can add a new dimension to our human experience." (p.3)

just before he slipped away, jesus gave his disciples 'the great commission':

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (matthew 28: 18-20, niv)

jesus knew what people need, how their lives can be lived to the full, and he taught this to his disciples, then told them to go tell it to the ends of the earth. there is nothing here about telling people that if they don't believe they'll go to hell for eternity, and neither was such a message part of the "everything I have commanded you" he told the disciples to pass on. it's true, especially towards the end of his ministry, jesus said a lot about the consequences of not following his teachings, but those words were all directed at the believers. in the parable of the sheep and goats, it is to the ones who claim to know jesus, who call out, "lord, lord," that he says, "depart from me, i never knew you." the others, who put their faith into practice, didn't even realise they were doing it for jesus, and he welcomes them into his rest.

which brings me to the second reason we should be following jesus and encouraging others to do the same: what we do has consequences, both here and after we die. i don't subscribe to the view that we'll all just stroll into heaven the minute we leave this mortal coil. such a view makes a mockery of god, and isn't in any way consistent with the bible's teaching. god is holy, and demands holiness from us. but while purity is a state (that disappears quickly!), holiness is a life. we cannot be declared holy, we can only learn to be holy through repentance. even jesus needed to be proved holy by his life, as it says in hebrews 5:8-9:

"Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him." (niv)

this doesn't mean jesus wasn't perfect through his life, but his perfection, his holiness, wasn't complete until he'd finished his work. we tend, i think, not to apply this to ourselves, but it doesn't make sense to me how i can be, for example, hateful to my neighbor one minute and holy the next, just because i died in between. being holy means learning how to love my neighbor, and i won't be holy until i've done that. and we will never enter the holy city of god, our final destination where all our desires will be completely fulfilled, until we are holy, until all unholiness has been purged from our lives, which can only be achieved by a long process of repentance, turning from our pride and selfishness and choosing to love.

george macdonald frequently made the point that jesus saves us from our sin, but not the consequences of our sin. i don't fully understand what he meant by this, but one of the obvious examples is our inevitable human death. the promise to adam and eve was that if they ate of the tree they would die, and as children of adam we inherit that promise, and hence we will all die as a consequence of our sin. but that's not the end of the story, as romans 6:23 says:

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (niv)

this verse has most popularly been used to support the eternal punishment doctrine, but it doesn't seem inherent to me that the second part cancels out the first. instead, i think it makes sense to see it as saying that, yes, we die, but then god gives us eternal life as a gift, completely gratuitous and unearned. and this gift, this act of grace on god's part, is meaningless unless it is also universal, given freely and in equal measure to all.

finally (and maybe ironically having spent so much time on the subject), i don't actually get the impression from reading the bible that what happens to us after we die is an issue god wants us to be concerned about to a great extent. i believe that saving is god's work, and our task is to live as true followers of christ. the commandment of jesus was for us to love each other as he taught and modelled, and thus the world will know we are his disciples. to me this means that the primary mode of evangelism is believers living in community, demonstrating to the world the kingdom life which is love and service to each other. of course, this doesn't mean we ignore non-believers and stay in our holy huddles, but that we go and live the life of following jesus out in the open, in the view of all, and especially where there is no witness of this kind. and by being salt and light in the dark places, we will be used by god to draw all people to himself.

the good war?

there's a great piece in today's smh by richard drayton, senior lecturer in history at Cambridge University, called War's moral compass is flawed and points in all directions (originally published in the guardian as An ethical blank cheque).

drayton mentions taken by force, a book by robert lilly which is a study of the rapes committed by american soldiers in europe between 1942 and 1945. lilly suggests a minimum of 10,000 rapes (which is probably a conservative estimate). elsewhere in the essay, drayton talks of crimes committed by allied soldiers in the pacific against japanese captives, quoting edgar james, an 'embedded' pacific war correspondent:

"We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments."

the point of bringing these things up is primarily because they are never mentioned or talked about, and thus largely unknown by the general population. we very readily remember the atrocities committed by the 'enemy' but sweep our own shameful actions under the carpet. once again marx's adage that history is written by the victors is proved correct. it's not just an issue of good guys and bad guys, needing to believe your side is right in order to sustain the will to win the war. as drayton says, the effect is much farther reaching:

"All this seems innocent fun, but patriotic myths have sharp edges. The 'good war' against Hitler has underwritten 60 years of warmaking. It has become an ethical blank cheque for British and US power. We claim the right to bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial on the basis of direct and implicit appeals to the war against fascism.

When we fall out with such tyrant friends as Noriega, Milosevic or Saddam we rebrand them as 'Hitler'. In the 'good war' against them, all bad things become forgettable 'collateral damage'. The devastation of civilian targets in Serbia or Iraq, torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the war crime of collective punishment in Falluja, fade to oblivion as the 'price of democracy'."

i find this all very interesting, and i'm not just trying to wack the purpetrators and supporters of the iraq war over the head once again (no matter how much i enjoy it :^). at the least i think we need to keep being reminded that, especially with issues of war, there is no black and white, right and wrong. not for the first time, bruce cockburn puts it perfectly:

God, damn the hands of glory
That hold the bloody firebrand high
Close the book and end the story
Of how so many men have died
Let the world retain in memory
That mighty tongues tell mighty lies
And if mankind must have an enemy
Let it be his warlike pride
Let it be his warlike pride

(from It's Going Down Slow, Bruce Cockburn, 1971)

more committed?

thanks to backyard missionary andrew hamilton for the link to this excellent article, It's No Longer About Commitment.

i especially agree that real, 'deep', discipleship must start with the those in leadership (not just pastors, but including elders, deacons and those who may not hold any 'office' but who are effectively leaders because of their maturity in the faith). As the author, stephen hinks, says:

"The starting place for sacrifice to re-enter our parlance and practice is with leadership. Leaders need to lead the way with deep personal change. Leaders need to model what sacrifice is, how choices are made, how costs are weighed and how fruits are enjoyed. When the language of sacrifice is recaptured by individual Christians we can put depth into our disciple-making."

bunch of scheming swindlers

i know this is lazy blogging, but i came across this excellent quote by soren kierkegaard at emergingsideways (picked up originally from mike at waving or drowing?) and wanted to pass it on:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

framing and families

thanks to rowen at sailing close to the wind for the link to don't think of an elephant from a few weeks back. the link contains a review of, and extract from, george lakoff's book Don’t Think of an Elephant – Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (scribe publications, melbourne, 2005).

the idea of 'framing' is thought-provoking and provides a plausible explanation for the hold the bush and howard (aus) governments seem to have over the minds of their electorates at the conceptual level. what piqued my interest most, though, was the depiction of the conservative/progressive divide in terms of two different models of the family: "a strict father family and a nurturant parent family." the description of the 'strict father' model is made with reference to conservative christian author dr. james dobson, who's book dare to discipline has been the bible of child-rearing for conservative/evangelical christians for 30 years. lakoff summarises the set of assumptions behind this paradigm as follows:

The world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is evil out there in the world. The world is also difficult because it is competitive. There will always be winners and losers. There is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. Children are born bad, in the sense that they just want to do what feels good, not what is right. Therefore, they have to be made good.

What is needed in this kind of a world is a strong, strict father who can:

• Protect the family in the dangerous world,

• Support the family in the difficult world, and

• Teach his children right from wrong.

What is required of the child is obedience, because the strict father is a moral authority who knows right from wrong. It is further assumed that the only way to teach kids obedience—that is, right from wrong— is through punishment, painful punishment, when they do wrong. This includes hitting them, and some authors on conservative child rearing recommend sticks, belts, and wooden paddles on the bare bottom. Some authors suggest this start at birth, but Dobson is more liberal. “There is no excuse for spanking babies younger than fifteen or eighteen months of age” (Dobson, The New Dare to Discipline, 65).

The rationale behind physical punishment is this: When children do something wrong, if they are physically disciplined they learn not to do it again. That means that they will develop internal discipline to keep themselves from doing wrong, so that in the future they will be obedient and act morally. Without such punishment, the world will go to hell. There will be no morality.

from what i know, this is a fairly accurate summary of the conservative attitude to child-rearing (as well as to social policy, as lakoff goes on to explain). it has particular personal resonance for me because it is more or less the model with which i was raised (as i expect most children of conservative christians have been from the 1950s to this day). based on my experience, and extensive subsequent reflection, i think that the assumptions and conclusions of this model are fundamentally flawed, and often have very harmful consequences. while it may produce a semblance of obedience and discipline, fear of punishment never by itself engenders true maturity. on the contrary, what it teaches is passive-aggressive conformity while the authority figure is present, and undisciplined free-for-all when it is believed there is little chance of 'being found out'. this is a far cry from the goal of producing adults who make the right choice because they believe it to be the best action, not because they are afraid of the consequences of doing the 'wrong' thing.

this whole subject is especially pertinent for me now that i have a child of my own. as with all children, she needs to learn that she can't do whatever she wants whenever she wants, but she often doesn't understand the boundaries we set for her or why we tell her not to do something, so she screams and resists or defiantly does what we've told her not to. i find it quite hard sometimes to resist dishing out some sort of physical punishment such as a slap, and occasionally i cross the boundary and immediately regret it. on the one hand i'm aware that my reaction is often more to do with what's going on for me than for her (for instance, i'm frustrated that she doesn't obey me, or she has done something that will require me to clean up - she's not of an age to clean up after herself yet). my greatest fear, though, is that she grows up in fear of me. i desperately want her to feel protected by my strength, for it to be a refuge for her, not a threat - no matter what she does.

if freya knows that our love for her is unconditional, that to the best of our knowledge and abilities we have her interest and well-being at heart, then i believe she'll be less likely to question and resist the things we ask her to do, even if she doesn't understand the reason behind it. at the same time, feeling secure in our love will allow her to explore and expand her boundaries, knowing that if she fails or does something wrong, we'll be there for her. then, as she grows up, she'll learn to seek and trust our advice and guidance, eventually becoming an adult who can trust herself to make good decisions based on a good understanding of the consequences.

at least that's the ideal. problem is, we're far from perfect parents and who knows what life will throw at us. boundaries and unconditional love is the principle, but i know we're still going to stuff things up big time. thank god for the resilience he's built into us as human beings. and most of all for his amazing grace to cover over our failures and make all things work for good.

pick of the pics

if you haven't had a look at the world press photo site, i highly recommend it. the winners gallery for 2005 gives a great retrospective of the events of 2004, both high profile and low, ordinary and historic. excuse the pun, but i think this collection of photos (if it is preserved in any way, which i assume it will be) will be a fascinating snapshot for future generations of the world as it was circa 2004, providing as it does the occasionally intentional but often incidental glimpses of technology, fashion, living conditions, sports, and just about everything else that was part of life as we knew it in the last year.

i especially like these from the nature category:

the weirdest photo must be the headless gymnast:

my favourite, though, is the swimmer who left his legs behind:

also superb (as you'd expect) is the gallery of winners of the last 50 years. for the most part it is a chronicle of tragedy and suffering, but in many ways that is the exactly the history of the last 50 years. after how many millenia of living together in this world, the cruelty and indifference of human beings to others is absolutely shocking, and it continues seemingly unabated.

viewing these pictures, it is easy to believe the assertions of rene girard, that all human societies are structured around the making of victims, killing and excluding in order to define and assert the identity of the group. in knowing jesus, james alison brilliantly turns this idea to the dealings of god with humankind as told in the bible, reframing the gospel as the story of jesus, the gratuitously given, forgiving victim, who willingly suffered the ultimate exclusion and became the ultimate sacrifice, in order to provide the way and means for us to have true life in ultimate freedom. this freedom is only found in escaping the tyranny of reactionary and reciprocating violence, moving from the endless cycle of victimhood and victimising to relationships of free and joyful giving of oneself to others, and, in so doing, joining the new society of forgiving victims which is the kingdom of god founded in jesus.

well, i didn't really intend to get all heavy, but these things are on my mind, and i am increasingly sickened by the violence and cruelty in the world and the wilful, repugnant indifference of the privileged (myself included) to the suffering of others. may we grow each day closer to the life god requires of us, in the words of the prophet, "to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" (micah 6:8, NIV).

victim mentality

i'm just over a quarter of the way through james alison's knowing jesus, but from the first pages i knew it was going to be a significant experience, similar to my first encounters with henri nouwen and george macdonald. alison has an amazing way of presenting multifaceted truth in wonderfully simple language, and to make it feel revolutionary yet entirely traditional at the same time. this is the best kind of theological writing, drawing and stimulating and inspiring.

the foreward to the book is by archbishop of canterbury rowan williams, and is excellent in its own right. i'd like to quote it at length, because it does a great job of introducing and setting the tone for the book:

[We] do not meet Jesus simply as another human individual; but neither is he just the subject of inspiring stories. We meet Jesus as the resurrected one - the one who, after those closest to him have betrayed him and left him to die alone, returns as the source of grace and hope to those treacherous and fearful friends. What this means is that Jesus 'appears' now as the agency of a completely gratuitous love, right outside the calculations, rewards and punishments of human relationships, outside the complicated negotiations for living space that dominate the 'ordinary' human world, with its underlying assumption that we all live at each other's expense. And this makes clear to us as never before just how deep that assumption goes, and forces us to look afresh at those at whose expense we live - our victims. The resurrection of Jesus makes it impossible to take for granted that the world is nothing but a system of oppressors and victims, [an] endless cycle of reactive violence. We are free to understand ourselves and each other in a new way, as living in mutual gift not mutual threat. We can collaborate in the relations that the resurrection sets in motion, relations of forgiveness, equality and care. And if we recognise our habitual bondage to reactive relations, passing on or returning the wounds we have received, and feel in our lives together the solid reality of relationships that transcend this, then we 'know Jesus'.

...

James Alison is - among other things - restating what some of his Dominican ancestors meant by 'knowledge through participation', and indeed what the whole early and medieval Christian tradition understood as becoming 'divine' in communion with Christ - growing into freedom, beyond the prison of self-absorbed, self-referential feelings, beyond the reactive and repetitive world sustained by sin. But this recovery of older wisdom is given a profoundly contemporary slant in its concern with violence and victimage. As a culture, we have become more alert to the depth and breadth of historical and personal violence, to just how many victims our 'normative' culture creates. But if we are to believe in the hope of something more than just reparation or settling scores, we need the concrete presence of relations that transcend reaction, jostling for space, rivalry; we need Christ and the Church.

...

[True] theology, truthful reflection on what God is and does, can't be done without conversion to a new perspective on yourself and the world. God is not to be known unless we grasp the depth of our freedom and our unfreedom, unless we give up fictions about our purity or our innocence and become committed to searching out those we exclude and suppress, creating with them the promised community of mutual gift. This is the community that depends on the resurrection of Jesus; to belong wholeheartedly to it is to know Jesus - and the God whom Jesus called 'Father'.

Rowan Williams, Foreward to Knowing Jesus, pp vii - ix

there is so much here, and it certainly doesn't need me to add anything to it. the whole topic of "our freedom and our unfreedom" is in itself a huge one. the real gem in this for me, though, is that in bringing to light the victim mentality which is so strong in us. especially in our closest relationships, but to some extent with everyone we come in contact with, we are so quick to "[pass] on or [return] the wounds we have received". it is a natural and automatic response, which we feel is completely justified - after all, isn't it proper and just to punish the wrongdoer? but it is through the resurrection of jesus that we can gain access to "the solid reality of relationships that transcend this," and we can "collaborate in ... relations of forgiveness, equality and care." the resurrection of jesus breaks "endless cycle of reactive violence," and sets us free to live together in "mutual gift not mutual threat."

what a world that will be!

glimpsing the mystery

this quote jumped out at me as i was reading on the train on the way home from work on friday evening:

The paradox of faith and of nature is this: the knowledge we gain will bring with it an overwhelming amount of mystery. One escalates in proportion to the other.

Cindy Crosby, The Reconstruction of a Prairie and a Faith, Mars Hill Review Issue 23, pg 130.

i think it's brilliant. the more we know about the world and in our faith, the more we become aware of how much we don't know. but it's not just about us, an awareness of our own ignorance. if we turn our eyes outside ourselves we catch a glimpse of the staggering depth of mystery out there, that we are part of something huge which for now is beyond our ability to see and understand. it's at once awesome and incredibly exciting.

the christmas challenge

i've been doing my best to ignore christmas this year, but it's creeping up with ominous inevitability. of course, i've been to a few christmas parties and get-togethers already, but they've been remarkably un-christmas-y, with just the obligatory "merry christmas and happy new year" on parting, if that. last night was the first christmas family gathering (janette's side, for her brother and sister-in-law who will be away on christmas day), but even then there was almost no mention of the 'c'-word, which suited me fine.

i'm certainly not alone in being disenchanted with the whole christmas thing. to me, it has become about as far removed from the 'real meaning' of christmas as you can imagine. i'm not even sure if i agree with the idea of having a holiday to celebrate the birth of jesus - apart from the dubious origin of christmas as the 'christianisation' of a pagan solstice festival, i have a strong feeling the apostles and early believers would have found the idea ludicrous if not blasphemous. the celebration of the gift of jesus is for every day, not to be relegated, as it were, to one day a year (two days including easter). of course, that's exactly how it turned out - jesus is conveniently ignored by most people apart from christmas and easter (and increasingly even on those days), just as he is ignored by many church-goers during the week. on the other hand, you could argue that those people would ignore jesus the whole 365 days of the year, so having two days to bring attention to him is better than none. but i think that's confusing things, because christmas and easter are not primarily 'evangelistic' days (ie. with the purpose of 'spreading the gospel') but days of remembrance for believers. and if that is the case, i can't see any justification in having a set-apart day for christmas, either for believers or as a public holiday (assuming, as is the case, that we live in a secular society).

be all that as it may, there's no ignoring the fact that christmas is a big thing in our society, especially for kids and the retail business. and it's not inherently a bad thing to have a day of giving gifts to the important people in your life. what is bad, in my opinion, is that it has become a time of consumer feeding-frenzy, in which the only consolation to the pressure and stress of getting gifts for everyone else is the loot you'll get yourself (though that's usually disappointing, one of the reasons, i'm sure, for the family 'unrest' that often occurs on christmas day).

it takes a huge amount of imagination, ingenuity and effort to come up with gifts that don't buy into the consumeristic mindset, but that all takes time which most people in our rat-race society don't have. the challenge i would like to set, then (for myself as well), is to match dollar for dollar (at least) the money spent in retail outlets for christmas with donations or gifts to the the most needy in the world. one of the ways to do this is to shop at tear australia's (arguably) the world's most useful gift catalog. apart from that, a couple of excellent organisations to support are data (debt aids trade africa) and oxfam.

hope your christmas is filled with love and the joy of giving.

long-time love

since i don't seem to have too many of my own words this week, i'll go with what looks like becoming a tradition on fridays - something from bruce cockburn...

A Long-Time Love Song

Can't trace this conversation --
Words fragment and fall
Into blue shadows by a white-baked wall.
Through shimmering spaces a single thrush calls --
A song when it's over is no song at all

And you know I long to feel that sail
Leaping in the wind
And i long to see what lies beyond that rim
Oh, ever-new lover and friend
Sing me that love song again.

Time measured in summersaults
And flickering kids' play --
Cross-world and southward it's a fine summer day
Translucent life-span evaporates away
To bead on the cool grass in a cyclic ballet

bruce said about this song:

"There was an old people's home near where I used to live in Toronto - sometimes walking the dog late at night I'd come upon them loading a body in a long black hearse. Only at night. In the light of afternoon, you could see them enjoying the large garden. One wizened gray couple was always holding hands and looking at each other so romantically that it had to be a song."

(from "All The Diamonds" songbook, edited by Arthur McGregor, OFC Publications 1986)

this is a song i want played at my funeral. it connects with my heart-song in a way that no other song does. i love the counterpoint between the images of the transient and cyclical nature of life in the verses and the yearning for something more permanent, "ever-new", in the chorus. it is a beautiful expression of a yearning to be free of the confines of this present life.

there's something in me that really identifies with this longing to "feel that sail leaping in the wind", to know the wildness and freedom of life "beyond that rim" (images here of reepicheep at the end of the voyage of the dawn treader from c.s. lewis' narnia series).

i can't imagine a better articulation of 'what it's all about' than the final lines of the chorus: "ever-new lover and friend, sing me that love song again". this is the purpose and goal of all god's dealings with his creation, the expression of his perfect and undying love, for ever renewing and being renewed.

prized peace

there's been a fair bit of controversy surrounding the recipient of this year's Sydney Peace Prize, indian author arundhati roy, though not quite as much as last year's, palestinian hanan ashrawi. personally, i think both were excellent choices, and both women very deserving of the prize. this edited extract from roy's peace prize lecture, given at the seymour centre in sydney last night, is well worth a read.

"It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support one and condemn the other."

children's stories

i suppose it's relatively early days yet, but i've started thinking about what janette and i can do so that freya grows up feeling free to think about and choose what she will believe in, but is also attracted to the faith of her parents.

it seems to me that a lot of what goes on in christian circles in regards to 'teaching' children about christianity/jesus/god is not too far removed from indoctrination or brainwashing. we tell kids what to think instead of teaching them how to think for themselves. the agenda is often clearly more to do with getting kids to behave in order to make their parents' feel good about themselves or to make life easier for them and other adults.

almost every 'children's talk' i've seen in churches follows the basic pattern "blah blah blah be good (for jesus)" or "blah blah blah god says honour your parents so be good". when i hear this (which is quite often now that i 'attend church' fairly regularly again), i want to shout out "give them a break! they get the whole be good thing everywhere else, so can't we lay off the guilt tripping in this one place at least where grace not performance is supposed to be the principle." as believers, we really should know better, and it's a sad indictment on the general environment and teaching in churches that this kind of thing is the norm, if not explicitly encouraged. if we truly believe that how good we are is NOT the basis of god's acceptance of us, how come we're teaching our kids that very thing?

i think adults in general seriously disrespect children. in many ways kids are treated as less than human, without minds of their own and not able to think through things and come to appropriate conclusions. we too often try to mold them in our image, forgetting that first and foremost they are children of god and he alone knows what is best for them.

one of the ways i think we disrespect children is by attaching morals to the stories we tell them. this especially applies to stories from the bible or others that illustrate a christian principle. we aren't content to just tell the story, we seem to think we have to spell out the lesson as if our young listeners can't think for themselves. in addition, the 'lesson' is often something we've forced on the story, and reflects an agenda of trying to instill behaviour conformity instead of revealing the infinite love and grace of god.

jesus told many stories, but explained 'the moral' of few of them, and even then only to a select few. i think one of the reasons for this was that he knew most of his hearers weren't ready to receive the message, and spelling it out for them would do more harm than good because they would turn them into principles and rules and thereby fence in the spirit. however, even if few people really understood what he was getting at, i think the stories/parables still had a positive effect by challenging the assumptions and worldview of those listening, confronting them with a different way of seeing things than the prevailing dogma. to use an analogy, the stories were helping to break up the ground so that the seed could eventually sink in and take root.

without denying or downplaying the very real relationship children can have with god, i think most of the task of parents and other adults is at this level of preparing the ground for children to develop their own unique and mature faith in god's good time. to my mind, this means is not being prescriptive about matters of faith, but instead providing an imaginative framework in the form of stories which demonstrate the love and grace of god. these stories can be narratives, fiction or otherwise, from the bible and elsewhere, but the main component is our lives as their parents. it's no secret that kids learn far more from what they see their parents doing than from what they are told. too often kids in 'christian' families grow up getting double messages and basically learn that hypocrisy is the normal mode of being. the 'trick' as parents is for our faith to be natural and consistent, while being upfront about our failures, which, not surprisingly, is what the whole thing is about anyway!

intervention

last night's australian story - "friends in deed" - was excellent. it told the story of three men who played significant roles in the 10 nation Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) led by australia. the three men were ben mcdevitt, the afp assistant commissioner responsible for the police side of the mission, diplomat nick warner and john frewin from the military. mcdevitt arguably had the toughest jobs of ridding the solomon islands police force of corruption, basically rebuilding it from scratch, and bringing about the arrest of rebel militia leader harold keke, which was almost miraculously accomplished without a shot being fired. due largely to the efforts of mcdevitt, warner and frewin, the solomons has returned to peace and the rule of law. it's a wonderful success story accomplished by level-headedness, determination, bravery and ingenuity. a very big hats off to these great ambassadors of our country.

while watching the program last night, my mind snagged on the term 'failed state', which was used to describe the solomon islands before the intervention. for whatever reason, my word association processor immediately came up with 'failed marriage', and it got me thinking about separation/divorce from the perspective of what i was watching. while there's not a lot of similarity between a state and a marriage, i think there are some interesting parallels in the larger context of failure and intervention.

to a certain extent we have the attitude that internal conflicts in other countries need to be sorted out by themselves, but there is an acknowledgement that what is happening, especially in near or neighbouring countries, impacts on the region and our own national interest. however, we don't seem to have this same acknowledgement that relationship difficulties between a couple significantly impact others (more than just the immediate family), but usually view it as just something the couple need to sort out (or not). sadly, it's often worse in a christian context, because marriage difficulty is usually treated as anathema, something to be left at home and not mentioned at church where you are expected to wear the facade that everything is happy and rosy and you're living the 'victorious life'.

so is 'outside intervention' a good idea in the context of relationships? i think it can be, but definitely not if it is pre-emptive intervention. in the case of the solomon islands, the government knew they were in dire straits and asked for assistance. i think its a tragic indictment on our lack of real involvement with each other that this kind of request for help is rarely made by couples, and when it is, the assistance is almost always sought from a counsellor or therapist who doesn't know the couple outside of the therapy room. while professional input of this kind is often helpful (though just as often not), doesn't it make more sense for people who know the couple well and have a significant degree of 'personal interest' in the relationship to be the ones helping out? why does it seem more difficult for a couple to go to the people close to them for help? this is a community issue because it's not just a case of the couple not wanting to talk about what's going on, but often also a clear, though usually unspoken, message from others that, for whatever reason, they don't want to know about it, so the ones going through the difficulties feel isolated and left to sort it out themselves.

another aspect of the solomon islands intervention was that it was a 10-nation assistance mission. i think this is another helpful example for 'relationship intervention', because if more people are involved there are more ideas and perspectives brought to the table, and the impact of any individual self-serving agendas is also reduced. while in this context you can't really talk about others solving any of the problems (and even in a country context it is the people themselves who must have the will to change for the peace to last), a mix of friends and family, most productively, i think, together (ie. in a kind of 'intervention meeting'), can offer a combination of advice and feedback to the couple which is greater than if each was to do so individually. of course, there is a (pretty small) limit to the number of people for which this would be helpful, as it would just become chaotic and do more harm than good.

one other example from the solomon islands case i think is pertinent is the gun amnesty. apart from the surrender of harold keke, probably the most significant turning point for the solomons was the rebels handing in their weapons. these were then melted down and the remains buried, with a plaque erected at the site as a reminder of the chaos and violence that widespread proliferation of guns can lead to. anyone who is or has been in a long term relationship knows about the weapons partners use against each other, proliferating and growing in strength as time goes by if not 'disarmed'. for a relationship in crisis (and even for those not on the rocks), i think a kind of weapons amnesty might be a good idea. this could be something like an informal ceremony with others present in which the partners would 'give up' their weapons, stating the things they use to try to wound the other and promising not to use them again. i think it's important that it's not done the other way around, each partner accusing the other of using this or that, and also that there is no rejoinder to each 'confession'. the aim is not to continue the battle, but to lay the weapons on the table and by doing so remove their potency.

maggie's words on words and the word

you may have noticed the link to maggie dawn's blog (among others) on the right of the screen. maggie has a heap of wisdom and insight, and i think you'll find it very worthwhile to check her out.

over the last number of weeks maggie has written an excellent series of posts called words and the word, which started as excerpts from her talk on the authority of the bible at greenbelt this year. she gives a very informative and scholarly, though easy to read, analysis of the issue of the inspiration of scripture, including discussions about translation, compilation of the canon, the true Word of God, 2 timothy 3:16, and much more. there are 7 parts to the series, the last just posted (the link above is to the first, and each has a link to the next at the bottom).

highly recommended.

post-mortem

literally, almost. maybe it's not quite that bad, but alan ramsey expresses my sentiments exactly (Nothing will save us from gullibility and greedy self-interest).

this was a triumph of negative campaigning and fear-mongering, a victory for short-sightedness, selfishness and greed, as clive hamilton, executive director of The Australia Institute, also writes in today's smh (Self-absorption wins the day). we've made the dollar god, and we're blindly prostrating ourselves before the altar. may god (the real one) help us, because the dollar is a mean and fickle mistress, with a history of enslaving her lovers and crippling their souls. what we reap we certainly shall sow.

one thing i can't understand is how so many of my fellow australians bought the interest rates lie. forget the fact that house affordability is at an all-time low, or that job security is so low - or maybe these were part of the tactic: deliver property prices that mean the mortgage takes up at least 50% of the average household's disposable income, then deliver job insecurity, and it's a sure bet that the "higher interest rates" scare tactic will hit home.

it only gets worse. there's a very good chance that the coalition will also have a majority in the senate (39 seats - they'll definitely have at least 38), so legislation will pass through unhindered and un-amended. that really is the most frightening result of this election.

the only silver lining i can think of is that the last time any leader has controlled both chambers was malcolm fraser between 1976 and 1981, which directly preceded the hawke/keating dynasty, and that is a hopeful precedent. i think it's more than likely that the 'mandate' (aka power) will go to the government's head and they'll screw us over (sale of remaining 51% of telstra, even-more-business-friendly-employee-exploiting industrial relations laws, removal of cross-media ownership rules) to such an extent that we'll finally see the light and get rid of them for a good long while. but Labor still has to play it right, and rowen atkinson's gratuitous advice is right on the money.

it seems that the trend in australia (similarly to the u.s.) is towards the conservative. this may be linked (in australia at least) with a resurgence in church-going, or it could just be a reflection of an increase in the upper-middle income demographic, which is where churches draw most of their members from. it really angers me, though, that there is such a strong perception that 'conservative' is more 'christian'. you'd be hard-pressed to find conservative or so-called family values in the gospels. on the contrary, you'd almost think jesus was anti-family by some of the things he said, and he made it pretty clear that the kingdom of god is a higher priority than the family. in fact, jesus was saying is that the kingdom, not the traditional, nuclear conception, is the real family, that it is to be open and organic, not closed, rigidly defined and self-protecting.

moreover, the conservative agenda tends towards increasing inequality in society, rewarding the 'haves' and leaving the 'have-nots' further behind (with the arrogant, superior, admonition that "if you just tried harder you could become a 'have' too"). many christians would implicitly, if not explicitly, agree with this attitude of 'god helps those who help themselves', not least those who hold to the 'blessing' or 'prosperity' doctrine so common in charismatic and pentecostal churches. but this is completely contrary to the kingdom values of equality for all, of giving a voice and place of honour to the exploited, the marginalised and disenfranchised, of the last being first and the first last.

ultimately, no matter what the government, believers are called to live according to the radical, society-transforming agenda of the kingdom. there is a grave danger, though, that christians in this country will become complacent in a political environment which they are told is in line with their values, or even worse, think that the government's agenda is basically 'christian' so nothing else needs to be done. is it foolish to hope that the opposite can happen, that a soul-less, materialistic society will drive believers back to their true values of compassion and justice?

christians and politics

been struck down by the 'flu this week and only now managing to get my head back above water (more or less). it's definitely not a pleasant place to be, but the bright side is that it forced me to catch up on some sleep, though even that would have been much better if 'the little one' (freya - 18 mths old tomorrow) hadn't had her own health/sleep issues. she's had a runny nose for several weeks, which obviously affects her sleep because of breathing problems. over the weekend it got so bad, though, that the mucous was seeping through to her eyes and crusting them up. not really an issue when she was sleeping, and apparently not painful, but a bit distressing when her eyes were so 'crusted up' that she couldn't open them when she woke up, and she wasn't too impressed when mum & dad tried to clean them up either. then yesterday afternoon she got really listless and had a high temperature so it seems she's caught the flu from me, the poor thing. thankfully we have an excellent doctor (who’s also a homeopath), and he's given us some good remedies, and freya was already noticeably improved by the evening, and slept quite well (relatively speaking) last night.

speaking of family (how's that for a segue), one of the hot topics around aussie blogs in relation to the election is the Family First party (a handful of posts, which include links to articles and other blogs on the subject, from the saint here, here, here, here and here; also this from backyardmissionary, which has a comment with a link to this blog by a member of the hawkesbury aog church). at the church we've started attending (though still spasmodically), a couple of people, including the service leader (not the pastor, who wasn't present), made statements on sunday in support of Family First. i actually found it quite offensive – not the content of what they said, but the fact that they endorsed a particular political party from the front, with the inherent authority that carries, in effect telling the people present how they should vote.

i suppose the assumption is that a voting christian should vote for a christian party. the irony with Family First is of course that they vehemently deny the 'christian party' tag (as much, one wonders, as an atheistic party would?), though they have very strong ties to the australian Assemblies of God evangelical/pentecostal denomination. obviously the first question is, regardless of whether or not the party is christian/religious, if the individuals themselves are christian, what kind of image is it sending to be dishonest and dissembling in the face of media questions on the aog links. this is what you would (sadly) expect from politicians, but hopefully not from christians, or does the former take precedence in this case, the ends (seats in parliament) justifying the means?

for me this illustrates the more fundamental question, which is whether a christian can or should be a politician at all, because of the self-promotion, dissembling, dishonesty and power-seeking which seem requisite with that job. is it possible to be a successful politician and be a follower of jesus, with the attributes of complete honesty and integrity, seeking to be the last instead of the first, the servant instead of the lord, taking the lowest seat instead of the place of honour, always promoting others instead of ourselves. call me naive or ignorant, but it would seem to me that these things are completely at odds with a life in politics in a modern day democracy.

it is a human desire to want to influence the way one's country is run, wanting the 'values' (getting really sick of that word) one believes in to be universally upheld. the first question must be, even if one legislates one's values, does that mean they will be accepted by the people? of course not, but does it matter? isn't it good enough that it is the law, so those who disagree must abide by it anyway? but isn't the point of christianity the changing of mind and heart? isn't this what we want for all the people? would not legislating our 'values' be counter-productive to this endeavour, creating resistance in those who do not appreciate being bludgeoned into acquiesence? do we really believe changing behaviour will lead to changing of the heart and mind? the great tragedy is that, at least from what you see and hear in most churches, this is exactly what christians believe...

my basic philosophy in relation to democratic politics is that the way to change what politicians do and decide is to change the people. politicians are obviously part of the population, and by and large reflect and pander to the will of the people, basically because that's the only way to get elected. though i don't believe democracy is inherently christian, this tenet of changing the people instead of seeking political power would seem to me to be congruent with christian principles.

though god at times (at least in the old testament) used nations to carry out his justice on other nations (which is nothing to be proud of), i think he's mostly indifferent about who has political power. what he's more interested in is how his people live, and living as a community according to his commands, pursuing justice and relief for the oppressed, cannot help but be a political act, highlighting and critiquing the nation's laws where they are unjust and oppressive. this is the way that i believe christians are called to change their world.

girard and ventura

thanks to whoever it was who came across this blog via this search (in italian), because it also came up with this excellent recent article on rene girard by michael kirwan. the article gives a brief background to girard's theories on religion and violence, as well as a basic description of those theories and their implications in regards to the recent hostage killings in iraq.

this paragraph in particular caught my eye:

"Of the many perspectives that this insight opens up, it is worth mentioning at least one. Girard asserts at one point that he is interested in 'conflict as a subtle destroyer of the differential meaning it seems to inflate'. What this means in plain language is none other than the paradox that violence makes antagonists identical to one another, even when their mutual hatred stresses only the differences (racial, religious) between them."

i think this is an extremely important observation, one that needs to be highlighted again and again in a political climate that gains so much mileage out of preaching a polarised, 'us good them evil', view of the world. of all the lies and deceptions which have been told us by our leaders since september 11 2001, this is, in my view, the most odious and destructive.

while on the subject, i highly recommend michael ventura's brilliant essay the lessons of guernica on the evidence that conflict makes antagonists resemble each other (though it's not clear if he owes the insight to girard). as ventura writes:

"Be careful how you choose your enemy, for you will come to resemble him. The moment you adapt your enemy's methods, your enemy has won. The rest is suffering and historical opera."