What may a Christian hope for in this life? Part 9 (and final...for now)

Hope, to be true, needs to be both good and possible. Christian hope centres around that which God has declared good, Jesus Christ and his return in glory. A Christian may hope for the glorification of Jesus Christ, the restoration of creation and to share in His glory and inheritance as an adopted child of God. The content of Christian hope for the future is determined by the revelation of that future in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. It is only in union with Christ, the one vindicated, that christian hope may be called christian. Thus any hope that is grounded on and looks toward his return in glory will be vindicated, and all other hopes proved both unreal and no good. Thus christian eschatology and modern eschatologies may have roughly similar elements, such as justice and blessing, but being based on entirely different grounds, one will be proved true, the other false. Similarly, even a christian who hopes for a good, must hope for that good in connection to the coming presence of God, who is the fount of all goodness. Though christian hopes are ultimately subject to the judgement of Jesus, not history, they are grounded in reality by the possibility of Jesus return before the death of the believer and by the actuality of God’s inbreaking kingdom in the resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The best icebreaker game..ever

Today at chaplaincy group I witnessed what has to be the best icebreaker ever.
Scar stories. Everyone has a scar, or at the very least an injury. In our group we had football reconstuctions, gashes, hooks falls and scrapes. And in one fell swoop, a group of relative strangers (ok we kind of know each other) has winced and laughed and found easy ways to remember each other.

Excellent stuff

H/T Mike Jensen

Would you be offended if bits and pieces of project stuff came up here?

I've found blogger, with its ability to tag posts, an incredibly handy tool for keeping little tidbits of information and quotes (as you may have noticed). Would you see it as poor form if I posted small thoughts and bits that I'd like to be able to find later on this blog?

I offer this post as an example.

2 Macc 3:38-39 offers support to Rosner's 'ho topos'/temple interpretation of 1 Corinthians 1:2

Philo of Alexandria writes about Jerusalem as the one and only place for God's Temple 'On Special Laws' 1.67 He also has some bits that present the entire cosmos as a Holy Temple to God, with the Jerusalem structure as a mediating temple.

In 'On the Contemplative life', Philo describes a group of of devoted Jewish worshippers near Alexandria as 'like priests when sacrificing' in abstaining from wine.
This seems to be a metaphorical use of temple imagery for the life of those not at the temple.

What may a Christian hope for in this life? Part 8

Yet even before the return of Christ, a christian may have hope for this life. In Jesus resurrection, the eschaton, the end has broken into history. In pouring out the Holy Spirit, Jesus has blessed his church with ‘the powers of the age to come” .
”They come out of the promised future of Christ into our present and fill us with new vitality. In the community of Christ we experience foretastes and anticipations of God’s coming kingdom.”
Moltmann
Christians are given the Holy Spirit as a firstfruits and foretaste of the future kingdom. By God’s strength we may hope that God will be glorified by our lives , we may hope for God’s healing of our bodies , we may hope for God to intervene and overrule in the the affairs of kings and men . Though we wait for the eternal feast, we may begin celebrating our salvation now,
“In joy over the open fulness of God, out of which we receive not just ‘grace upon grace’ but also... life upon life, the life we live here and now is already transfigured and becomes a festive life, life in celebration”
Moltmann
Just as death is not the necessary barrier to the final end of the believer, the final end is not a complete barrier to the kingdom blessings of God for which we hope. Hope remains hope until that final fulfilment. The foretastes only make us hungrier,
“ That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world,for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present”
Moltmann

Hogeterp argues that Romans 3:25 should not be interpreted as referring to the Jewish sacrifices, whether the 'mercy seat' or atoning blood. His logic is this, Paul's gospel is about there being no distinctions (Rom 3:22), thus defying levitical notions of purity (lev 10:10), therefore his use of hilasterion is most likely not one governed by Law, and hence in terms apart from the Jewish cult.
This seems to short circuit the argument of grafting and fulfilling by saying that the only way for there to be no distinction is to see Israels way (and language and symbolic world) left behind.
But in fact Hogeterp goes the other way, quoting W S Campbell, Paul's gospel " is universal not in opposition to Jewish particularism, as has often been mistakenly beleived, but precisely on the basis of that Jewish particularism which, through the fulfillment in Christ of the promises to Israel, is now opened up to gentiles also"
WS Campbell in 'The Romans Debate'
quoted in Hogeterp 280

I don't understand how Hogeterp can make this move, without imprisoning the cultic terms of Israel only for Jews.

Meeting Jesus in the face of others. Or not.

Today i was doing the powerpoint at a chapel service at college. Because of the setup of the computer, I had tostand next to the guitarplayer/singer facing the congregation during the songs.
As I dutifully pressed the down key every 30 seconds, I was struck by what a privelege this was. Not the powerpoint, but the fact that I could see everyones faces as they sung praises to Jesus.

Now, as a preacher and leader of services, I get to see faces all the time. I was saddened today to think that for your average churchgoer, all they will ever see, in their entire churchgoing life, will be the back of peoples heads. How horrible. Somehow we have to learn to look at each other while we sing (perhaps even while we pray too!)

In Jesus there is a whole new world

To place Paul's moral instruction in the light of Aristides and Pliny's vice and virtue lists " is to run the risk of missing the major surprise of Gal 5:19-23a: the degree to which Paul's apocalyptic view has transformed the language of the catalogue tradition....(This approach by Meeks)..leaves largely out of account the degree to which apocalyptic frames of reference- notably the motif of cosmic warfare- led Paul to a radically new view of the cosmos itself, and thus to an apocalyptic transformation of the language of vice and virtues. Thus if one were able to imagine a conversation in which one could teach Paul the modern usage of such inelegant terms as 'resocialization', one would also be able to imagine him coining the still more inelegant term 're-cosmos-ization' , in order to refer to the deed by which God is bringing about the death of the old and enslaving cosmos, in order to create a community so novel as to be called the new creation, a community in which language itself is transformed"
J luois Martyn ' Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul' Studies of the New Testament and it's world T&t Clark:Edinbrgh1997,Pg 262 note 26.


Martyn's ideas on the change in the cosmos brought about by Christ fit with the 'it's not a metaphor' theory of cultic language in Paul. As the temple and cult formed a model of the cosmos, so the church (with her head) are the model of the new cosmos

What may a christian hope for in this life? Part 7

This then begs the question of timing and legitimacy. If Jesus judges as legitimate those who hoped for his coming within their lifetime, even if it did not come, does christian hope need to bear any resemblance to the reality of the future? And what comfort is there in calling hope legitimate yet unfulfilled? Moltmann resolves the tension by speculating that the future resurrection will be a resurrection of the entire history of the believer. “To be raised to eternal life means that nothing has ever been lost for God- not the pains of this life, and not the moments of happiness. Men and women will find again with God not only the final moment, but their whole history- but as the reconciled, the rectified and healed and completed history of their whole lives. ”32 Even without this speculation, Christian hope for this life may avoid the charge of divinely approved fantasy. Two factors tie christian hope firmly to a real fulfilment. Firstly the possibility of the end before the death of the believer, and secondly the intrusion of God’s eschatological blessings prior to the end.
Though the christian faith highly commends those who die for their faith, death is always presented as the enemy of God and his people. Though Paul may long to be with the Lord , the New Testament never presents death as a normal and ongoing ‘gateway’ to hope. 1 Corinthians 15:50-57 and 1 Thessalonians 5:13-18 both speak of both living and dead believers meeting with the Lord at his coming. Paul is at pains in 1 Thessalonians to assure his readers that the dead are at no disadvantage in this respect, yet neither are they advantaged ‘ the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed’ .
“The syllogism: All men must die, Caius is a man, therefore Caius must die, is no doubt an illuminating statement of pagan wisdom. But it is not a statement of Christian wisdom, any more than the obvious moral of the mediaeval dance of death. It cannot be, because it overlooks the parousia of Jesus Christ, which in its last and as yet outstanding form carries with it an alternative so far as concerns the end of the man living in it, so that his end does not have to be his death... If the triumph of hope is to be clear and understandable in face of this most bitter of all limits, namely, the ineluctable end of human and therefore Christian existence, then it is not merely advisable but quite indispensable to realise that the end which is before all of us can come with death but may also come directly with the coming of Jesus Christ”
Karl Barth
Christian hope for the return of Jesus and the coming of his kingdom are grounded in the reality of the possibility of his return.

What may a christian hope for in this life? Part 6

Yet the question remains, what of those christians over the last two thousand years who have aligned their hopes with Christ and his kingdom, who have longed for his coming in their lifetime, but have died before his coming? Were their hopes legitimate or mistaken? Or should they have been better at reading the signs of the times and tempered their hopes? Even more than the outcome of our personal history, christian hope looks for it’s legitimacy from the one who will return to judge all things, including our hopes, Jesus Christ. In Acts 1 Jesus specifically instructs his disciples that it is not for them to know the dates and the times set by the Father when he will restore the kingdom. In Matthew 25, Jesus commends the five virgins who wait expectantly, prepared for the bridegrooms coming, since we do not know the hour that the Son of Man is coming. Christians are exhorted to watch and be sober . Moltmann speaks of the ‘sin of despair’ “The temptation today is not so much that humans beings want to play God. It is much more that they no longer have confidence in the humanity which God expects of them. It is the fearfulness fed by lack of faith which leads to capitulation before the power of evil” . It is not those who have reconciled themselves to the evil world who are vindicated, but those who cry out with the martyr’s “How long O Lord”

Is Paul being metaphorical when he uses cultic language?

If a metaphor says both 'it is not' and 'it is like', as Ricoeur claims, we have to ask , is Paul speaking metaphorically when he uses cultic language? My first reaction is to say that, of course he is! If we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, we don't actually take up a knife, pop ourselves on the altar and light the fire.

The danger I see in jumping straight to metaphor, is that we have an underlying assumption about the universe that it is not organised cultically. We don't (generally) see the universe as a big temple. Yet the OT sacrifices were always an expression of a larger cosmic/cultic view of the world.
While Paul certainly isn't arguing for the ongoing upkeep of the Jerusalem Temple, I don't know that he is an acultic modernist either. His description of the church as the Temple of God, the one true place of worship, the collection money being an act of cultic worship, make me wonder whether Paul thought what was going on was 'actually' cultic sacrifice, not simply 'like' the sacrifice of the Jerusalem temple. That is, the point of the Temple has been fulfilled rather than done away with.

This is important. If Paul is simply using metaphor to describe Christian activity that is like the cult, then we could describe that activity in other terms and still understand it, by simply mapping the similarities and abstracting them conceptually.

But if Paul is describing what is actually the case, then abstracting it away from cultic language obscures what is actually going on.

What may a christian hope for in this life? Part 5

While the scope of christian hope is almost universal, the nature of what is hoped for is not. Not all dreams of the future, even by christians are legitimate. Not all prayers, even from christians, are worthy. What, of the various and sometimes conflicting hopes of christians may be legitimate? One way of approaching the question would be to collate the desires of Christians throughout the world and throughout christian history, yet this would make the community the arbiter of the legitimacy of hope, ignoring it’s sinfulness and finitude, and would be a study in what a christian can hope for. Another approach would be to study the life experiences of christians throughout the last two thousand years, the highs and the lows, and calculate an average which the christian today may expect . Yet this would leave the legitimacy of hope purely in the hands of history, in what may be seen and calculated from the past, based on the assumption that the future will resemble the past. But Christian hope is also for what is as yet unseen. This does not mean it is an other-wordly hope, that which could never be seen, but simply that it is not seen yet. What is legitimate for a christian to hope for in this life then, will go beyond describing the reality of our eschatological tension, living between the resurrection and return of Jesus. The christian does not hope for this tension to continue eternally, as though this state of tension were the goal, but hopes for good to triumph over evil. Yet christian hope is not indeterminate, or determined simply by a free subjective appraisal of good. By definition, Christians have appraised and by the grace of God accepted a specific good; Jesus Christ and his kingdom. All legitimate christian hope must be aligned with Jesus Christ, in all his particularity, the one who was crucified and vindicated by God in the eschatological act of raising him from the dead. Jesus himself is our inheritance kept in heaven waiting to be revealed.
“the Christian hope doesn’t talk about the future per se.. it starts from a particular historical reality, and announces the future of that reality, it’s power over the future and it’s consummation...[it] talks about Jesus Christ and his future ."
Jurgen Moltmann Jesus himself is our anchor of hope that has entered before us into the sanctuary, behind the curtain, to be priest on our behalf forever. Thus our hopes for the glorification of God must be aligned with the God of Israel who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, rather than idolatrous projection of our desires. Christian hope for the world and all it’s people is that they would bow the knee to Jesus Christ and be saved, and so our hope for the world must be connected to his redeeming action. John, for all his confidence in God’s forgiveness, writes that we should not pray for those who commit the sin that leads to death, most likely apostasy and “denying that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and that his death is necessary for salvation” . Our hopes for lives of abundance may not be simply projections of our greed but must be shaped by Jesus own description of eternal life,”that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). To be legitimate, christian hope must be aligned with Jesus’ hopes and love for his people, not simply a calling on his name, but an alignment with his purposes . “True life means here love and there glory” Moltmann. Since a servant is not better than his master, this will necessarily involve the christian following Christ in suffering, indeed for the christian, suffering produces hope. 1 Peter repeatedly affirms that if we hope to share in Christ’s glory, we will also share in his sufferings.
“There is all the difference in the world between Christ uncrucified and Christ risen: they speak of two different kinds of hope for humanity, one unrealisable , the other barely imaginable, but at least truthful.” Rowan Williams

What may a christian hope for in this life? Part 4

For all this the christian may also hope for himself. The christian may hope that she personally will share in Christ’s inheritance, will be raised as he was and will enter eternal life. The christian may hope for God’s personal care and deliverance from evil, and that she will persevere to the end. That “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus." The christian's hope for himself is firmly grounded in union with Christ, and therefore with the community of those who wait in hope,
“The only point is that this hoping community and he who hopes in and with it already exist in virtue of the first event in direct fellowship with the One for whose new coming they may hope, and that they have received, and must continually pray for and receive again, directly from Him the freedom to hope for His future coming.”
Karl Barth
Yet this hope remains truly personal
“Because the church finds its ground and pattern in the life of the Trinity, it is a communion of persons and a communion of communions; and the Kingdom is what the church anticipates. The hope of Israel and the church is thus irremediably antithetical to hope for dissolution into abstract divinity or for rescue from the wheel of karma or for reincarnation or soul transmigration, or any other state that represses personhood”
Robert Jenson
. The scope of christian hope includes personal salvation, but is not restricted to it, rather it encompasses the good future of the self, the creation and God.

What may a christian hope for in this life? Part 3

Yet the christian does not hope only for God, as though God’s glory were detached from the good of his creation. . God’s glory is not curved in on itself but is in his commitment to the redeeming of creation. Since the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, a christian may hope for all of God's good creation.
“In proclaiming the the resurrection of Christ, the apostles...proclaimed the renewal of creation with him.. The resurrection of mankind apart from creation would be a gospel of a sort, but of a purely gnostic and world denying sort which is far from the gospel that the apostles actually preached”
Oliver O'Donovan .
Since God’s goal is to sum all things up in Christ, and has promises of the end “Behold, I make all things new” , the christian may join the creation in groaning and hoping for it’s redemption. Nothing in the creation, human or otherwise is immune from this hope. Christian hope may not be restricted to the ‘spiritual’ or the individual.
”We must ... acknowledge that modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation. In so doing it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognise sufficiently the greatness of its task”
Benedict XVI

a call for postmodern derwent colours.

It's time.
It's time that our children could draw, not with the division of colour of 100 years ago
It's time for the pallette of our pencil box to match the pallette of our hearts.
Until our colours are released we will not be satisfied.
This is a call.
This is a call for new colours. A call for colours that are from your world.

What new colours light your landscape?

I'll kick off the discussion with two of my favourites,

Nicotine Sunset
No Injection Magenta

I'm not ashamed of the gospel, because even if it weren't that great, secular people are really stupid and immoral, especially those intellectuals

choose one

I am not ashamed of the gospel because...

a) non-christian intellectuals are actually stupid and terribly immoral.

b) it is the power of God for the salvation of ALL who BELIEVE, whether they vote green, have studied philosophy, are brickies labourers (and the power of God to unite them in Christ.)

Option a) locates it's lack of shame in a feeling of superiority, the superiority of the victim. It requires a ridiculing of the sinful opponent, which shows a deep seated unease with the gospel of grace for sinners, even as it speaks those words.

Option b) locates it's lack of shame in the powerful grace of God. Non christians may say useful things, may even have useful critiques of christians, but they have nothing that even comes close to the power of God to salvation. So even
when ridiculed by the world, it feels no need to return in kind.

The child who genuinely feels no shame in nakedness doesn't whinge about clothes, but runs around the house inn the nuddy.


sorry to those of you not in 4th year MTC, but we were given a sermon to watch as an example of cultural critique and engagement today, that I think employed option a).

Now I have to admit that I have never been tempted to doubt the intellectual firmness of Christian beleif. This didn't come from thinking that secular thinkers were stupid, but simply from a calm hope that whatever truth was in there claims would relate to the truth of God. So todays talk wasn't aimed at me. But we have to ask ourselves, who was it aimed at?
The original audience was a Moore College chapel. Now, last time I checked, not too many people there are too ashamed of presenting the gospel of Jesus, especially to uni students and 'intellectuals'.

So maybe it was an attempt to engage the wider culture. After all, thats how it was framed in our class. So lets have a think about how useful and persuasive an engagement it was.

The run of the argument was essentially ad hominem. Modern secularists pick on christians, but look how stuffed up their lives are. Bertrand russel picked on christians, but even secular people say his later journalism was crap. People pick on christians for their treatment of aboriginies, but secular people were worse. Even secular people recognise how stupid and immoral previous thinkers were.

Now, these may all be true, but this is touted as incisive cultural comment and engagement. It isn't. It is the equivalent of the schoolyard 'I know you are, you said you are, but what am I'. And this methods persuasive effect on those in the culture it derides is about the same as the school room taunt. It makes no attempt at understanding why it's culture might form the opinions it does, other than,'they are naughty sinful people'. Though it poses as a firm of engagement with culture, it is actually disengagement. Picking out some secular thinkers to deride assumes that the listener has some reason to identify with them. We lump them together as 'non christians', but the average non-christian feels no identification with the immorality of Bertrand Russel. Just imagine how we as christians respond to this kind of argument, when a teleevangelist falls from grace, we just say, oh well, I'm not part of their type. If this is what we do when we have a strong philosophical and theological reason to identify, why on earth do we think a non christian would give a toss what some other intellectual did with his genitals.
But that doesnt matter, because this kind of talk isn't about engaging the culture at all.
If we all took up this model, lets be clear what we would be doing. It wouldn't be engaging the culture around us. At best it would be encouraging some engineers to despise arts students, or if we used it against scientists, encourage arts students to despise science students. Or the media, or....... Or...... You fill in the blanks of who you would like your faithful converted to write off.

And this kind of thinkong spreads through a christian culture.
Speaking to one new student today, he was bemused at the idea that it wasn't ok to tear into someone in an essay.
'But what if they are someone who is leading lots of people astray, like Tom Wright'
'You still have to play the ball, not the man. Argue the ideas, but be careful of throwing the heretic word around'
'sheesh, how much of their work do i have to read'
The people coming out of our churches are essentially confused by the idea that you would listen to someone and engage them on their ideas. Instead people are given white hats or black hats and are fair game, because anyone who disagrees is a naughty bad person intent on destroying the gospel.
Without denying total depravity, this simply is not true all the time. In fact the white hat, black hat game is an insidious way of denying total depravity, within your select white hat group.

If we are going to reach Sydney with the gospel, we can't waste anymore time or emotional energy on this sort of bullshit

What may a Christian hope for in this life? part 2

First we will explore the broad scope of objects a christian may have hope for; God, the creation and the christian himself. Then we will explore the particular hope that is legitimate for these; that which is aligned with God’s eschatological verdict in raising Jesus from the dead. Then we shall examine whether it is legitimate to hope for these to be fulfilled before the death of a christian.

The scope of objects for which a christian may hope is as broad as the triune God and his redeeming action. The christian hopes first for God. God is not only the ground of all christian hopes, but also their object. Nor is God simply a static object to be hoped for, but a living object of hope for whom we may hope. The first cry of the Lord’s prayer is that the name of the Father be hallowed. Christians “boast in the hope of the glory of God” . Christian hope at it’s centre is the hope that God will prevail over evil and be glorified. It is the hope of the Father placing all things under the feet of the Son, and of the Son handing the kingdom back to the Father,6 so that God may be all in all. Christian hope and prayer is a sharing in Jesus’ prayer to the Father, “Glorify the Son, that the Son may glorify you” Hope for anything that does not also hope for the glorification of the Father, Son and Spirit is simply not christian hope. This is especially so for the glory of the Son, Jesus Christ. To be a christian is to be one who eagerly awaits “the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ “ Even 1 Peter’s terminology, which speaks more of Christ’s current glory being finally revealed, there is nevertheless a future for Christ for which the christian hopes.

Teenagers doing the Job interview for their youth leaders

I just read an interesting tip for recruiting new leaders for youth group. It was in an old book I picked up from the free table at college.
The idea is this: once you've found someone who you think is suitable to lead, have the kids from the youth group do a job interview with them. The kids then decide on whether they think this person would be suitable.

There are at least two advantages to this approach.
1. You have to prepare the kids to think about what they should look for in a christian leader snd what they should ask and expect of that leader. We are about to do a study on Pauls leadership in 1 Thess, and I might get the kids to write some interview questions from that.

2. If the new recruit passes muster, they know from the very beginning that the kids want them there. They haven't been imposed. They dont have to worry about whether they are cool enough. The kids have asked them to be there, and asked them to lead them in faith in jesus christ.

Has anyone ever done this before?
Does anyone see any downside?

What may a Christian hope for in this life? Part 1

“Christianity is wholly and entirely confident hope, a stretching out to what is ahead, and a readiness for a fresh start”
Jurgen Moltmann. "In the end the beginning:the life of hope

Yet because this hope has been held by christians for thousands of years, many of whom are now dead, questions arise as to what may be legitimately hoped for by the christian in this life.
Following J. K A Smith’s phenomenology of hope we define hope as an act of positively “intending” the future that is grounded, by faith, in reality, and moves towards an object within a horizon. There are other modes of intending the future, such as wishful thinking or fear , that have no ground in reality or that have a negative object, yet neither of these is hope. For hope to be hope it must be (or at least perceived to be) grounded and good, possible and positive, real and righteous. Hope can be shown false by being ungrounded, not possible; or by not being good, even if possible and actual. Christian hope must also be carefully distinguished from the secular concept of expectation, that attempts to calculate what is possible in the future from the immanent conditions of the present. Hope is not a weighing of probabilities, but an expression of possibility. Christian hope is not derived from weighing up past and present circumstances to ascertain God’s action, but it is a cry to him in the possibility of his free action.
“Prayer is the sole ‘reason’ for hope, at the same time that it is its means and expression. Prayer is the referral to God’s decision, on which we are counting.”
Jacques Ellul
What is it then, that a Christian, living between the resurrection of Jesus and His return, may cry out to God for, within the horizon of the possibility of his own death?

Paul Ricoeur on how metaphors work

'the place of metaphor, its most intimate and ultimate abode, is neither the name, nor the sentence, nor even discourse, but the copula of the verb 'to be'. The metaphorical 'is at once signifies both 'is not' and 'is like'
Paul Ricoeur 'The rule of metaphor' university of toronto. Eng trans 1977 pp 7

Lent and advertising

Each year, Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Easter by observing Lent. It is a time for fasting, not for fastings sake, or to gain favour from God, but to remind ourselves that as Christians we are to walk alongside Jesus in his passion and journey to the cross. fasting reminds us that our desires aren't set on this current world. Fasting foments our desire for God's kingdom, for the way of suffering to be transformed into the glory of the resurrection.
Now, I guess you could acheive these subjective feelings with otherwise pointless flaggellation, but Jesus suffering was for the sake of love, and ours should be too. In a culture that is consumed by the desire to consume, that prefers the titillation of glitter to the dignity of the poor, we need to remember again the powerful witness of lives that sit lightly to these desires.
So this year I'm giving up advertising for 40 days again. I don't want my desire for stuff artificially stimulated, I don't want to be told I need anything other than God's kingdom. No billboards, no junkmail, no radio ads, no logo's. (If I cant look at your t-shirt, I'll try to look at your eye's)

Part two of my lent strategy is to really enjoy what I already have. i'm already eyeing off that snorkelling gear in the cupboard.

Last year this two part strategy was difficult but strangely liberating, why don't you give it a go too.

Moore College students, keep everything

This is a tip for all Moore College Students.

When you submit an essay, keep a timed and dated photograph of the assignment going into the box.

Keep another copy for yourself already spell checked and printed in case the office loses it.

When the office e-mails you to ask for another copy, keep that email, hard and soft copies. In fact, keep all correspondence with the office, both e-mails you send to them and e-mails they send to you. Hard and soft, in duplicate if you must.

When the assignment is returned, keep the marked copy and a photocopy of the markers page with the mark clearly marked (with a marking pen if you like).

When your transcript comes in, carefully check that your assignment marks match the transcript.

Now here is the kicker. Don't throw anything out yet, because the office CAN STILL CHANGE YOUR TRANSCRIPT.

I guess seven years is the way to go, just like tax.

The parish and other churches

In the past few years, the idea of the parish regained popularity in Sydney Anglican circles. The idea is that a church and minister have a responsibility for the entire geographical area, not just those who walk in the door. Usually our thoughts go towards people who are not christians, but what of other christians in our parish. i did a quick check, and there are over 30 churches within a 5 km radius of my current church. how could rectors take responsibility (as servants, not condescending) for all the christians in our parish that happen to not be part of the anglican church. Ecumenical is a bit of a dirty word, yet a huge percentage of people in our society identify themselves as christians. if we are going to reach and encourage and grow them, it may be that that will happen outside our doors.
Serving the local church, and identifying the body must stretch beyond those who affiliate with us. Sure, we think that our way of doing things is the best, but if we are going to serve our parish, we'll have to serve those who disagree.

How helpful are taxonomies of unbeleif

How helpful are books and materials that tell you 'what unbeleivers think'?
I really like books like Tim Kellers 'the reason for God', or some of alister mcgraths books, but I wonder if they make us jump to conclusions about people. Truth is, I don't really know what my non christian friends think, or why they think it. I know very very few people who fit one of the boxes neatly, who is genuinely influenced by liberal theology, who would happily accept jesus as a moral teacher, but not as God. In fact, my hunch is my unbeleiving friends probaly don't have coherent reasons for not beleiving. I'm sure some haven't really thought about it, and don't really want to.

My worry about the taxonomies is that they give us a gun and tempt us to pull the trigger too quickly, before we have actually listened to people. Even our assumption that people are not beleivers, often based on our observation that they dont go to our brand of church, may be completely wrong.
Hmm, dont know where I'm going with this

retraction

ok, so that last post was a little too cynical and not really justified. For the most part the conservative/reformed/evangelical brothers and sisters (of which I am one) I am surrounded by are caring, sensitive, passionately loving people, who are far more careful in their choice of words than I am, who are far more joyful in the riches of God's mercy.

What I liked about MPJ's article was the way it asked, 'why do we accept the strange bullying antics of some of our friends?'. Espicially (but not only) if we disagree with their position.

nevertheless, I must keep strggling against cynicism, beacause reality (at least in my part of it) is much rosier than my easy caricature of conservative evangelicals (us).

lord have mercy

Michael Jensen undermines the very foundations of conservative evangelical discourse

Over at the blogging parson, Mike Jensen has written a piece on knowledge, trust, and most controversially, young earth creationism.

While the article seems innocent at first, in fact it undermines one of the most important foundations of most conservative evangelical discourse.

That foundation is this: if I disagree with you, but your position can be construed as more conservative than mine, I will keep my mouth shut and regard you as quaint but sincere.

Of course this is based on the deeper foundation: if I disagree with you and your position is even the slightest bit less conservative, then you are fair game to be labelled a liberal, gospel denying heretic who secretly reads bultmann every night.

Now we must recognise how dangerous Jensens position is. If his thinking takes hold, we will be burdened with engaging each and every person on each of their views, and then think about how to respond. We will have to plant a stake in the ground and engage on the basis of truth, rather than charicature those who disagree with us as jesus hating naughty people.

Surely we all recognise that the simple conservative/ liberal labelling system is far more efficient ; )

Is knowledge always violent?

Is every attempt to understand someone else simply a projection of ourselves onto the other, and in thus way a violence against them? Only if you sre limited to a Cartesian ego and Kantian epistemology, says D B Hart. Instead, we should think of the moment of knowing as always preceded by creation. Every knower shares in the created 'givenness' of the world they know. Yet christian theology affirms the beauty of the particular to give glory to god, and so we know by analogy and difference.



'There is, then, no 'ethical' need to leave the other suspended between the superintentional darkness of blind obligation and the imprisoning representstions of an imperious ego, unable to show him or herself... All true otherness appears only under the form of and analogical difference,this does not mean a difference simply dissoluable within the abstraction of a resemblance, but rather one sustained in proffering itself..according to a shared dwelling in the light that gives being, a common grammar of love and delight, of beauty. This allows the other to be and to be other, to shine, to vary me in my recognition of his or her otherness'
DB Hart 'The Beauty of the Infinite' 143

Hart roots this in participation in God. It is right to rhetorically know because the other is a peice of God's rhetoric, e declaration of his glory, and so are you.

Generation flexible

I was born halfway through 1980. Technically this puts me on the older cusp of Gen Y. Now Gen Y's are knocked sometimes for being a privelleged, soft bunch. But I'd like to counter with two words. Job flexibility. In the 90's, some bright spark came up with the idea of calling casual and part time labour 'job flexibility'. I woke up this morning and realised, I'm almost thirty, i have had a grand total of one week of paid holidays in my life. Job flexibility. I've had a series of employers who just didn't get round to paying super. Job flexibility. I remember one gen xer who was trying to get me to go to some conference. he couldn't quite grasp that being a casual didn't mean I could choose when to work, it meant I had to take whatever I could get. Job flexibility. Thanks a bunch baby boomers

Basil on the Holy Spirit

Saint Basil the Great 'On the Holy Spirit' New York:st vladimirs 1980. 118pp.

This traetise by the great Cappadocian Father is one of the classic texts on the Holy Spirit. frankly, I found it pretty difficult to get into. I'm trying to figure out why. Basil spends at least 10 chapters on prepositions, with , in, through,by. I guess for those of us who've had some Barth, we know that the safest thing to do is to say every preposition in every sentence. Along with the prepositions, Basil refutes a bunch of other positions that are rarely articulated today, denying the Spirits divinity, comparing with angels, etc etc. As I read through, I realised that the arians and pneumatichoi were actually pretty theologically rigourous and honest. These days no one would say, for example "glory should no be given to the Spirit to such an extreme that we sing Him doxologies" . No. We would quietly take the Spirit out of our worship (can we still call it that) and conflate Him with Bible ; )
Nevertheless, there are some gems in here, probably the mosy important is Basil's idea of the Spirit as the perfecter of creation.


"when you consider creation I advise you to think of Him who is the first cause of everything that exists. Namely, the Father, and then of the Son, who is the creator, and then the Holy Spirit, the perfector"
pp 61