Blue Like Jazz

2010/06/21 Graeme Leave a comment

Originall posted on 1 June 2005

I am busy reading “Blue Like Jazz”, by Donald Miller (Nelson, 2003, ISBN: 0785263 705) (buy it at Kalahari.net or Amazon.com). The subtitle, “nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality” hints at the style – its collection of stories and reflections on experience of a person trying to understand what it really means to be a question on the 21st century.

He explains the title as follows: “I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But sometimes you have to watch somebody loves something before you can love it yourself. But I was outside the Baghdad Theatre in Portland one night when I saw the men playing the saxophone. I stood there for 15 minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody loves something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before in the of this happened.”

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General, Global issues

Bible verses on gun sights

2010/06/19 Graeme Leave a comment

This story is a bit old, but I only picked up on it recently. In January this year, it emerged that a Michigan company, Trijicon who provides sights for high powered rifles and guns in America, had been putting Bible verses onto the sights provided to the American military. It has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army. Read the story here – including a video.

The picture I saw (included in this post), referenced John 8:12, where Jesus said: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” I also saw 2 Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” The company believes this is part of an evangelistic mindset. Besides the standard, “Honesty, integrity, quality, teamwork, etc” of their corporate values, they also have a value of “Morality” which they define as: “We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals.” They achieve this by manufacturing and selling sights for rifles with Bible verses on them??

Might there be other Biblical verses they could consider including on their products? Maybe Luke 6:31: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Or maybe John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.” What about Romans 14:19: “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.” Or Psalms 11:5: “The soul of the Lord hates… those who love violence.”

The fact that these sights are used in a Muslim nation by a military that specifically does not act in the name of any religion just adds fuel to this fire. The sights are also fitted to guns supplied to soldiers of the militaries of those Muslim nations, supported by the USA. Two years ago, it emerged that some US soldiers were using a Quran as a target in firing practice. Now this story. No wonder the Muslim nations still hark back to Crusades! Shooting Muslims with Jesus rifles – that’s not even a metaphor for Crusade!

The Director of Sales and Marketing for Trijicon, Tom Munsen, said that the verses had “always been on their sights, and there was nothing wrong or illegal in adding them”. Really? Is he serious? This is a self avowed Christian company on a Christian mission. And they see “nothing wrong” in helping people to kill other people more effectively?

Within a week of this story breaking, Trijicon had agreed to remove the verses from the sights supplied to the US military.

I am almost speechless at this story. It is SO wrong and SO many levels that I don’t know where to begin. I’ll just leave you to decide how to respond…

You should be hearing this at your church: Christians need to be pacifists.

Gender, General, Theology

Taking the Bible Literally

2010/06/17 Graeme 22 Comments

First posted on 15 Feb , 2008

Here’s something you might not hear in church this Sunday, but should: Stop worshiping the Bible.

On Sunday, the preacher at our church spoke of forgiveness, and used the wonderful interaction between Peter and Jesus recorded in Matthew 18:21-35. It was a good sermon, but it also sparked another thought about how we choose to interpret the Bible (and an afterthought about Scotland making it legal to marry your mother-in-law).

Because of the nature of what I say (and how I say it), I am often accused of abandoning the Christian faith altogther. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that doesn’t deter my detractors. Anyway, I am finding that the most common “root” concern that people seem to have with my approach comes down to one thing: how we treat the Bible.

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Book reviews, General, Theology

Some Thoughts on Hell

2010/06/15 Graeme 9 Comments

Originally posted on 15 August, 2008

Some time ago I skim-read Brian McLaren’s The Last Word and the Word After That (get it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net). This past week, I have gone back to it, and am devouring it in depth. It is a story-based reflection on the issue of salvation, with specific reference to hell. It really has got me thinking, and has helped to clarify some questions (see previous post at this blog), if not entirely provide adequate answers. These are issues we should be dealing with in our churches, but are not.

I think a key part of the problem with our understanding of what it means to be saved, and the issue of hell, the life hereafter and “eternal life”, is that the historical church has created such strong camps/entrenched positions. I don’t find any of them convincing or coherent. And none of the traditional positions gives a “unifying theory of everything” – a consistent and coherent explanation of the whole of the Biblical witness. I find that I have sympathy (and concerns) with every position, from exclusivism (that everyone not personally, consciously, individually “born again” will be excluded from heaven), or inclusivism (that some will be saved through Jesus without ever knowing the name of Jesus), to conditionalism (that hell does not last forever – after a period of conscious punishment, the damned in hell are annihilated) or universalism (that everyone will ultimately be reconciled to God through Jesus, with hell ultimately being empty).

The key to understanding the importance of the issue of hell, is not actually the concept of hell itself, but rather the God to which that concept points. “God loves you – like the greatest father’s unconditional love – and has a wonderful plan for your life, and if you don’t love God back and cooperate with God’s plans in exactly the way He wants you to, God will torture you with unimaginable abuse, forever!” Yes?

Continue reading Some Thoughts on Hell →

Church, General, Theology

Journalists, free speech, blogs and the church

2010/05/26 Graeme 1 Comment

Originally posted on 30 March 2005

Reading an editorial in BusinessWeek magazine from March 28, 2005, it struck me that the business world and the church may share a similar problem: redefinitions of the traditional roles of stakeholders.

The editorial was entitled, “The Apple Case Isn’t Just A Blow To Bloggers“, and referred to the recent Californian judicial ruling that web loggers (bloggers) must reveal their sources for confidential documents posted on their sites. The underlying issue is really about the definition of a journalist — who is one, and who isn’t, and what rights and privileges this status may bring.

If a blogger is actually acting as a journalist, then that blogger and the contents of his/her blog should be accorded first Amendment free speech rights. I sense a similar problem in the church today, where, at one level, we’re trying to work out who has the right to develop theology.

I was recently told of a conversation between a young person and an older theologically trained church leader. As the debate ensued, the older person stated something like this: “I will only be prepared to believe and accept this new type of thinking if someone like a modern-day Martin Luther spent his whole life studying the topic, and then writes down the fully developed, systematised version.” What this person really wanted was a bombproof faith, with no unanswered questions, and only one answer to each question asked. And they were only prepared to hear the answers if fully qualified people were giving them.

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Church, Future trends, General, Missional, Social Justice, Theology

More on “cheap grace”

2010/05/25 Graeme Leave a comment

This was originally posted on 29 March 2005

Here’s something you might not hear at church this week, but should.

Following on from my previous post, I wanted to add that this concept of “cheap grace” is one of the biggest problems facing the “established” church (by this I mean orthodox, traditional, and/or evangelical churches/denominations) is that many of them have a rotten image amongst non-Christians. I do not simply mean that they are not attractive to non-Christians (at one level, of course, the cross is an affront to non-Christians, and cannot be “attractive” in a simple sense). The problem goes a lot deeper.

In his excellent book, A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren writes a great introduction in which he addresses a number of different types of people who might be reading his book. Here is a short excerpt:

“You may not be a Christian and wondering why anyone would want to be. The religion that inspired the Crusades, launched witch trials, perpetuates religious broadcasting, present too-often boring and irrelevant church services with schmaltzy music – or else presents manic and overly aggressive church services with a different kind of schmaltzy music – baptises wars and other questionable political programs, promotes judgementalism, and ordains preachers was puffy haircuts… doesn’t make sense to you why anyone would want ‘in’ on that.

You may not yet be a Christian, and you’re thinking of becoming one, but you’re worried that if you do you’re become a worse person – judgemental, arrogant, narrowminded, bigoted, and brainwashed… Do I have to like organ music? Do I have to say ‘Praise the Lord!’ all the time? Do I have to vote Republican? Do I have to oppose civil rights for homosexuals?… you wonder if there is any way to follow Jesus without becoming a Christian.

You may already be a Christian, struggling, questioning, and looking for reasons to stay in. Or you may have officially left the Christian community, but part of your heart is still there, and you wonder if you might some day return. So many of us have come close to withdrawing from the Christian community. It’s not because of Jesus or his Good News, but because of frustrations with religious politics, dubious theological propositions, difficulties in interpreting passages of the Bible that are barbaric (especially to people sensitised by Jesus to the importance of compassion), and/or embarrassments from recent and not-so-recent church history. Or perhaps it’s simply boredom – dreary music, blase sermons, simple answers to tough questions, and other adventures in missing the point. Or perhaps it’s fatigue – a treadmill of meetings in books and programmes and squabbles that yield more duties, obligations, guilt trips, and stress.”

And that’s just the introductory page…

The point I want to make is quite simple: I believe that in an attempt to deal with the declining image and acceptance of the church in general society, and, paradoxically, in moves by the existing leadership of churches to entrench their positions of power over laypeople, we have created churches that firstly make it too easy to become Christians, and secondly give too easy answers to the tough questions that fill the lives of people inside and outside their congregations.

We are currently living with the awful consequences of decades of cheap grace. There are many churches beginning to attempt to deal with some of the problems this has caused. There are many ways of approaching this problem and looking for solutions. There are many practitioners experimenting with new practice, many authors are beginning to write about it, a few theologians are attempting to systematise it, and some philosophers are trying to fathom it.

I find myself wondering between these different categories, continuing to look for questions, answers and markers for the journey. This issue of cheap grace seems to me to be an important marker.

Future trends, General, Global issues

Synthetic Life created – this changes everything

2010/05/20 Graeme 1 Comment

I have been predicting it for some time, and today it was announced! Craig Venter runs the company that first sequenced the human genome. Now, his team has created what they’re calling synthetic life.

They’ve actually created an entirely synthetic genome, built from chemicals in a lab. They inserted the genome into a cleaned out cell. When they did so, the new genome fired up exactly as if it were a “natural” genome.

Read the press release here.

Of course, everything has gone crazy. The media are in a frenzy. Some claim he’s playing God. Others are freaking out that these things will “escape” into nature and destroy life. And some are saying that it will end disease and bring about paradise on earth. The truth, as always, will lie somewhere in between these extreme views.

But this changes everything. Mark this day. A new era has dawned.

Book reviews, Church, General, Missional, Theology

Eddy Gibbs on the Emerging Church

2010/05/12 Graeme Leave a comment

Originally posted on 19 September 2005

In a lecture presented to the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa a few months ago, Eddy Gibbs, a long-term voice for change in the church, talked about his view of “emerging church”. What found really interesting in the report I received, was his list of emerging church characteristics. He since wrote a book on the topic. While it is now slightly outdated, I do think that the picture he presents of the “ideal” emerging church should be aspirational for all church leaders.

“For the past three years I have been working with a younger colleague at Fuller Seminary, interviewing around 100 emerging church leaders in the UK, the US, and other areas of the English-speaking world in an attempt to answer those questions. Here is our tentative list:

Their churches are worship-inspired with everyone playing an active role in creating the worship experience.
They are mission focused, committed to responding to the needs of their community and especially in serving the poor.
They are shaped by context, i.e. seeking an indigenous expression of church that is culturally appropriate.
They seek to contextualize discerningly, ensuring the integrity of the message and refusing to soften its radical impact.
They disciple intentionally, which means that they are more concerned to challenge people to live as Christ-followers rather than gathering a crowd.
Their churches are structured relationally rather than hierarchically. This means that everyone has their place to belong and ministry to which they can contribute.
Their churches grow organically, which means that they are reproducible, much like a strawberry plant sending out runners that set down new roots and produce more strawberries.
They network extensively, usually by means of regular contact with the internet, with chatrooms and blogs.
They gather together periodically the smaller cell churches for times of celebration and re-tooling for mission.
Lastly, they serve compassionately, in that they are committed to holistic spirituality, rejecting any separation of the spiritual from the secular, which occurred under modernity.

I like it a lot.

FutureChurchNow by Graeme Codrington