General, Global issues, Social Justice, Theology

Should we celebrate Osama bin Laden’s death?

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I don’t think we should. I think this is a moment to show the world how different Christian faith is – and what a difference Christ makes in the world. By the way, I don’t think the world is a safer place tonight. At least in the near future it’s just got a little bit scarier – especially since I am planning four trips to the USA in the next six weeks.

Two articles published today in Christianity Today helped me to think through this issue a bit more thoroughly, and I recommend them to you.

Firstly, Gideon Strauss, CEO of the Center for Public Justice, argues that “Yes, Justice Has Been Done in the Killing of Osama bin Laden”, but our response as Christians must be marked by knowledge of our own depravity. Read his article here.

His points are Biblical and theological. Proverbs 24:17 says: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles.” And Ezekiel 18:23: “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?”

He understands that we have a desire for retribution, and acknowledges that God understands this (see Psalm 137). “But beyond this immediate response, understandable as it is, I believe it is necessary for Christians to pause, and to consider the death of Osama bin Laden within the deeper perspective of human sin and divine grace. In the end, no death should give us pleasure…. Our best next response, I believe, to the news of Osama bin Laden’s death, after we have sought our own hearts for the wickedness that resides in all of us, and have thanked God for his amazing grace that has rescued us from our own evil, is to join President Obama on May 5, this year’s National Day of Prayer, ‘in giving thanks for the many blessings we enjoy’ and ‘in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our nation.’ And perhaps we can add a prayer for our enemies, that God may win them to himself and in his own good time bring into the relations between this nation and those who now seek her destruction some foretaste of the just peace of his world to come.”

But an even more profound response was written by Michael Horton, Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary, CA. He titled it: “The Death of Osama bin Laden: What Kind of Justice Has Been Done?” The news should again remind us of the difference between the City of Man and the City of God. You can read it here, or an extended extract below.

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General, Theology, Youth

Dear God, who invented you?

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Brian McLaren alerted me to a lovely little story in the British media over the weekend. A young girl sent a letter to God. And the Archbishop of Canterbury sent her a remarkable reply.

A six-year-old girl writes a letter to God. And the Archbishop of Canterbury answers

By Damian Thompson, The Telegraph, April 22nd, 2011

There’s a charming article in today’s Times by Alex Renton, a non-believer who sends his six-year-old daughter Lulu to a Scottish church primary school. Her teachers asked her to write the following letter: “To God, How did you get invented?” The Rentons were taken aback: “We had no idea that a state primary affiliated with a church would do quite so much God,” says her father. He could have told Lulu that, in his opinion, there was no God; or he could have pretended that he was a believer. He chose to do neither, instead emailing her letter to the Scottish Episcopal Church (no reply), the Presbyterians (ditto) and the Scottish Catholics (a nice but theologically complex answer). For good measure, he also sent it to “the head of theology of the Anglican Communion, based at Lambeth Palace” – and this was the response:


    Dear Lulu,

    Your dad has sent on your letter and asked if I have any answers. It’s a difficult one! But I think God might reply a bit like this –

    ‘Dear Lulu – Nobody invented me – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn’t expected.

    Then they invented ideas about me – some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints – specially in the life of Jesus – to help them get closer to what I’m really like.
    But there was nothing and nobody around before me to invent me. Rather like somebody who writes a story in a book, I started making up the story of the world and eventually invented human beings like you who could ask me awkward questions!’

    And then he’d send you lots of love and sign off.

    I know he doesn’t usually write letters, so I have to do the best I can on his behalf. Lots of love from me too.

    +Archbishop Rowan

I think this letter reveals a lot about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sort of theology – more, indeed, than many of his lectures or agonised Synod addresses. I’d be interested to know whether readers of this blog think he did a good job of answering Lulu’s question.

But what the letter also tells us is that the Archbishop took the trouble to write a really thoughtful message – unmistakably his work and not that of a secretary – to a little girl. “Well done, Rowan!” was the reaction of Alex Renton’s mother, and I agree.

Source: The Independent

General, Global issues, Missional, Social Justice

And Just Us For All

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Graeme in And just us for all t-shirtOn Monday night I attended the global launch event of the “Live Below the Line” campaign at a fund raising event in London, hosted by Hugh Jackman. I worked as one of the volunteers at the event, and was given the t-shirt you see in the picture alongside. I think the slogan is one of the cleverest and most powerful I have ever seen:
& Just Us For All

The campaign is aimed at raising awareness of the fact that a quarter of the world’s population – 1.4 billion people – go to bed hungry every night. They survive on the equivalent of £ 1 per day. That’s for everything: food, clothes, medicine, transport, entertainment and education of their children.

In order to raise funds to fight extreme poverty, thousands of people around the world are going to try and live on less than £ 1 of food and drink for five days next week. I am doing so starting next Saturday, for five days. This is the “Live Below the Line” challenge. Please would you consider sponsoring me, even if it’s just a few pounds (or dollars, or rands, or euros). It’s easy to do at my special campaign website. You can also leave me a message of support, and show your concern for the world’s poor.

And that’s why I think the slogan is so brilliant. If we don’t do anything, who will? And if we don’t do it now, then when? It’s about Just Us For All.

Continue reading And Just Us For All →

Future trends, General, Social Justice

A deeper consciousness: What Knut’s death might teach us about the life choices facing us soon

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Just a few days ago, one of the world’s most famous animals died. Knut was a polar bear who was born in captivity at the Berlin Zoological Garden. Rejected by his mother at birth, he was raised by zookeepers. He became a celebrity, even making it onto the cover of Vanity Fair magazine (twice, by the way – also sharing the cover with Leonardo di Caprio).

On 19 March, Knut collapsed and died in his enclosure. He was four years old. He had a seizure due to encephalitis, a swelling of the brain triggered by an infection, and collapsed into his pool where he drowned.

This story got me thinking. My understanding is that many animals exhibit a sixth sense when it comes to health and nature. They seem to be able to sense, anticipate, connect and communicate things that go beyond the ‘normal’. Knut’s mother strangely rejected both him and his brother who was born on the same day. Knut’s brother died of an infection when he was only four days old.

Could it be that Knut’s mother somehow knew that her two cubs were not “viable”? My understanding is that this may very well have been the case. In the animal world, it makes sense to abandon animals if they are not able to contribute. It takes up too many valuable resources to care for animals that will just die anyway.

I don’t know if Knut’s mother knew this. But it does provide an interesting starting point for discussions we’re going to have to have in the next decade or so.

As we continue to increase life expectancy, and as our medical and technical knowledge and expertise improves to the point where we can prolong our lives and fight off disease, we may very well reach the point of having to decide which lives are worth saving and which not. These decisions may very well relate to how we value people and their ability to contribute to society. Of course, in reality, this is happening already. Poor people have very few choices when it comes to health. Rich people can spend their wealth on prolonging their lives.

The difficulty will start in countries that have social medicine and limited budgets. At what point do we decide who can be treated (saved) and who has a disease that does not deserve treatment? When it’s public money being spent, how do we decide between one person and another? As we live ever longer, these choices will become starker.

Maybe animals like Knut’s mother do have the ability to work out quickly which of their fellows are worth saving and which not. Do we? And even if we did, should we not differentiate ourselves from the animals in some way – specifically by caring for the weak and outcast of society?

But how do we make these decisions? I think this may be one of the defining moral issues of my generation.

Future trends, General, Social Justice, Theology

Is Evangelical Christianity Having a Great Gay Awakening?

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You should hear this at your church, but definitely won’t: God made LGBTQI people just as they are, and God loves them!

A recent article in the Huffington Post has caused a bit of a stir amongst conservative evangelicals. It simply aimed to point out an objective fact: that more and more Christians are questioning the church’s traditional response to homosexuality. For some, this is another sign of the crumbling of the orthodoxy of Christianity. For others, it is a sign of hope that Christianity can continue to escape its prejudices and past (they cite examples of how the church treated non-whites, women, slaves and others).

Whatever your view on the church’s current response to homosexuality, this article is worth reading and reflecting on. You can read it at The Huffington Post, or an extract below:

Is Evangelical Christianity Having a Great Gay Awakening?

by Cathleen Falsani, Huffington Post, 13 Jan 2011

Some of my dearest friends are gay.

Most of my dearest friends are Christians.

And more than a few of my dearest friends are gay Christians.

As an evangelical, that last part is not something that, traditionally and culturally, I’m supposed to say out loud. For most of my life, I’ve been taught that it’s impossible to be both openly gay and authentically Christian.

Continue reading Is Evangelical Christianity Having a Great Gay Awakening? →

General

Watching a Master

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This is from my archives – but worth dusting off and revisiting. It’s something we should hear at church regularly: engage with the things you disagree with.

I have played the trumpet since I was 11, and even spent two years doing it professionally, including a year as lead trumpeter of the National Serviceman’s Orchestra of the South African Air Force (whilst conscripted in the late 1980s). I love the instrument, and still play to this day. When I was just out of the Air Force (at the “height” of my trumpet playing ability), I attended a concert by Phil Driscoll, one of the greatest trumpeters in the world. In fact, he is a genius musician, with a gravelly voice like Miles Davis, legendary trumpet and picolo trumpet ability, plays piano, bass and a few other instruments as well. Just oozes music. When he played the trumpet, it looked and felt like it was just an extension of his body. He was one with the instrument, and I was left dazed and in awe.

At that point, I had two choices. Part of me wanted to go home, sell my trumpet and never play again. The other part wanted to go home and practice for 10 hours straight. And do the same the next day, and the days after that. Being in the presence of a master is always humbling and inspiring like that.

To a lesser extent, I continue to try and learn from the masters – even those masters that infuriate me. For this reason, I often flick the TV across to one or other of the “God channels”, which carries the televangelists and many other similar evangelical Christian preachers doing what they do. Most often, these preachers infuriate me. Their shallow interpretations of the Christian message and their clear right wing politics and ethics often incense me. Yet, these are some of the world’s greatest communicators. Man, can these guys work a crowd!! I stand in awe of their abilities.

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General, Global issues, Social Justice

An atheist, God and African solutions

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This post was originally written on 15 January 2009, on the previous version of my blog

The Times (UK) published a thought-provoking article last week, by an avowed atheist who is often critical of organised religion and Christianity. Yet, his thoughts on what is needed in Africa are refreshing and exciting for those of us who believe there is a different way of being and doing Christian in the world today.

This is worth a read. The original is online here.

 

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem – the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset
by Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

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Church, Future trends, General, Global issues, Theology

From Minority to Majority – a problem for Reformed Protestants

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This post was originally written on 10 June 2009, on the previous version of my blog

I was recently sent an article from the Associated Baptist Press (ABP, USA), entitled: “Baptists urged to consider risks of ‘majoritarian faith’”, by David Wilkinson. It is a news article about a recent lecture by Baptist historian Doug Weaver, speaking at the Baptist History and Heritage Society annual meeting.

His main point was that Baptists (and by inference, other Reformed Protestants) were shaped and formed as persecuted, minority groups. Now, they are majority, mainstream groups, and are in danger (I’d say they have already) lost their distinctiveness and compromised their values. In particular, he is concerned that Baptists have abandoned their belief in religious liberty (and in liberty in general).

While Baptists proudly point to religious liberty and church-state separation as their distinctive contributions to American history, Weaver said, contemporary Baptist heirs to that tradition may find it difficult to relate to their 17th-century forebears, who were part of a persecuted minority of dissenters to official state-supported denominations.

“We are used to being a part of the majority. We are the Bible Belt, maybe even the buckle of that belt. We are Baptists, the largest body of Protestants in the United States,” Weaver, a religion professor at Baylor University, said. “We have climbed the ladder of success numerically, socially and intellectually. We have an air of respectability. We are the majority; hear us roar.”

In contrast, he noted, it was the persecuted minority groups – the Anabaptists, Baptists and Quakers – that “pushed the Christian world in the 16th and 17th centuries to face the music and hear cries for complete religious liberty.”

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Church, General, Theology

Four “lanes” of the emerging church

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This post was originally written on 7 March 2009, on the previous version of my blog

If you’ve done any reading on the emerging church, you’ll probably know the name Mark Driscoll. He has distanced himself from “Emergent”, the voice of emerging church in the USA. But he nevertheless still considers himself as “emerging”, although he prefers the label “Reformed Missional” or “Emerging Reformers”.

The video can be found at YouTube (click here). Or see below.

I think he is overly critical of the “fourth lane”, which he labels the “Emerging Liberals”. He is incorrect about Rob Bell, for example, who does NOT say that we can get rid of the virgin birth. It’s interesting. Driscoll says in this video below that “they are asking questions that no pastors should be asking”. Maybe that’s the big difference here. Reformed guys think that some issues should not be discussed, and that all Truth (with a capital T) has already been discovered (i.e. we are not wrong on any major issues right now in the history of the church). Anyone who is open to having conversations about this is labelled a liberal, and is seen as dangerous.

You decide.

But, here, at least is Driscoll’s video. I don’t buy into his analysis of the “emerging liberals”, but it probably fairly represents the concern most people have with the “emerging church”.

The video can be found at YouTube (click here).

On the previous blog, the following useful comments were added to the original post:

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Graeme Codrington's musings on a new kind of Christianity