Community: Problem solving or problem sharing? Or solidarity?

In my last post I cited some great points made by Tim Gombis. Gombis says that sometimes churches don't quite live as communities of the cross: "They imagine that the problem is the problem.  After all, churches aren’t supposed to have problems or challenges, just as individual Christians are supposed to have perfect lives.  If there’s something wrong, then there’s something wrong!"

I have some further thoughts on this.

Because of my work and ministry I have been involved in quite a few Christian communities and churches. I am concerned when the more vulnerable members of those communities are hurt or going through a difficult time. For others, these vulnerable members are the ones who have “problems”. Often sincere and committed Christians try to help them by their "problem-solving" skills, as if there are always formulas to tackle the “problems” in people’s lives. Sometimes this works. But I would prefer problem-sharing rather than problem-solving (if we insist on using the term “problem”). If we stand in solidarity with those who are hurting and those going through hard times, and if the first thing we do is to listen and share their pain, then we are on a journey together to deal with the issues that causes the hurt and pain.

I think that’s what Jesus did when he was on earth. He walked life’s journeys with his fellow human beings. He showed us what it means to be truly human – that is, someone who is willing to share the pain, suffering and injustice in this world. Yes, he taught us how to live wisely. Yes, he taught us to pray. Yes, he spoke of God's judgment and God’s love. And so should we teach others. But his message is about God’s upside-down kingdom (or right-way-up kingdom, from his perspective). It is about “those who are first will be last, and those who are last will be first”. It is about self-giving and solidarity with the poor and oppressed. I think this is where the apostle Paul gets it right – God’s wisdom is found in the crucified Christ. And it is in the crucified Christ and risen Lord that we see God's power manifest.

Let the gospel overwhelm and transform - Tim Gombis

Here are some excerpts from Tim Gombis's recent post in his blog. I think they are excellent.

"It seems to me that the New Testament assumes the constant rehearsal of the story of Scripture in order to shape the identity of God’s people.  We get to know God and his ways with his people as we have our imaginations shaped by the narrative of Scripture.  That’s the resurrection-powered world we inhabit, with all its possibilities, its dynamics, and its causes and effects."

"God works in power only through communities of the cross.  God unleashes resurrection power only among cruciform communities of humility and weakness.  God’s people, therefore, can adopt postures of humility toward one another and call out to God for wisdom to find a way forward through any challenge.  They then put their heads together and commit to the hard work of discussing and listening to one another in order to creatively come up with a way to deal with whatever challenge they face."

"It seems to me that here is where churches sometimes fail.  They imagine that the problem is the problem.  After all, churches aren’t supposed to have problems or challenges, just as individual Christians are supposed to have perfect lives.  If there’s something wrong, then there’s something wrong!"

"I hate Christian clichés, but I’ve never forgotten this one: “the end is the process.”"

"The goal is not simply to get rid of the problem or to get past the obstacle as quickly as possible.  The goal is to go through the hard work of discussing and listening in order to strengthen the bonds of community through that whole messy process.  Get people involved, let people give advice and counsel.  Cultivate openness, honesty, and vulnerability.  Giving people opportunities just might allow them to discover their gifts and capacities to contribute to a community.  It will allow a church to actually do the “one-anothers” of church life."

"[Y]ou only lose when you try to win.  God has already pledged his allegiance to us in Jesus, so we can’t lose.  We’re already loved by God despite our failures, sins, and shameful pasts, so there’s no way we can fail.  If working through a difficulty as a community takes more time than we thought, that’s okay.  If we think we’re going to miss out on great opportunities because we’re doing the hard work of making sure everyone is unified, that’s okay, too.  Like I said, the whole point is the process, and we win when we remain unified and grow in love for one another."

Click here to read the full blog post.

Reflection: Two recent movies, discipleship, justice for the oppressed

Two recent movies reflect elements of what I have been thinking in my studies and in my work in an overseas aid and development Christian organisation. Of course different people have different takes on the movies. But here are my reflections.

(1) Movie: Of Gods and Men

Based on a true story, this movie is about the choices made by a group of monks in a monastery in Algeria when their lives were threatened. I think true discipleship is ultimately about following Christ's sacrificial way of life, which is expressed in our solidarity with the community, not least those who are vulnerable and powerless. This is no abstract theology or theory, but a call to be authentic followers of Jesus.

Click here for a review from Guardian, UK.

(2) Movie: Oranges and Sunshine

This movie is based on true events that happened in the 1950s and 1960s, in which thousands of children were transported to Australia from England wrongfully. I think this movies highlights the fact that we need to recognise the fact that injustice and oppression is often embedded in a web of systemic social and individual sins. There are political, social and even religious systems and structures that oppress the vulnerable in our world. We need to stand in solidarity with those who suffer from injustice because of their powerlessness. Unfortunately Christians often are unaware of this, despite the fact that the Bible speaks of this in the Prophets (not least Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, Zechariah) and in Jesus' own ministry.
 
Click here for a review from ABC At the Movies.

Putting the above two reflections together, I think the church is called to participate in Christ's life, suffering, death and resurrection, just as he participated in human frailty in order to accomplish his atoning sacrifice for our sins and his redemption for his entire creation. We are to proclaim this Christ to all humankind - through our words and daily life - so that people may have hope and shalom through faith in Christ Jesus.

Idolary (Christopher Wright; Tim Keller; Brian Rosner; Greg Beale)

Jason Hood has written an article in Christianity Today entitled, Idolatry, the Gospel, and the Imitation of God: Why evangelicals have taken such an interest in idols. (Click here to view the whole article.)

With the help of the insights from Christopher J. H. Wright, Tim Keller, Brian Rosner and Greg Beale, Hood came up with some good stuff in his article. Here are some excerpts.

"Idolatry is dangerous because it almost always involves the offer of good things as substitutes for God. Wright highlights three pairs of idols: power and pride, success and popularity, and wealth and greed. Keller similarly highlights money, sex, and power, noting that even churches and efforts in ministry can become idols."

"Closer to home geographically, ideologically, and temporally, we find the same effect. The most famous statue in the United States is the Statue of Liberty. Many Americans are unaware that the image atop the base is the Roman goddess Libertas. Now we may not worship this goddess in the traditional manner. But it is not too much to say that our radical allegiance to self and independence is idolatrous worship... And if we worship freedom, we may become the personification of Libertas, unable to experience healthy dependence on God and others, even as others find they cannot depend on us. Freedom can ironically enslave us, crippling our service to God and others."

"We begin to destroy the power of idols by believing the good news of all that God offers his broken human images in the person and work of his Son. In Christ we receive a new adopted identity as God's beloved children who are assured of acceptance, forgiveness, resurrection life, and a global inheritance. This identity is available apart from success, popularity, creativity, and wealth. God gives redemption despite our failure, poverty, and spiritual barrenness. He holds out proof of his love in the bloody death of Jesus for sinners, in his life-giving resurrection, and in the empowering gift of the Spirit of adoption."

"Beale's thesis notes the possibility of "becoming what we worship" for ill and for good. "All of us are imitators and there is no neutrality," says Beale. "We are either being conformed to an idol of the world or to God." In the final chapters of his book, Beale begins to explore this neglected strand of biblical teaching: those who worship the God of Israel become like him, increasingly fulfilling their destiny as they conform to the righteousness and holiness of God and the Son who is his perfect image (Matt. 5:48; Rom. 8:29; Eph. 4:23–24; 4:32–5:2; Col. 3:5–10)."

"Repenting of idolatry involves actual turning, a change of one's mind and service away from idols and toward the worship and imitation of the Father and Son.Wright summarized the task in his reflections on Lausanne 2010: "Few things can be more important for the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ than that those who claim his name should be like him, by taking up their cross, denying themselves, and following him in the paths of humility, love, integrity, generosity, and servanthood.""

Let us take up the cross and follow Christ!

The Task of Our Generation (Daniel Kirk)

Daniel Kirk has posted The Task of Our Generation in his blog. (Click here for the link.) I think it is really worth reading.

As a bi-cultural person (Asian-Aussie), I do find that the dichotomies in our Western mindset somewhat frustrating. But it's our task to overcome that, so that we may proclaim the gospel and live it out at the same time (and to do so both as individuals and as a community at the same time!).

Here are some excerpts from Kirk's post.

"In the post-conservative Christian circles in which I run, people have often experienced a shift. From an entry into Christianity that is all about Jesus dying for my sins, people later discover a Kingdom of God that demands active engagement with the world."

"Within the world of Pauline studies a parallel distinction is sometimes highlighted. On the one hand, there is Jesus dying “for me,” with its concomitant substitutionary language of justification and the like. On the other hand, there is my “dying with Christ,” with its concomitant participatory language of co-crucifixion, co-glorification and the like."

"I see the [t]ask of our generation to overcome this false dichotomy by (1) insisting that it’s not a dichotomy after all; and (2) articulating atonement in such a way that action and transformation are inherent to the saving story of Jesus." (I think Kirk meant "task" in the first sentence here.)

"There are many ways to put the question we must answer.

At the Institute for Biblical Research this year, Tom Wright put the question, “What does the Kingdom of God have to do with the cross?”"

"And, until we can so tell the story of Jesus’ death such that his life is not only an anticipation... but inseparable from his atoning death, that we have not yet comprehended what it is to say that Jesus died for our sins."

Justice for the poor and oppressed: The law, the prophets and Matthew (towards a biblical theology of justice)

Micah 6:8 is a well known verse about justice. But do you realise that it is echoed by Jesus in one of his seven woes against the Pharisees and the Scribes? The very people who are supposed to know the Scripture and are in relatively high religious and social positions fail to understand God's purpose and his value system.

And do you realise that the words of Micah can trace back to the Law of Moses, and that Jeremiah has something profound to say about it? Indeed, both the Law and the prophet Jeremiah talk about the circumcision of the heart (or the lack of it) when they talk about the people's failure to seek justice for the poor and marginalised.

I think a careful study of these Scriptures will help us understand God's love for the poor and oppressed - that from ancient times he wants his people to live in such a way that will reflect his character.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is the one you praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky. (Deuteronomy 10:12-22)

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. (Matthew 23:23)

This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD. “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh— Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab and all who live in the wilderness in distant places. For all these nations are really uncircumcised, and even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.” (Jeremiah 9:23-25)

A careful look at these passages will reveal that they are connected with the following themes and biblical stories.

• Yahweh is the Creator God and hence the Genesis story, and hence all praise goes to him
• The Exodus story, in which the righteous, just and faithful God graciously rescued his people from social, economical, racial and political oppressions
• The Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, which is of course the greatest commandment according to Jesus, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." - And note how the next verse makes the heart the location of this love and how it is to be expressed, "These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts."
• The new (renewed) covenant foreshadowed by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, that one day God would circumcise the heart of his people through the outpouring of the Spirit
• This in turn has now been fulfilled through Jesus the Messiah and the indwelling Spirit in the life of the Christ-community, who seek to follow Jesus and his self-giving and love-filled way of life.
  

We can see how these passages can form the basis of a biblical theology of justice for the poor and oppressed. It is about the loving and faithful God, his gracious saving acts, and the demand for faithful discipleship on the part of the Jesus-followers.

(All of these passages are taken from the NIV2011)

A young woman's story that will make you cry

Here is a young woman's story that will make you cry. It is about her father's dedication to the cause of Christ and her own experience in knowing Jesus. Her father's life and her own experience call us to worship and challenge our own lives.

Click here to view the video.

A life of sacrifice and witness to Christ

I read an article about the life and witness of a Christian in Asia. It's the type of authentic Christianity that should challenge all of us.

Here is an excerpt.

"After his [her husband's] arrest, Alice moved out... with their six children and her mother-in-law. As they had lived by faith and the church was now closed, she went through the most difficult six months of her life. All they could afford was porridge. They slept on planks laid over bricks as a make-shift bed. Fellow Christians were too frightened to help them. She found work on a construction site paying 80 fen a day (less than US$0.20). Her children were cruelly treated at school... the whole family suffered further humiliation. For six months she... was put under intense pressure to renounce her faith and divorce her husband. At night she sought the Lord with tears. Finally, she was found innocent of all charges. Providentially, God supplied the family’s needs through the sacrificial giving of a few devoted believers. Even in her darkest hour she never stopped giving one tenth of her income to the Lord."

Click here for the whole article.

Authentic Partnership (Vinoth Ramachandra)

Some good stuff from Vinoth Ramachandra about partnership between the West and the South. What Vinoth has to say is important for every church and mission in the West that seeks to work with those in the South.

Click here for the link.

Self-improvement, dreams, or following Jesus?

I have long been thinking what life is about for Christians. Where is the line between achieving our own dreams and doing God's will? How can we be sure that we are not trying to fulfil our own desires? Are we sure that, as we seek to fulfil our dreams, we do not in the process lose sight of God's kingdom and his purposes for his creation? I think the answer lies in the Cross.

Here is something Tom Wright says in his book, Virtue Reborn (or otherwise called After you believe), page 100.

Jesus's call to follow him, to discover in the present time the habits of life which point forward to the coming kingdom and already, in a measure, share in its life, only makes sense when it is couched the terms made famous by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Come and die". Jesus didn't say, as do some modern evangelists, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." Nor did he say, "I accept you as you are, so you can now happily do whatever comes naturally." He said, "If you want to become my followers, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me" (Mark 8.34). He spoke of losing one's life in order to gain it, as opposed to clinging to it and so losing it He spoke of this in direct relation to himself and his own forthcoming humiliation and death, followed by resurrection and exaltation. Exactly in line with the Beatitudes, he was describing, and inviting his followers to enter, an upside-down world, an inside-out world, a world where all the things people normally assume about human flourishing, including human virtue, are set aside and a new order is established. (Emphasis added)

Jesus would have said, of course, that it's the present world that is upside down and inside out. He was coming to put it the right way up, the right way out. That shift of perception is the challenge of the gospel he preached and lived, and for which he died.

What this means is that the normal standards, even the standards of virtue itself, are challenged at their core. No longer is the good life to be a matter of human beings glimpsing the goal of "happiness" in which they will become complete, and then setting about a program of self-improvement by which they might begin to make that goal a reality. They are summoned to follow a leader whose eventual goal is indeed a world of blessing beyond bounds, but whose immediate goal, the only possible route to that eventual one, is a horrible and shameful death. And the reason for this radical difference is not obscure. It is that Jesus's diagnosis of the problem goes far deeper than that of any ancient Greek philosopher. (Emphasis added)

Looking beyond the labels

My friend Nils Von Kalm has written a new article. I highly recommend it. Here is a quote in his article.

"In our noble attempts to be Christ-like, we have tried to civilise the poor. Gardiner believes that the Spirit would say to the church today, ‘stop civilising and start discipling’. Or, as a pastor at a church I was at many years ago said, we are just one beggar telling another beggar where to find food."

Click here for the article.

Alarming trend regarding our desire to read and study the Bible

I have spent the past 15 years attending, studying and teaching at a number of Bible colleges in Australia, especially the ones that have been growing in enrolment. One alarming trend is the declining interest in studying the Bible itself. There are many students enrolled in leadership and ministry subjects. But often there are only a handful of students doing subjects that focus on studying the Bible. And I am not referring to subjects that involve highly technical Bible analysis. Nor am I referring to subjects taught by boring lecturers. These subjects are, for example, book studies on selected books in the Bible, and are taught by lecturers who try their best to make the Scripture relevant to daily life and ministry.

This is, to me, an alarming trend. How can our future leaders and pastors (and indeed Christians who are sincere enough about their faith to study at Bible colleges) not be interested studying the Bible itself? What future is there for the church? What's the point of being a good 'leader' without some basic skills to study the Bible?

As I speak with the lecturers in the Bible colleges, I am told that the students they get in recent years do not have the basic Bible knowledge they used to have. College lecturers find themselves having to do the job that normally local churches do - ie. to help Christians to pray and learn how to read the Bible.

(In my previous post, I referred to Cheryl Catford's observation on the decline of biblical literacy. Click here to see the reasons Cheryl outlines.)

How can we be authentic followers of Jesus if we do not diligently study the Scripture that Jesus himself loved and upheld when he walked on earth?

What the ministry of reconciliation requires - living like Jesus

Recently I read the following about 2 Corinthians from Rediscovering Paul (by David B Capes, Rodney Reeves and E Randolph Richards). I think it really captures some key moments of this great letter of Paul. This is one of those letters that we hear less and less these days. But we are doing ourselves a disservice if we don't read this letter, because there is so much in this letter about how we can be authentic followers of Jesus.

"According to Paul, his converts had failed to recognize what the ministry of reconciliation required. It meant "carrying in the body the death of Jesus" (2 Cor 4:10), and "walk[ing] by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor 5:7), "regard[ing] no one from a human point of view" (2 Cor 5:16) and living as "having nothing, and yet possessing everything" (2 Cor 6:10). In other words, it meant living like Jesus ("though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich," 2 Cor 8:9), and emulating Paul ("as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments," 2 Cor 6:4-5). The Corinthians needed to learn what it meant to become living sacrifices for the welfare of others. This is why the paradox of Christian existence is the leading motif of 2 Corinthians: "for whenever I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12:10). The strength-in-weakness theme pervades the entire letter in a variety of apparent contradictions, including joy in suffering, generosity in poverty and life in death. For Paul the theological basis for this paradox is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In weakness and suffering Jesus descended into death; in power and joy God raised him from the dead. Therefore, weakness is strength, death is life, and humiliation is glory." (pages 160-1)