My Big Gay (affirming) Post

This is a big issue. To assume that the debates about Homosexuality in Christian churches are just about sexuality is, I think, to miss why people argue so passionately about it. Conversely to say that it's all about biblical interpretation is also to miss how deeply our own beliefs about sexuality affect us. For many who believe that homosexuality is a sin, at stake is not whether two people are in a relationship but rather it's reading something in the bible which seems to clearly say something is wrong and then choose to ignore the bible and to ignore what their tradition has said is a sin.

Personally, I take the Bible pretty damn seriously. I grew up not just evangelical but Sydney evangelical. I think it's helpful to start by trying to set aside the passages in the bible and ask if their was to be passages in the bible what might we expect them to say. This will either help you to tackle the issue afresh or tell you which way you are biased towards.

I like everyone have a few underlying beliefs which colour the way I read scripture and I feel I should lay out.

1. Homosexuality is not a choice and especially not at high school, when usually people start to figure out there sexuality. High school people may want to be different from their parents but they desperately want to be like everyone else. I cannot imagine a scenario where someone would choose homosexuality. My own heterosexuality was forcefully thrown upon me by my hormones not by any choice. Three of the guys I hung out with at high school have identified as gay I just can't imagine them choosing that as an option in the same way you might choose what you have for lunch. (sadly, in a poor reflection of my own high school studliness they averaged more girlfriends than me)

2. I had thought of homosexuality a part of fallen world something analogous to say someone who is born blind. Something that wasn't meant to be or not part of the ideal but, none the less in the same way I wouldn't ask a blind person to give up their guide dog and live as if they weren't blind I wouldn't ask someone to give up their homosexuality. Lately, however, I've found it harder to think this way. Partly because I know a few more gay people but probably more because I have son with Autism. Before my son I would have seen autism like homosexuality, as a "disorder", part of this fallen world. As I get to know my son his autistic traits are something that make him who he is. In the same way each person's sexuality is also deeply ingrained in them and makes them who they are. I'm now wondering whether people who are not neurotypical or sexual-typical are just a part of Gods wild and varied creation. (See "theology of pizazz" for more on this text and MP3)

Of course these ideas will colour the way I read the bible as does anyone else's beliefs and ideas.

That said lets jump into the Bible. Very often I've seen gay affirming types dismiss the bible as an old homophobic text that can be ignored because it does not keeping pace with modern western values of what is loving and moral. This, I think is, dangerous. Rather, I'd like to propose revisiting scripture in the same way as people have around the issues of slavery, race and gender equality. Wondering if there are other ways to understand texts that we've always been told can only be understood one way.

Fortunately there are only a very small number of passages. I've done lots of reading around this but to avoid making this post enormous I'm going to look at them in pretty light detail but hopefully enough to give a good outline about my thinking around them.

Leviticus 18:22: this passage is part of a ritual manual for Israel's priests. This prohibition follows after the prohibition of the idolatrous sexuality of worshipping Molech, whose cult included male cult prostitutes and bestiality. Leviticus also has a set of "every sperm is sacred" type passages (no sex during menstruation for example) all designed to keep a small isolated people in the wilderness alive and growing. Like all cultic practices the practice in Leviticus 18:22 is described as an abomination.

Sodom and Gomorrah: Should I bother with this one? No. You can google it. Plenty of conservative scholars will say that Sodom and Gomorrah's sin was not homosexuality. Even Ezekiel 16:49 says "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy."

1 Corinthians 6:9: The NRSV translates this word (used only here in the New Testament) as "Male prostitute". The family that this word belongs to is used in Matthew 11:8 and Luke 7:25 where Jesus describes robes as being "soft" (NRSV). The first time word was translated as homosexual was 1958 by the Amplified bible. None the less lets say The NRSV and the more conservative NIV (who also uses male prostitute) translations are correct. If we can see heterosexual prostitution as a sin but not a heterosexual relationship then the same should be true for homosexual prostitution and homosexual relationships

1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Tim. 1:10: the Greek word (Arsenokoites) is again rarely used, only twice with no context. The NRSV translates it as "sodomites" which all things considered isn't too bad. The word refers to someone who rapes or dominates someone (male or female) using anal sex. Just like in the Sodom story. Again if vaginal rape doesn't make vaginal sex a sin then logically the same would apply to anal sex.

Romans 1:24-28: For me, this is where the rubber really hits the road. We're not talking about an Old Testament book with laws that Xns mostly ignore (Take almost any random passage in Leviticus) or the the translation of just one word in a list of sins with no other context to the meaning.

Romans 24-28 describes the consequence of something that has happened, that is the people have sinned and this is the result. Romans 20b-23 lets us know what this something is; worship of false Gods. I think (from what I've read) that this most likely refers to the worship of pagan fertility gods. This worship often culminating in ritualistic orgies that involved anal sex with priests and priestesses.

The word translated as natural in the key passage of Romans could also be regular or usual. So that is to euphemistically say men were having anal (unnatural) sex with women and even with other men. These of course were usually men with wives at home, hence the extra astonishment over the sex with men.

What all of these verses have in common is that they are denouncements against domination and abuse as well as against pagan worship. This is, I believe, is why lesbian sex is so absent from all these verses and the rest of the Bible.

This is just my rough thumbnail overview. If you want more detail, gaychristian101.com is not a bad place to start particularly if you're a more evangelical leaning kind of person.

So does all this mean that Paul thought homosexuality was not "unnatural" in the way we think of the term "unnatural"? Quite possibly not. If Paul's own urges to be heterosexual were as powerful as mine are and given that he was surrounded by ritualistic anal sex as a key part of pagan worship and pederasty a part of Greek and then Roman Culture - which would usually involve heterosexual men dominating or abusing someone beneath their social standing it would be difficult for Paul to imagine homosexuality outside of these pervasive contexts. Having said that I don't think Paul could imagine a world without slavery. Or, could imagine a world where women were not considered property and were educated to the same level as men. That doesn't mean he wouldn't say that in Christ there is no male or female, no slave or free, no Jew or gentile, and no straight or gay.

Now, if you're one of the many people who read this in horror feeling I've watered down scripture and I'm just being a wet liberal, It's worth asking ourselves why do you care so much? More about this issue than say divorce? Divorce being something that's far more plainly written about in scripture, yet we are generally prepared to say "it'd be great if it didn't happen but since it has lets make sure all involved get as much love and support as they need". If you find yourself getting heated up and thinking "but this is different!" it's probably worth asking yourself why. It won't (probably) make you think differently about the issue but it will help you realise what you are bringing to the text before reading it.

I have written this post like all my other posts primarily for myself. To document the thinking that I have gone through and to explain how I can be both Christian, evangelical (as much as I hate Xn labels this is probably still the one that comes closest to describing me) and gay affirming. 

Atonement Alternative

I've often written critically about atonement illustrations like Nicky Gumbell's Nazi camp story. So I thought it was time to write an alternative illustration. Of course like other illustrations it doesn't capture the entire gospel it just captures one aspect.

The hike started to take a turn for the worse. We had reached the summit of the mountain and we were on our way back when we discovered an avalanche had cut off the path home. The sun was starting to set and jack, our guide, confirmed our fears that the moans in the distance were indeed bears. Jack lead us to the opening of an abandoned mine. "this is going to be our only way out" he suggested "I've never been down inside but it might lead out somewhere pass the bears". A few decided to stay at the mouth of the mine most of us followed jack. The mine shafts got narrower and narrower. Some of the lager and more claustrophobic in the group stopped to see if we would come back after hitting a dead end. The rest of use winded our way single file through the mine until we came to a small hole where we could hear running water below. The opening was big enough for one and the ledge below was big enough for just two. The stream was going to go somewhere and it was big enough to for someone to swim in you just needed gills to breath until you found air somewhere. Jack turned to the hiker who had gone down with him and said he was going to swim. Through and see where it went. A while went by went by until jack resurfaced "it gets us out just take a deep breath and follow me. Don't try and come back though you'll probably drown and block the path for everyone else." So jack left then a second hiker got down on the ledge with the first hiker. By the time I got there this story had been relayed to me by at least a dozen people. As it was my time to relay the story back to the person behind me. I wondered why I was believing it could everyone be just going to there death? I held my breath but my faith in jack and swam believing life would greet me on the other side.

The Weakness of God

When I was younger I used to sing “My God is so big so strong and so mighty there’s nothing my God cannot do.” Now I’m older I’m not so sure. This is a post that I have been mulling over for a while and have finally decided to buckle down and write, short as it is. Recently I was reflecting on my life as a Father and how my view of the concept of “Father” has changed. I grew up with an image of God as Father. When I was young, God as father meant a God who was powerful, in control and can do anything. Now that I am a father I don’t feel like I am powerful or control. It is almost impossible to convince my children (all under four) that I am the boss and in control. I can’t make my daughter her eat all her dinner, I can’t make my son fall asleep on time. I can sit her at the table or keep him in his room at bed time but that’s not the same thing.

I am now thinking that God has created a world were his influence and power are quite limited, like me as a father. When God intervenes it is often subtle, God is not in the storm but that still small voice. The big intervention that Xns celebrate is when God came to the world as an obscure Jewish man with no great political power. A man who we would describe as servant rather than ruler.

If we are to believe that “My God is so big so strong and so mighty there’s nothing my God cannot do.” It means that every time some kind of evil happens that God (who can do anything) is just sitting passively by letting it all happen. This just does not concur with my understanding of what God is like. In the story of Noah when evil things are happening God doesn’t tweak things at the edges to make things a little better instead God anguishes over having created humans, something where he is can’t just do anything to change the situation. He finally resorts to flooding the world – itself something so horrific he chooses never to do again. I think an explanation of why God doesn’t just come in and do something dramatic.

I believe that God still intervenes in the world but that intervention tends to be through people, God changing and empowering people to do great things. I can get my daughter to bed by giving her a horsey ride, fairly little effort on her behalf but she has to want to get on that horse.

The Beginning of another Alternative to Penal Substitution

I sometimes wonder if the only reason that Xns have successfully been able to tell their non Xn friends about penal substitution is because when they say “let me tell you about penal substitution” they’re expecting to hear a story about two lesbians and a sex toy.

Then when we start telling the story about the Nazi prison camp (a story used in Alpha courses) the one where a prisoner is about to be shot by the prison warden for some very minor offence. When an innocent fellow prisoner steps in and says shoot me instead, which the prison warden does. It’s a horrible shocking story. As shocking as anything Hollywood could come up with. Then as we say “Jesus is just like the innocent guy who dies”. I wonder is the quiet respectful response that we think people are giving is actually shock and astonishment as they process that we have just told a story about our loving God who is best represented by a cruel Nazi guard who is happy to kill an innocent man for a petty offence.

So how can we describe of the atonement

In my head at the moment I’ve got this image of Jesus, in his death, diving through the walls of reality as we know it and then coming back resurrected. This means that if we follow Jesus we will not die it means that God is bigger than what we see. The problem with being Christ like, being reconciled to God is that it seems to be all in vain but in Christ’s death and resurrection we are invited to take up our cross and follow him and be part of a new Kingdom that cannot be stopped even by death.

How I’ll flesh this out into a fuller atonement theory I’m not yet sure. It’s just a start. And I’m sure just like the penal substitution theory it will not completely explain all of the atonement, hopefully it might be just another face on the diamond that is all atonement narratives and that helps us to fully understand the atonement.

Orthoistoria: Right Story

In my struggle to define my self as neither Liberal nor Evangelical I’ve decide to invent a new word. Orthoistoria.

Orthodoxy is right belief which is often the big concern of evangelical types.

Orthopraxis is right practice which is often the big concern of liberal types.

Me, I think my thing is Orthoistoria, right story.

The bible doesn’t give us a clearly spelt out set of practices or a clearly spelt out set of beliefs like a prayer book or doctrinal set of beliefs might. It does give us a story of God’s interaction with humanity and from this we derive our beliefs and practices many of which will change as our understanding and context changes. The thing that stay’s the same is the story. Which is what is at the heart of what we want to share. A story, which like any story, has many layers and many ways that people connect and relate to. Beliefs and practices can often divide but story can unite.

Just a thought.

Teach a Man to Fish...

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. teach a man to fish and you can absolve your self of any sense of guilt for completely over fishing the ocean and having a huge stock pile of fish you're unwilling to share

This is what cheekily came to mind after reading some comments in my previous The Sheep and the Goats and the Lamas post. I guess I have had problems when I have heard people us the “teach a man to fish” expression as a way of absolving themselves from ever giving any fish. I don’t think the commenters in the The Sheep and the Goats and the Lamas post were implying this.

Of course there is great value in teaching someone to fish or helping someone to help themselves, especially when the alternative is giving someone one off help and there is nothing worse than trying to do for someone what they want and need to do for themselves.

However I still have a niggling suspicion that Jesus would challenge me to more than I am with the homeless people I meet. For example…

Matt 5:40 says

and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well;

not

if someone asks for coat give them sewing lessons.

Luke 6:30 says

Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.

Not

Give to everyone who begs when you are sure that they are morally responsible enough to only spend that money on things that you consider essential to their survival.

Luke 12:33 says

Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.

Not

Sell your possessions that you no longer use, give alms, and be prepared to sell everything else if you hear a direct voice from God telling you to do so.

When I think about the homeless people that I have met I think there are two ways of looking at them. One is as a client, the other is as a friend or brother.

The best thing I can do for a client or customer (someone who I can only give a limited amount of time & energy too with in strict boundaries) is going to be very different to how I would treat a brother or a friend.

Could you really imagine fishing alongside your brother or friend and at the end of the night when the fish have stopped biting noticing that while your bucket is full to overflowing his is not only empty but he looks weak from hunger that you could love the person without giving them some of your fish and just by giving them some extra fishing tips?

Walk into any church and I bet that there are a few spare rooms amongst the houses owned by members. There may even be some empty houses there are a million of these in Australia at the moment and they aren’t all holiday homes. Some are just investments that are easier to maintain without tenants. It's not that these people are evil and greedy they like me have grown up in a society where this is considered normal. I genuinely feel that we need to start thinking about a big paradime shift around issues like these.

Tom Sine - A Call to a Pre-Industrial Village?

Thursday night I went to see tom sine speak. I've been a big Tom Sine fan for a while have 3 of his and Christine’s (his wife) books, and have often quoted passages in talks I’ve given. It was a little disappointing that the night was more of an intro tom Sine than a now you’ve read the book kind of talk. Probably the hardest thing was looking at the four types of "new conspirators" and realising I wasn’t even close to being one of them. The four types (with examples from Tom) are.

1. Emerging. Tom described this mostly in terms of groovy inner city types coming out of the alternative worship (I’m pretty sure the U.S emergents would consider themselves much more diverse than this) eg: Johnny Baker, Prodigal Project, emergent village.
2. Missional. eg: Lesley Newbigin, book "the missional church", Forge, Allan Hirsch. Often the groups have a worship time and small groups and no other programs for people in the church.
3. Mosaic. Multicultural church planters eg: the church "sanctuary covenant" and the book "the hip hop church"
4. Monastic. UNO, the book "companions with then poor", Viv Greigs, Word made Flesh, The Simple Way, Shane Claiborne and Camden house. Where people live on the same economic level as the poor.

The way I see these four is...

1. Emerging. I'm not sure if Perth has one and I'm not sure if I quite got Tom's definition (i'll have to read the book).
   
2. Missional. There are a couple of conscious missional things I know of in Perth in Brighton and Banksia Grove.
3. Mosaic. I don't think this exists in Perth .
4. Monastic. Perth's Peace Tree community is probably the only community Perth has like this.
   

The problem I have with these four types of community are...

• I can't afford to be a part of these communities, especially 1 & 2. Even the 4th one can be hard as the rent in some "poor" suburbs in Perth is more than the mortgage I am paying at the moment, and I'm not keen to get a job which is just a money job.
  
• It can be harder than it needs to be for others if they become Xn, when it involves being part of one of these communities.
• I already have too many people in my life and these communities would be adding more.
  
• People are slippery and move on. So what happens when people move out of the communities?
  

I can't help but think that all of the four models work on the basis of a geographical community of some sort and by default a desire to be part of a pre-industrial, pre-urban sprawl life. I’m not in a community in the above four senses. I’d love to be but I feel like I would be spreading myself too thin and would have to give other things up.

Below is a quick picture I drew representing many of the significant people and communities in my life.

As you can see it's a friggin' mess. I link with people from school four different work places including my current one, church, uni, school, various networking groups. On top of this there are clients I meet through work and people who I am trying to connect with in my local suburb (which at the moment is proving difficult) and people through the web. My relationships with people non Xn and Xns alike tend to out last the community in which they start whether that be geographical or work or another interest. This is just a reality of the society I find myself in.

In my very first post I said that a churchless faith meant that I would still be part of a community. But, by the above four definitions I fail. My life is more like a node or a website than a community. Tom said you can't be an effective Xn without community, this is something I stewed over for a long time. I wonder if it might be that we not called to be in community but to be love. Don't get me wrong community is great and I'd jump at the chance to be a part of any one of the above models but not at the sacrifice of the relationships and people I am serving at the moment.

I wonder if one of the reasons why the mega church works is because it works (probably not consciously) in an suburban sprawl environment.

Anyway, these communities are great but I'm looking for something that will transcend my current environment and I will be able to live a meaningful impactful counter cultural life without having to also be part of a pre-industrial village.

Is God Bigger than Christianity?

Recently I heard a sermon by Samir Selmanovic on the emergent podcast titled “finding God in the other”. I really seemed to resonate so strongly with this podcast. I wasn’t sure whether to write a review or write out the whole podcast verbatim. Instead I’m just writing out my thoughts from the podcast which includes some quotes, a few of my own thoughts and bits in between. To work out what’s original thought an what I’ve borrowed you’ll have to listen to the podcast.

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I've often felt Xns think that non Xns tend to struggle with church and Xns and not Xy itself. The idea is that if we could cut through all the churchy stuff (if we could have a churchless faith perhaps) then maybe we could have this pure Xy. When we see so many problems with “church” it’s not hard to think this way. But much of what I tend to write about in this blog is not “church” but Xy or theology. Perhaps the problem that people have with Xy is not church and Xns but Xy itself.

Samir Selmanovic describes Xy as a God or Christ management system. Something humans have created to manage God and keep control of God. At the start of the sermon he asks a series of great questions, some of which I have listed below…

• Is Jesus more than Xy? Or, is Jesus something that Xy has to submit to and serve?
• Has Jesus death and resurrection emptied everywhere else of grace and deposited it into just one religion, Xy?
• How can we have a genuine conversation about Jesus with non Xns if we believe they cannot know anything about Jesus apart from us?
• How can we (xns) talk to non-Xns if we believe God withholds a genuine experience of the divine from everyone but us?

All great questions.

For me the statement that really nails the problem with Xy is this. "Xy has problem with credibility because it doesn’t know how to exist for the sake of something greater than itself"

In the same way that Xns are scared of extreme Muslim fundamentalists who can’t see that God might be bigger than their understanding of Islam non Xns are scared by Xns for the same reason. Just because (usually) Xns are not involved in violent activities if we do not believe that God is larger than Xy then the Xn God can not to be trusted. It means Xns are saying “we possess God”. Samir Selmanovic puts it like this, "People are rightly afraid of any religion that will not accept it’s place at the feet of the mystery or will not kneel down at the mystery of God with others". It is our duty to humbly submit to the mystery of the divine. Anything less is arrogance.

We can still speak of Christ. But we need to acknowledge that Xy is a living breathing movement of God. It is both glorious and broken. There will never be and has never been pure Xy, not even in the first centuary, where Peter and Paul argued about whether you could be uncircumcised and Xn.

I think the beauty of the Gospel would shine through much more if Xy, the interpretation of the gospel, took a back seat. If you have ever had anyone tell you the definitive meaning of your favourite movie or song you’ll know how much this just ruins the movie or song. This is so often what Xy does to the gospel.

Perhaps not only would the gospel shine but Xns might shine too. When we see ourselves as the only ones with access to God we will never seriously entertain the idea that a non Xn could teach us something new about God. If we are not open to God apart from through the God management system known as Xy then we are not humble and we won't trusted.

Jesus is a peculiar God to follow. He died for something greater than himself, there was something more important than himself. God emptied himself through Christ for the world. If we believe that God is only with Xy then God has emptied himself to the world through Christ and Xy has emptied the world of God.

In Acts 17 Paul sees God (an unknown God) in a pagan religion. This is an invitation to dialogue. Paul even finds God in their own tradition. “Your poet’s say…” much the same way that we might find God a U2 song or Matrix film. But would we quote from Hindu text or some other tradition because we found God in that?

At the end of the sermon, Samir Selmanovic asks the simple question- "would rather be in another religion and accept Jesus in substance or be a Xn and accept Jesus only in name?" Another great question. I can imagine many people giving a "yes, but..." response.

In John 1:9 Jesus is the light to everyone, there is non salvation outside of Christ but there is salvation outside of Xy. Imagine a Xy where non Xns who are saved (eg Matt 25) is not an annoying anomaly. Not an appendix to a statement of belief but is at the center. What are we afraid to lose? I suspect we are afraid to loose the control which comes with any God management system.

Any way enough of my rambling listen to the podcast here.

Predestination Does Not Exist

I've been meaning to post about this for a while and after a recent chat with a friend I’ve been inspired to do so. My friend told me how he was at party were a theological student, a stranger, asked him if he believed in predestination and went on to explain why he did and that the more he studied the bible the more he was convinced of predestination. I am not.

Predestination is the idea that your life and relationship with God is all preplanned, just waiting to unfold. This idea is based on a few false precursor ideas.

1. God is outside of time.
2. God is all knowing and all powerful.
3. Since God is outside time, knows everything including the future and God is all powerful, we do not have the power to change the future.

I think these 3 things are not biblical ideas. If you believe them it is not possible believe in prayer or free will as you have no power to change your destination. I’ve heard some explanations trying to reconcile this which usually involved some pretty amazing mental gymnastics or stories about two train tracks look like they meet but never actually do.

So here are my thoughts.

1. God is not outside of time.
2. God does not know the future.

Instead God makes plans for the future. God even repents of things done in the past. God does not know the future, God has made some plans and promises and is pretty good at keeping them. We have free will, not just the illusion but actual free will.

Finally the actual bible verse from which all of this predestination talk actually comes from is Romans 8:29. In this verse we are just predestined to become more like Christ. This simply means if you become Xn you're going to become more like Christ as God's spirit works in you. So this one passage is actually something fairly simple rather than some huge new radical concept through which the rest of the bible must be explained.

I know this is a short post given the topic. I’m happy to expand if people want.

Orthonomy, Doubt and Compassion

Post modernism is often thought of as a movement that has relativised truth. That truth is not as important as experience or, "what's true for you may not be true for me". Personally, I think this unfairly caricatures Post modernism. The reason this may seem to be the case for me and some of my PM friends is that above truth and indeed even what we experience is harmony. That includes the hamony between what one believes and what one experiences or how one lives. I think this is also called orthohomony (right harmony) as opposed to orthodoxy (right belief) or orthopraxis (right practice or action).

This has meant the rejection of "truths" handed down by religious leaders and other authority figures, where the authurity for that truth comes purely from the status of truth giver. It has also meant the rejection of "rituals or practices" handed down by religious leaders and other authority figures for the same reasons.

I don't think this post modern era is the rejection of truth rather it is the rejection of confidence. This rejection of confidence has lead to (for me & I suspect many others) an increase in doubt. Doubt being the gap between belief and experience. This is a problem for many churches who rely on all members agreeing on a set of beliefs or practices. For more evangelical churches who major on orthodoxy and tend to interpret experience through their belief system, and more mainline churches who major on orthopraxis. The doubtful person will interpret belief through their experience and experience through belief, importantly they must be in harmony with each other.

Post moderns are post confident because they have seen the damage done by the confidence where someone is sure that they are right and all others wrong. Examples include slavery, crusades, etc. These are almost always due to a blind confidence in what poeople believed or were doing. There was no doubt or questioning.

I'm wondering in fact doubt feeds compassion. The more confident and right someone is the less compassionate they seem to be. Could this be because they believe they understand a truth that explains why someone is suffering be that because of the individuals own actions or because some supernatural force has inflicted that on them. If you know that then others doesn't If you know why someone is suffering don't need to act. If you are doubtful confused and are not sure of the big story you are faced with just one suffering person and compelled to act. If you have a meta-narrative why then you are not compelled to act.

Apologies if these thoughts are a little rambled and unstructured. I kind of vomited the sentences out.

Turning into Virtual Temples or Reinventing Church

I mentioned a little while ago that Ephesians 2 was bugging me and I'm pretty over the whole Sunday morning service thing. The idea in Ephesians 2 that the spirit of God is now dwelling in the church (as in the people ) is a radical change from the fixed temple where God dwelt. Looking at many churches I'm wondering if they have become virtual temples with people only gathering in a building once a week. Other activities like Bible studies are usually things non Xns cannot engage with. At the moment I feel like God sends Jesus, Jesus sends the Spirit, the Spirit sends us and we go into a building. I wonder how well would Jesus fit into our churches? Would he be happy singing romantic love songs to God or would he be doing something closer to turning tables?

Previously I have said that inviting someone to church is much like inviting someone to a nudist colony. No matter how good the music, how great the coffee or how talented the speaker is it is going to be very hard to get them to come. It's pretty easy to bag out big church meetings and lament about how great things would have been for the first month after Pentecost. As much as I have enjoyed small house church type things that I have been involved in previously I don't think "lets all do small house churches" is necessarily the answer. There is nothing wrong with being big and eventually any infectious group will get bigger. The question is how do we get big and what do we look like when we get big?

My latest thought is we divide a church into 3 levels

Individuals, Small missions and a Collective gathering. Usually we ten to start with the collective gathering and then try and get small groups happening and then try and usually not pay too much attention to to individual action. This certainly makes sense as far as economies of scale go. Rather than start from the big and work down I'd like to try starting from the individual and working up to the collective gathering. This is what I'm thinking at the moment...

Individuals

All members of the church to the the same rhythms together (this idea is pretty much from Mike Frost and Small Boat Big Sea). They are things that the group agrees to do as individuals. They need to be tangible achievable things, so "grow closer to God" doesn't count.

• Read the Bible (all members reading the same things - of course you can read more)
• Pray (all members praying for the same things - of course you can pray for more)
• Do 3 acts of kindness a week

This way everyone in the church is wrestling with the same part of scripture and praying collectively.

Small Missions

These are not bible studies as most small groups are but rather missions and really the heart of the church. These are small groups (that everyone is a part of perhaps even more than one) about actively and collectively living out faith. The focus of the small groups will be to collectively live out faith with a focus on creativity, justice or evangelism.
So these could include a group that does...

• A bread run
• An art group
• A playgroup
• Visit prisoners
  
• An amnesty letter writing group
• Windsurfing with the aim to reach out to the local windsurfing community group
• Walking their dogs in the local suburb with aim of reaching out to the local community

Apart from the doing of the activity members would get together too...

• Plan / talk about the mission
  
• be accountable to each other about the individual rhythms
• Anything else like wrestle with particular issues or listen guest speakers (virtual or real)

Collective Gathering
So this is the big Sunday Service replacement... Once a fortnight perhaps or so...

• Eat a shared meal
• Share stories of the mission / group
  
• Pray for each other

I'm sure I will change my mind about all this and realise that it's really impractical. Anyhow the thought process has jumped to constructive and that's a start.

God changes her mind

This has been a difficult post to write. So apologies if it's not super coherent. A few weeks a go I mentioned I've recently discovered the hilarious Mr Deity. Part of the humor of the show is based tension between two ideas, one that that God is in control of everything and knows the future and two that the world can be a pretty painful place to live. The way the writers explain the tension between the two is by presenting God as a fumbling, absent minded depressive who doesn't always have great help. One of my favourite examples of this is where his assistant Larry asks him who will "go to hell" and Mr Deity miss hears this as who "will do well" to which he answers the Jews (his chosen people) and homosexuals (who have great design sense).

One of the reasons I don't find Mr Deity offensive is that I don't feel like it is showing up faults in my theology of God. I don't think of God as in control of everything and knowing the future. The two reasons for this are that I think God changes his mind and that God is not outside of time. These two ideas have been two very critical and very liberating ideas that have not only helped me but have often been a big stumbling block to many non-Xns I know who ask really sensible and obvious questions like. "If God knew the future and he has the power to control everything then how come the Tsunami / Holocaust / 911 happened?" Below I have tried to outline my thoughts and why I think they are important.

1. God changes his mind.

Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher) saw God as "the unmoved mover" that God is perfect love loving himself perfectly. He saw God as unchangeable unmovable and unaffected by human wisdom, thought or action. Aristotle saw that God is in ultimate control of the universe. That is it's going exactly how God wants it or God is executing his perfect plan. Furthermore, God won't change his mind because his plan is perfect in the first place. Although perhaps worded a little bit more starkly here these are probably similar sentiments to things you might of heard many Xns say.

None the less this is not what we find in the Bible. For example...

• Exodus 32:9-10 vs 32:11-13 God relents and doesn't destroy (Ex 32:14)
  
• Jonah 1:1-2 and 3:1-10 God relents and doesn't destroy (Jonah 4:2)
  

In these passages we see God is affected by humanity. God reacts, interacts responds too and is influenced by creation. The Hebrew word often translated as relent is the very same word translated as repent. Our English bibles often translate it as relent as repent has sin connotations.

Other times were God repents are...

• Gen 6:6 Just before flood God repents of having made humans
• 1Sam 15:11&35 God repents that he has made Saul King
• 1 Chron 21:15 God repents of sending a plague to Israel
• Psalm 106:45 Talks of God repenting in
  
• Jer 18:7-8 A promise that God will repent
  
• Jer 42:10 God repents of disaster he inflicted on Israel
• Joel 2:13

When God repents God changes his mind. This is what repentance is. Just like if someone repents from sin they decide not to sin anymore. In Genesis God repents because he wishes he hadn't made humanity so he sends the flood. In 1 Samuel God wishes he hadn't made Saul King so he makes David King. In all the other occasions God repents from a right or just thing to a loving graceful thing.

So why is God changing his mind so friggin important?

• If you understand this you will find Mr Deity funny and not offensive.
• Prayer: It's actually worth praying. It's hard to pray to God if everything is already decided in a perfect plan.
• You don't have to believe that the world is going perfectly to God's plan and that disasters and tragedies are not part of God's plan.
• Our future is completely undecided. God can change his mind about it. This is something I talked about in the God's plan for your life post.

The one logical consequence from believing that God genuinely changes his mind is that God is not outside of time. If we are truly to believe in freewill and that God changes his mind then the logical consequence is that God is outside of time and doesn't know the future.

Again the idea that God is not constrained by time comes from ancient Greek thought. So unlike Mr Deity who checks the script of the future God is not doing that. As the idea of being outside of time is not an idea in the Hebrew writers mind there is nothing to suggest this in the old Testament and also nothing to deny this. Passages like 2 Peter 3:8 (a day is like a thousand years) just as reasonably suggests that God often forgets to look at his watch as it does that God is outside of time.

One of the biggest bits of evidence that none of the New or Old Testament writers thought of God as "outside of time" is that none of them go through the theological gymnastics that are needed when you believe God is outside of time.

The theological gymnastics includes explaining how...

• God appears to change his mind he hasn't really because he knew he was going to but it just appears that way to us.
• God knows exactly what you are going to do for the rest of your life who you are going marry and who you will have lunch with today, but you do have free will it's just that God know what that is.

So why is God being outside of time so friggin important?

• If you understand this you will find Mr Deity funny and not offensive.
• If God doesn't know the future we truly have free will and we truly have a mutual relationship with God.
• Despite what some may first think this actually makes God more powerful rather than less powerful. God doesn't know the future because he's seen the end of the movie rather God has plans that he has promised to carry out.

If you've got this far thanks for reading I hope it helps.

Mr Deity and a few Theological Reflections

I have just discovered the hilarious Mr Deity. Mr Deity is a semi-monthly video series (every two weeks) that looks at God and the Universe with a smile (and sometimes, a wink). It is well written with great production values. There are four Characters God (Mr Deity), Jesus (Jesse), Lucifer (Lucy) and Larry Mr Deity's administration guy. From a theological perspective I find it interesting because I think much of the humor of the show rests on the idea that God is "all powerful and all knowing" that is God is in control of everything and God knows exactly what is going to happen in the future. These are two things that I do not believe and I explore this in the weeks to come, probably with a few lengthy posts. This is something that I have wanted to do for a while and Mr Deity has reminded of the theological tangles and difficulties that you can get into by having the ideas that God is in control of everything and God knows exactly what is going to happen in the future at the foundation of your theology.

Sending "Hell" (New Testament) to Hell in a Hand Basket

After some of the comments I got on my last post concerning whether Xns should be telling others their love ones have gone to hell. I decided it was time to finish of my sending "hell" to hell in a Hand Basket series by looking at "hell" in the New Testament having looked at the Old Testament some months ago.

The CRI/Voice Institute website has a good article about the expression "he descended into hell" from the apostles creed, which covers much of what I think about hell in the New Testament. Here is part of that article...

There are two perspectives necessary to understand this issue, one cultural and historical and the other exegetical. In the old King James Version, the English word “hell” actually was used to translate two different words and two very different concepts. One term was the word gehenna, (e.g., Matt 5:22). This was adapted from the name of a valley to the south of the Temple in Jerusalem where the city garbage was burned, the “Valley of Hinnom.” Because of the perpetual fires, and also because there had been idols to the Canaanite god Molech erected there to which were offered human sacrifices (2 Kings 23:10), ge hinnom (“valley of Hinnom” in Hebrew) became a symbol for the judgment of God. The fires also came to symbolize that punishment and destruction, and became the more common way to conceptualize “hell” in later Christian tradition.

Another term, and one more relevant to our topic, is the Greek term Hades (e.g., Matt 11:23). This term comes from Greek mythology in which it was the abode of the dead. It was used to translate into Greek the Hebrew concept of Sheol. While in the Old Testament this term was not mythological, it was a metaphorical way to talk about what happened to people when they died. Sheol was simply the place where dead people go. It was almost synonymous with death and especially “grave,” and indeed is used that way in several Old Testament passages, e.g., Psa 49:14: Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; Death shall be their shepherd; straight to the grave they descend, and their form shall waste away; Sheol shall be their home.

In other words, Sheol or Hades was a poetic way to say, “they died and were buried.” It is in this sense that the phrase in the Apostles’ Creed is used, using the ambiguous word “hell” in English, when the more precise idea of Hades actually lies behind the statement. “He descended into hell” then becomes nothing more than a statement that Jesus died and was placed in the tomb, the grave. In Hebrew concepts, they would say he descended into Sheol, that is, was lowered into the grave, or that he slept with the fathers, that is, was placed in a family tomb. It is in that context that the affirmation of the resurrection is so powerful.

Part of the reason for the confusion in the first place is that the Septuagint (the old testament translation used around Jesus time) translated the Hebrew word Sheol as 'Hades', the name for the underworld in Greek mythology which derived from the Egyptian Lake of Fire (see picture below). Since word gehenna reffered to an eternally buring rubbish tip it's easy to see how imagery of these two different ideas could be eventually melded into the modern day understanding of hell.


So what do we do about the images of "hellish" fire in the New Testament? Well, given what we know about our eternally burning rubbish tip this fire does not have to equate to eternal suffering in a lake of fire, it more likely means that what ever goes in there (at whatever time) dies instantly, like the rubbish tip.

Sometimes I think Xns have forgotten how horrible death is. Adding the eternal punishment understanding of hell into the mix just makes you look insensitive at best and stupid at worst.

Do not talk about The Gospel of Fight Club

I remember the first time I got caught reading Fight Club. It was when I was studying Ancient Greek at a rather conservative Xn college. It was only the second lecture and I sat down next to a fellow student who I didn’t know, but none the less looked pretty much as conservative as everyone else in the class with their trousers and a button up shirts. As I was pulling my books out of my bag my neighbour spied a copy of fight club in my bag. “Are you reading Fight Club?” he said in voice that sounded somewhat horrified. Feeling like I’d just been caught with hard core pornography I turned to face my neighbour and expecting a rebuking of some sort. His face was not full of horror but excitement. He just couldn’t believe that he had found a fellow Chuck Palahniuk fan amongst the group. I dropped out of Ancient Greek but we remained friends and I even bought him the novel Choke for his birthday.

I thought of that story immediately when I read a comment on my previous post about Fight Club asking "How do I explain why I watch and love movies like Fight Club to everyday evangelicals (not that I am one)?"

My Solution is I don’t. I very cautiously tread ground mostly, avoid really saying what I think and then I write a blog post about it instead. I guess the real question is why Fight Club kind of films so taboo for evangelicals?

I think the reason why many evangelicals don’t like movies like Fight Club or American Beauty or music like Marylin Manson or Nirvana to name but a few is because evangelicals are usually very conservative and believe that Xy and Jesus is very conservative. For me this was summed up well by an evangelical friend who once said to me, something along the lines of, “I don’t understand why people don't become Xns. They don't have to change anything about their life for most people they just have to accept Jesus.” The assumption behind what he said is that most of us in the west are living Xn lives and all we have to do is just invite Jesus into our hearts and everything will be hunky dory when it comes to the big heaven or hell thing when you die.

I’d like to suggest that not only is Xy much more than that but also something quite opposite to that. The problem that I think evangelicals have with Fight Club etc… is that these movies are rallying against values of our western lives, I think Xy & Jesus is all about that. The Gospel of Mathew especially is all about Jesus clashing with the religious, social and political establishment of his day.

To me it's hard to believe that "family values" people follow Jesus when Jesus said things like...

• (Matt 10:35) For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
• (Matt 10:37) Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
  
• (Matt 12:50) For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
• (Matt 19:29) And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life.
  
• (Luke 14:26) "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

I remember when American Beauty (another one of my favourite movies) came out a Xn film review website gave it one of their worst reviews ever and another Xn website even went as far as to suggest that writer Sam Mendes was possessed at the time of writing the movie. Yet to me the film is just full of gospel parallels.

Lester Burnham is just drudging through his meaningless hell of a life. His one dream is to have sex with his daughter’s friend (a minor). Sex with a minor (someone less than half his age) is something that almost everyone would agree as wrong or sinful. Lester is both a slave to the system of western life and a slave to the desire to commit this sin. Along comes Ricky Fitz, a pot selling Christ like figure who’s rejection of his fathers unreasonable authority (Luke 14:5 Then he said to them [the pharisees], "If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?") and freedom from worry of money (Luke 12:24: Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!). He is the only one who is free to live life to the full (John 10:10: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly) and sees beauty not in the blonde girl Lester lusts after but in a plastic bag blowing in the breeze.

Rikki (with the help of some high grade cannabis) sparks the change in Lester’s life a change where Lester ends up living a life that is both enjoyable meaningful. He tries to seduce his wife instead of masturbating, he starts to pay attention to his daughter instead of her friends and stands up for himself. This culminates when he is put in the position where he finally gets the chance to fulfil his original fantasy of having sex with his daughter’s friend and chooses not to. The film ends with a Lester smiling having found meaning and happiness.

Narratives like Fight Club and America Beauty are all about change and change means confrontation, and a good change narrative that makes us want to change will be confronting. My guess is that many evangelicals (perhaps like the Pharisees in Jesus time) just don't like this. I can remember once reading an interview with Marilyn Manson (despised by many Xns) and he said he wanted the world to end in an apocalypse so their can be the beginning of a new one that’s better. Take away the goth make up and that sounds a lot like what many evangelical Xns might say.

I know this post has been a bit long and rambling and has kind of avoided the original question "How do I explain why I watch and love movies like Fight Club to everyday evangelicals (not that I am one)?" I guess I'd like to say that it's important to remember that narratives like Fight Club are narratives or parables, so they won't be a 100% gospel and That's OK (the Matrix is not gospel and neither is everything Bono has ever said). If the films inspire you to be more like Christ, as Fight Club had done for me then keep reading that kind of book and watching those kind of films. It's probably the inspiring to be more like Christ that's going to be the best starting point if you're talking to an evangelical friend too.

Why am I not an Athiest?

Richard Dawkins new book "The God delusion" has got a few people talking and got me thinking… Why am I not an atheist?

Given the way that I usually like to logically and rationally approach things I tend think that this would be my default spiritual position about the whole God thing. And this is certainly the conclusion that some of my most rational and logical contemporaries have reached.

Too often I have heard Xns give quite unpersuasive explanations for their belief in God. The Godless geeks site has some great examples these kind of proofs of God many of which are painfully familiar. My favourites being…

So why then am I a God believer?

Firstly, Jesus, who he was and his resurrection. Essentially I am a follower of Christ (hence the term Christian) and he is still the lynch pin of my faith. I kind of subscribe to C.S Lewis's “Liar, Lunatic or Lord” idea. Dawkins tackles this somewhat by suggesting that the Lewis triad is missing the category of "honestly mistaken". A fair comment but I think anything that would be covered in the "lunatic" category which is really the "thinks he's right in making a claim but he isn't right" category cover anything that would be in a “honestly mistaken” category. Dawkins also says that Jesus didn't directly claim to be messiah. He certainly does this very directly in the gospel of John and less directly in the synoptics. However, I can understand why from a historian’s point of view you could validly argue that this was written back into the text. Even if we get rid of John’s gospel to me saying that Jesus did not think he was the messiah is like saying that the skinny black guy with the effeminate voice and one white glove who keeps grabbing his crotch singing "I'm bad" and moon walking doesn't think he's Michael Jackson. Personally I’ve always found the disciples a fairly compelling group of people not only did they make Jesus resurrection the lynch pin of their faith put they were prepared to die for this. In simplest terms I see Jesus as some kind of manifestation of God in human form. Maybe that’s a bit like believing in sugar cane after drinking cola.

Secondly, is my own personal experience. Now I’m prepared to admit that this can be pretty dodgy and Dawkins gives a good example of why this can be very dangerous.

One of the cleverer and more mature of my undergraduate contemporaries, who was deeply religious, went camping in the Scottish isles. In the middle of the night he and his girlfriend were woken in their tent by the voice of the devil - Satan himself; there could be no possible doubt: the voice was in every sense diabolical. My friend would never forget this horrifying experience, and it was one of the factors that later drove him to be ordained. My youthful self was impressed by his story, and I recounted it to a gathering of zoologists relaxing in the Rose and Crown Inn, Oxford. Two of them happened to be experienced ornithologists, and they roared with laughter. 'Manx Shearwater!' they shouted in delighted chorus. One of them added that the diabolical shrieks and cackles of this species have earned it, in various parts of the world and various languages, the local nickname 'Devil Bird'.

The question I like to ask myself is experience of what? In my experience it is often the one off freaky, miraculous an experience that are most likely to be something else. Wether that’s a miraculous healing or speaking in tongues or whatever. My experience has slower and stronger more like an incoming tide than crashing wave. It is perhaps analogous to Mathematical induction. That's where you assume something to be true and then test it, the more I have tested my assumption the more convinced I have become.

Having said that the more convinced I become the more ridiculous I realise it must seem to logical rational people. So what would I like to say to people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris? Certainly not the above argument. Id' say something like this...

Sorry.

• I'm sorry that when Xns blindly inherited our parents beliefs we cursed you saying that you were poor in spirit.
• I'm sorry that Xns have reviled you and persecuted you and uttered all kinds of evil against you falsely because of God.
• I'm sorry that when you talked about how the earth was flat or how world was made we cursed you, when you were right and with God rather than against.
• I'm sorry that when religious groups were fighting and you spoke against it we said cursed you who were peace makers.

Jesus said...

• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
• Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Bits of Matthew 5:3-11

The Gospel of Fight Club

I recently read and watched Fight Club, again both one of my favourite books and films. So I thought I might say a little something of why I like this story so much.

Darby Ray author of "Deceiving the Devil" describes atonement as “the reconciling, redeeming, liberating activity of God in Christ.” I think this is a pretty succinct and broad summary of atonement, covering everything conservative substitutionary atonement through to liberation theology and many other ideas. My guess is that we have too often in the west we have overly focused on the redeeming and reconciling parts and neglected the liberating part of the triad.

Overlooking liberation may have been for good reason. In the west we usually don't think of ourselves as being needed to be liberated. At best we see ourselves as the oppressors from whom others needed to be liberated. For me and many of my peers there is a feeling amongst us that the life of an oppressor is not something we chose but something we inherited. We were born into a world where it was impossible to buy a shoe that had not been made in a sweat shop and where third world inequality and environmental degradation was just seen as part of the natural order. An old friend of mine (white and male) once lamented that he wished he had been born black and female, then he'd at least know what to fight against. We are a generation who have an awareness that there is something wrong with the world. We love escaping into movies like the Matrix and TV shows like Buffy the vampire slayer where the main characters are the only ones who realise there is something really wrong with the world whilst everyone else just walks along like zombies.

Many people have sought to find Christ like atonement narratives in the Matrix and Buffy. Whilst they might be there I prefer to look in Fight Club. Where the Matrix and Buffy set up dualistic universes (a "flesh" reality and a greater "spiritual" reality) Fight Club does not do this. There is no overarching vampire or matrix that we need to discover and fight, rather the evil is being perpetrated by us and the systems that we comply with. In Fight Club Tyler Durden is the Christ like figure who walks into Jacks life. Tyler forces Jack to face the current reality of his world, the injustice, the love of money, the obsession of the trivial and to liberate him, an "heir of oppression" (my term) from that. There is much Xns can learn about atonement from Fight Club.

Here are some of my favourite Gospel and Fight Club parallels...

Fight Club

Only when Jack truly gives up his will to live is he saved.

Jesus

Luke 14:26. "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

---

Fight Club

Jack quits job and Tyler Durden destroys all that he owns.

Jesus

Matt 6:24-34. "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

---

Fight Club

Jack has no family, those around him following Tyler Durden and his followers become his family.

Jesus

Mark 4:34-35. "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

---

Fight Club

The first assignment for fight club members is for them to start a fight and loose.

Jesus

Matt 5:38-39. "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;”

---

Fight Club

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are all part of the same compost pile." Tyler Durden

Jesus

Matt 7:1-5. "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

---
Fight Club

Tyler Durden destroys Jacks apartment, and destroys the buildings of credit card companies in order to make everything go back to zero so that non one is in debt.

Jesus

Luke 18:22. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

Author of Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk. Has also written the books Survivor, Invisible Monsters Choke, Lullaby, Diary and Haunted. They are all really good.

Ecotheology Part 3

Ecotheology Part 1, Ecotheology Part 2

Previosuly I mentioned I didn't like to use words like steward or priest to describe our relationship with the earth. I know that these are words the Bible uses so I'm now going revisit what I think are the Biblical meanings behind words like steward and priest. As I said before for almost all readers these are not helpful images, and arouse ideas over authority and domination. To help us rethink the these words I wanted to start by looking at the way God relates to us because I think there are similar power issues between God and humans.

Central to the relationship between humans and God is Christ, the servant king. Jesus becomes king by being a servant to all. Central to the relationship between God and humans is that any power within the relationship has been inverted. Jesus becomes king by being servant.

Similarly, Paul continues this way of thinking in Ephesians when, whilst agreeing with the thinking of his day that that men are the head or stewards of the household, (“In the Old Testament, the term steward usually refers to ‘the man over the house’, with responsibility to the master for the affairs of the household and his possessions, such as Daniel 1.11.”) he qualifies this by saying that a husband and wife are to serve each other. And, that a husband is to be a steward of his wife in the same way that Jesus is the head of the church, that is by being the exact opposite. To be King, steward or ruler, is to be servant. Once again in the same way the writer of Hebrews call’s Jesus our great High Priest, because of the sacrifice Jesus made for us.

To me to say that we should be stewards or priests is like reading Jesus phrase “first shall be last and the last shall be first” and telling people we need to be first. We may be called to be first but we do this need to by being last. Similarly, we may as Christians be called to be stewards of the earth but we don’t do that in a dominating the earth in an un-Christ like manner, we do it by being servants.

Now that we have looked at God’s relationship with us being one free from issues of control and one of harmony, rather than ruling over us. I would like to, with some liberty say that God’s relationship with us is in it’s essence creative. This is a theme I have mentioned before I would like to repeat a metaphor that I think of for describing the relationship between my self and God.

That metaphor is that of a Jazz band. Where I am the improvising soloist and God is the rhythm section. If I, the soloist, ignore what the God, rhythm section, is doing I am not going to sound good. By the same token the rhythm section does not dictate what my solo will sound like either. No matter how badly I play there is nothing the rhythm section can do to fix it. If I play exactly what the rhythm section is playing it will sound bland at best. What will sound best is when I am in tune to what the rhythm section is doing and I am able to freely and creatively expressing myself. As a soloist in a Jazz band there is no requirement of obedience, and there is more than just the freedom of playing alone. There is more than freedom there is harmony. The freedom of synergistically creating a sound with the rest of the band that is more beautiful than the individuals by themselves. So too I think is our relationship with God. The usual power paradigm of obedience or freedom, need to be replaced with paradigm of disunity or harmony.

Human relationships with God and with each other are by nature creative. There is not a formula or a method that we need to apply to them, creativity is not only what we have in common but is the space in which we are able to have relationship.

From this I conclude three things...

1. God wants to live in harmony with us, rather to rule us
2. God is creative in relating to us
3. God’s relationship with us is free of issues of control

The question is then how do we, who have so much power to affect the earth, serve the earth? How do we relate to the earth? In order to live in harmony with the earth we will have to intimately get to know the earth. In the same way that someone cannot sing a harmony unless they know the tune, we cannot live in harmony with the earth unless we know the earth. I think prolonged contact and interaction is as important for us and the earth as was for God walking in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Only a deep interaction with the earth can lead us to an empathy for the earth that will propel us to go beyond asking the earth “What are you good for?”.

It is only once we have and intimate knowledge of the earth that we can start to creatively relate to the earth. To think creatively about living with the earth will mean most likely that the solution to our ecological crisis will most likely be one that we have not thought of. It will most likely not be a retreat to a pre-industrialised way of living and equally will not be a blind trust that technological advancement will have the solution.

Essential to any effective ecotheolgy must be how do those who believe that the state of the earth is in crisis and are actively seeking to change it, communicate to those who do not believe this and are not seeking to change things. I believe that once again we need to take up the principles of harmony, creativity and relinquishing control.

This is a song I wrote about the Earth...

I have missed you for so long,
I have not sung your holy song,
You are my sister, you are my brother
We were created with each other
I lived right above you
I did not live right beside you
Can I heal the wounds, of all we’ve done
Is it to late, to live as one

You give me joy extraordinary
You are my holy Sanctuary
And I see God in all you do
God give me the grace to show it back to you
Can I heal the wounds, of all we’ve done
Is it to late, to live as one

Ecotheology Part 2

Ecotheology Part 1

The idea I raised last time that the Earth is a creature, is taken directly from James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which I found to be both impressive and persuasive. James Lovelock says that “Most of us sense that the Earth is more than a sphere of rock with a thin layer of air, ocean, and life covering the surface. We feel that we belong here, as if this planet were indeed our home. Long ago the Greeks, thinking this way, gave to the Earth the name of Gaia." (James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia) As much as the Gaia Hypothesis appealed to me I wanted not to read the Gaia hypothesis back into scripture but to see if a Gaia hypothesis or something similar was already within the Biblical texts.

In Genesis 1:1 we read that the earth (like humans) was created by God. If we can define a creature as simply something that has been created by God then the earth is a creature. Over and above this the earth also exhibits many, many features that one might usually consider solely the expression of a creature rather than an object. Indeed these are all creature like features that the earth and humanity share. These are…

• We are both created by God
• We both sing praise to God
• We are both blessed by God
• We both have a Sabbath
• God has made a covenants with both of us
• We are both cursed from the fall
  
• Jesus was sent for both of us
• We are both awaiting redemption
• We can both become a new creation in Christ

Scharper describes the earth (Gaia) as “a self-regulating system, a "creature," which moves forward into the future regardless of what humans do.” For me the fact that the earth is created, acts like a creature in the Bible and acts like a creature in a scientific sense is where the Earth gets intrinsic worth.

The Question that arises from concluding that the earth is a creature is how do we relate to this creature? Or, how do we relate to the earth?

Too often I think that our relationship with the Earth has fallen into these four possible categories: Rock, Gift, Slave and Master

1. The Earth is a rock: This is pretty much an ancient Greek view of the world where all physical matter is corrupt, and the earth has value only for what we can get from it.

2. The Earth is a gift from God: This kind of sounds nice and to an extent is true the only problem is that the earth has value purely because it is a gift from God and has no value in it’s self.

3. Earth is our slave (or under us): Whether we try and dress this up by using words like steward or priest invariably we will take this as meaning the earth is inferior to humanity, due to the authority we have been given to stewards and priests. For this reason I think these words are not helpful.

4. Earth is the master we obey (or above us): This probably the view James Lovelock would ascribe to. He asserts that when humanity dies out the earth will live on and that bacteria deep in soils and seabeds are probably more important to the earths survival than plants and animals. The problem with this, even though it may be true is that I don’t think this view in necessary helpful when for my entire lifetime I could do as I please to the earth and feel no real consequence as a result. In many ways, I think, an earth centred ecotheology will, in the long run, be as unhelpful as wanting to replace Patriarchy with Matriarchy. The answer to anthropocentric theology is not earth-centred theology but a de-centred theology of relationship. A theology of relationship between two co-created creatures were we view our selves not as stewards over creation, but as kin.

Part of the reason I like to use the word relationship with the earth, rather than phrases like ‘steward’ or even terms like inter-related, was to avoid any word that had a hint of power or control. Although it may be true that humanity and the earth are interrelated the reality is that most western Christians are living as though we are not, and can quite happily live as though we are not, until the environmental crisis gets so bad and it is too late to turn back. What is more the term inter-related may have overtones control, a kind of wrestling were if one does one thing that may affect the other and vice versa – which could lead us back to asking questions of who controls who rather than a picture of two co-created beings standing beside each other ready to start to understand each other.

This does not mean that there is not power in the relationship. Whether it is we have the power to destroy the earth or as James Lovelocks suggests that we will be a mere hiccup on the earth this is not helpful. What is more different people in different places on the earth will have different relationships with the earth. We i the west are more likely to be the oppressors and not the oppressed. So a western response to how they relate to the earth may be very different to how someone in a dessert ravaged country with seasonal flood might relate to the earth. In the later case it may indeed be appropriate to encourage them to follow Genesis 1:28 and subdue the earth by building some dams to hold the flood waters and grow vegetation with this water.

Therefore, it should be no surprise that there isn't a single uniformed attitude towards the natural world in the Bible. Different time periods and circumstances require different perspectives. This is surely the nature of a relationship! That is it changes and grows.

Final installment next week.

Ecotheology Part 3

Ecotheology Part 1

Ecotheology is something that I think is very important to me and I think I may have a bit of a unique spin on the whole thing. So I thought I'd do a little series on it. To start with a quick quiz...

Who am I?

• I am created by God: “in the beginning God created me” (Genesis 1:1)
• I sing praise to God: “I clap my hands and sing for joy at the presence of the Lord.” (Psalm 98:8-9)
• I am blessed by God: I am “Blessed by the Lord, with the choice gifts of heaven above, and of the deep that lies beneath; with the choice fruits of the sun, and the rich yield of the months; with the finest produce of the ancient mountains, and the abundance of the everlasting hills.” (Deuteronomy 33:13-16)
• I need to rest every Sabbath: God said to my people “In the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest” (Leviticus 25:4)
• God has made a covenant with me: God promised “you will never be destroyed” (Genesis 9:9-11)
• I am made to be in covenant with humans: It was said to Job “you shall be in league (covenant) with the stones of the field, and the wild animals shall be at peace with you.” (Job 5:23)

I am... the earth.

• And I am cursed because of humanity: God said to Adam “cursed is the ground because of you.” (Genesis 3:17)
• God so loved me that Jesus was sent for me: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. (John 3:16)
• And I wait for my Redemption: “I wait with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. I have been groaning in labor pains. Together we wait for adoption, and redemption.” (Romans 8:18-23)
• Where I will be new in Christ: For God Said “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” (Isaiah 65:17-25) Yes I will be renewed like humanity “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” (2Corinthians 5:17)
• Where I will live in harmony with all of God’s creations: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.” (Isaiah 11:6-9)
  

Xns and Xn organizations are often indifferent to the rape and plunder of the world and of its traditional cultures. It is not too much to say that often Christian organizations are as happily indifferent as most industrial organizations to the ecological, cultural, and religious implications of industrial economics. Xns often seem as likely as anyone else to join in teh destruction of creation. Especially western Xy which is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen. Not only is there a dualism between humans and nature but it is often insisted that it's G0d’s will that humans exploit nature for their own ends.

I have read different ecotheologys and I have never been completely satisfied with the ecotheologys that I have read so far. Here I would like to present my own Xn ecotheolgy. I have tried to create an ecotheology with roots deeper than current environmental crisis and hence one that can may have a future if and when this crisis is over.

There are three points to my ecotheology

1. The earth (like humans) is a creature
2. We have a relationship with the earth
3. We need to relate to the earth the way God relates to us which is...
i. Harmonious
ii. Creative
iii. Free of issues of control

More next week.

Ecotheology Part 2