I don't usually go for conspiracy theories

I've only been keeping half an eye on the news lately, but it seems to me that things just aren't adding up in Libya. I don't want world leaders to tell me the whole truth and nothing but the truth - I've seen enough of West Wing to know that political maneuvering is complex and that sometimes spin is for the greater good. What I do expect is that the official line will vaguely approximate the truth. Here's what I'm seeing:

1. The vulnerable people of Libya are protected by Nato airstrikes, but not the vulnerable people of, say, Syria.
2. Nato countries agreed to airstrikes in order to protect the people of Libya, but, without explanation, rhetoric and efforts soon shifted to ousting Gaddafi.
3. The poverty-striken Libyan people have acquired sufficient arms to mount a ground offensive against Gaddafi's presumably well-equipped military.

Just what is going on?

Unified together and apart

I love the unity that is shared by all Christian churches - but I don't think that unity has to necessarily be given expression in joint ministry. I was trying to work out why some inter-church activities float my boat and others don't. This is what I came up with. I'm passionate about healthy local churches. Wherever possible, I want to see individual churches taking responsibility for things like world mission and women's teaching and fellowship. But I also love to see churches banding together to pull off a conference or bold ministry project they never could have done apart.

Seeing it for what it is

You may be noticing a theme here... ;). It's borne of doing missionary promotion at churches not my own and with people unfamiliar to me. So here's another thing I've been learning: you need to be grateful whenever people show affection and ownership towards you and your ministry. If they don't do it how you would like it, so what - their intentions are beautiful. You need to forget the exterior and look to the heart.

The gist

This isn't a biggie: more a note to self. And other people like me. Before you, Fiona, go getting your back up about something biblically unsound that someone has said, stop and think about what they meant. Very often you'll be okay with what they meant, even if you wish they'd used different words to say it.

So when someone prays that you will be "in the centre of God's will" (as a number of people have been praying for me recently), it's charitable to assume that they don't believe in a impotent God who is stymied by our choices. What they probably mean is that in this life we can act rightly and wisely, or wrongly and foolishly, and that to chose the former is to keep in step with the most wholesome and happy vision God has for our lives. And if we stray from this, it's not that God somehow loses control over things, just that our lives are more difficult and damaged than they might have been.

Getting inside their head

One thing that always bugs me is when people make no effort to understand each other, when their first reaction is to assume the worst of another person, rather than examining the part they themselves play. If people aren't signing up for your event, don't just lay a guilt trip on them - reflect on the attractiveness and relevance of the event. Perhaps it is relevant, but sloppy promotion doesn't get that across. Perhaps the packaging's sexy but the content doesn't hit the mark. Maybe for your event to flourish it will need to achieve these things across a cultural barrier of ethnicity or age or money. Whatever the case, it could be that if you change things your end, you just might change everything.

Capítulo El Segundo

There are a few new posts over at Chapter The Second which you might like to check out. It won't really get cranking til I'm in Chile though.

PS I have no idea if that word order is okay in Spanish, or if it has the same, old-school effect.

Raising kids

I was speaking to some women the other day who were heavily involved in raising their younger siblings. Now they're in their thirties, in happy relationships but with no desire to ever have kids of their own. I found that really sad. A good reminder to not ask kids to be adults before their time.

Not fair

Kids say "It's not fair!" when what they mean is "I don't like it!". So why the appeal to justice? I wonder if, in being forced to do an unpleasant thing, they presume that the adult is choosing to be mean and tightfisted when they might be magnanimous and kind. The sort of ugly assumption made by Eve.

Or, perhaps it's a protest against the very existence of unpleasant things, a no to the very possibility of packing up toys and not being allowed to start painting before dinner.

Dora and heaven

When I was visiting a friend last Monday, she had to go comfort her little girl weeping in her bedroom. She was upset because one of her best friends, her teddy Dora, won't be going to heaven. Now while I've come to terms with leaving Big Ted behind, I can still relate to how she was feeling. I hope to get married one day and the knowledge that there will be no marriage in heaven has always troubled me.

What my friend told her little girl is what I need to hear when I worry that good things will be missing in heaven.

Heaven is a real place, just as real as Hobart and it's going to be a good place. It's going to be perfect! And God knows you and loves you very much and he will look after you in heaven and you will be very happy.

H/T Nikki

How art should be used to grow a banana

Some while back the Christian group at Tas uni hosted an artists' forum. Gosh it was good - and just as dense and stimulating on the second and third listen. On the panel were a poet/writer, a graphic designer/musician and a poet/painter/writer. They had all obviously given a lot of thought to their responses, and spoke with honesty and insight about their experience and observations on the process and place of artistic endeavour. The first 20 minutes was about their personal journeys and individual crafts, and after that they explored the relationship between Christian faith and art.

I kinda did a painting course at Art School and that was when I became a Christian. So I guess a few people who became Christians around that time can relate to this feeling of being a bit punk about being a Christian and having a lot of impatience for aesthetic subtlety and stuff that takes a long time and stuff that perculates and relationships... [Nicholas Gross]

I think it can sometimes stretch art - and I guess I'm talking about especially figurative art, not so much books and films cos they've got a bit more scope - but it's stretching that medium a bit to ask it to do too much and to be too didatic. And just thinking about your conversion story, I guess we're so sensitive about kitsh, we're so sensitive about happy endings - I'm not sure why, whether it's just we see such a volume of pictures and read such a volume of things that we're very sensitive to that kind of easy answer - so maybe it is hard to picture and to represent that kind of stuff in a convincing way, in a way that really compels - you really need those twists. [Nicholas Gross]

Art can have any number of functions and forms and aesthetics that go alongside it. To say that art is just about representing reality is a very sort of maybe 15th to 16th century view of art into about the 19th century view of art. I mean art for the Egyptians was a completely different thing and thus took different forms. Art for Rothko was a very different thing and took different forms. So I can imagine art for conversion I guess - because as a liberal minded person I want to say that art can be used for all sorts of things, and throughout history has been used for all sorts of things. But I think that, given our culture's understanding of the function of art since the early 20th century and through a tradition that began earlier than that, I think it's really difficult to think of art as being directly towards conversion. Cos it's a bit like saying how art should be used to grow a banana or something like that - it's missing the point. [Ben Walter]

A trap of your own making

In The Weekend Australia a few weeks ago Frank Furedi wrote an insightful piece about the intolerant exclusion of those opposed to homosexual marriage from even the conversation of 'modern society'. I commend it to you.

Yet, for all its perspicuity, the article suffers from the same thing it criticises. Furedi chides those who define an anti gay marriage position out of all consideration - "The declaration that certain values and attitudes are incompatible with modern society tends to serve as a prelude towards stigmatising and attempting to silence it. That is why the so-called enlightened opponents of 'old-time religion' more than match the intolerance of those they denounce as homophobic bigots.".

But this is exactly how he frames his own argument. He begins with: "Whatever one thinks about the pros and cons of gay marriage, a tolerant society cannot deny the right of homosexual couples to formalise their relationship", and ends: "In such circumstances elite-sanctioned snobbish intolerance is no more acceptable than anti-gay prejudice". It seems that the pull to be on "the right side of the cultural divide" is even stronger than Furedi recognises. A careful reader needs must come away confused. It is intolerant and unfair to simply dismiss those who oppose gay marriage - that much is clear. Yet it is equally unacceptable to be in any way won over to their position. So one must tolerantly allow their participation in the national discussion, as long as one's mind is made up from the get-go. Huh?