Small town girl goes to the city

My friend Joan lives in Kings Cross and when I asked her if she had any stories, told me about how she's got to know a young homeless woman who begs for her living. Until I attended the SIM training course early last year, I hadn't formed any firm ideas on how to respond to beggars. Now I think that unless you do get to know someone, you can't tell if they are trustworthy or if what they are asking for is actually going to help. So it's pretty foolish to proffer significant help to a beggar you don't know. But buying them a taxi or train fare, going with them to a motel and paying for a night, or buying them something to eat can all be good things to do if you have the time and money. I've known this for a while but still I don't do it, so I asked Joan for some advice. She said that what she does is to:

1. Be prepared. Have some smaller order money set aside in a purse, so you're not riffling through your hundred dollar notes ;). I've also heard of people who keep a stash of bus tickets handy.
2. Regard them as human. They might be interrupting your day or behaving rudely, but they are actual people doing that. If they're rude, it might be most dignifying to politely have nothing to do with them, as you would any other rude person. Whatever the case, they deserve to be looked at, spoken to and to have their request considered. 

It's not just beggars with me though, it's shopkeepers too. How can I hope to engage with a beggar if I'm too shy to even mention the weather to a shopkeeper? *sigh* I pray that living in Santiago will teach me these things.

Authenticity and fun

The Be Natural people have got (middle class?) Australia sussed. Here's the rallying cry on the back of a 5 Whole Grain Flakes packet:

Be happy, be real, be relaxed and be yourself!

I reckon most Aussies would see attaining those four things as a life well lived (plus enough money to have a nice house, car, holidays and generally spoil yourself - but we don't like to talk about that). Wonder what it will be in Chile?

Family dinner

For a while now Crossroads has been running a more traditional church service of a Sunday afternoon and a few 'house services' of a Sunday morning. We're changing things up a bit this year and one of those changes is to have a midweek house get-together. Going into it I knew that it wasn't so much a time for new teaching, but rather a time to 'share life together', young and old, but I didn't exactly know what that would look or feel like. It was a wonderful evening, sitting on the deck in the late afternoon sun, squeezing past people to get to our seats and helping serve one another food. Damon shared his vision for what this new thing will be. One week we will join together, adults and kids, and learn from the Bible, like a big family devotion. And the next the kids will go and play while the adults talk through living as Christians in the workplace, at home, with our mates and rellies. We'll keep alternating between the two. And we'll do all this over dinner. ♥

Jesus years

I thoroughly enjoyed Inside Bob Dylan's Jesus Years: Busy Being Born . . . Again!, an honest, poorly produced documentary. It features interviews with Bob's pastor, Bible study leader, backing singer, keyboardist, music critics, producer, and Jews for Jesus representative. It was a real joy to hear from humble, goodhumoured, intelligent, Gospel-loving Christian brothers and sisters. One thing that particularly struck me was the wisdom and graciousness with which the pastors of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship Church treated their famous convert:

At the Vineyard our approach was to encourage Bob to grow himself, grow himself in the Lord, to not... run off and become an Evangelist or... but to really let the Lord work in his life. Because the message is that God loves you, God loves Bob, God loves me, God wants to work in our lives, and what he does to us is even more important than what he does through us. That was one of the problems I think that Bob faced, was that there were a lot of people who wanted to use him and push him up to the front, put him on TV, put him on the stage and get him to say something. The people we knew, that we were close with were just saying, 'Bob, continue just to stay focused on God and the Scriptures and stay in fellowship with other Christians and grow as a person'. (Pastor Bill Dwyer)

Jeer and flout him

If you haven't read CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, you should. Let me entice you... (a demon is speaking)

He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles . . . . Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
 . . .
The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's talents - or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.
 . . .
We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic . . . . [The Enemy] wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking "Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?" they will neglect the relevant questions.
 . . .
[I]t is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it - all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is "finding his place in it", while really it is finding its place in him.

gosh

Dinner for two at Angelo's

Now for a collection of links... I will write some of my own stuff again soon I promise :P. It's just that these posts were too good to miss (thanks to Laura for drawing them to my attention).

Douglas Wilson is responding to Mark and Grace Driscoll's recent and controversial book, Real Marriage. He introduces the discussion with great wisdom and fair-mindedness here. He then continues his introduction by drawing on 1 Thessalonians 4:4-5, making the following observation:

So we do not yet know what the distinction is exactly, but the important thing is that we now know that there is one. This means that there should be some kind of qualitative difference in how a sanctified and honorable man approaches a woman and how a man full of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life does. From the passages noted above, the difference is clearly not a difference with intensity.

Next Wilson explains frankly and persuasively why anal intercourse is "unnatural, unhealthy, unclean, and unnecessary". He then turns to how you go about deciding what is right and wrong when the Bible fails to mention modern sexual practices. His answer is in part: "a couple who seriously put into practice the great principles in the first part of this book will overwhelmingly not be interested in some of the questions in the controversial section".

 Wilson concludes by explaining how understanding the culture you live is in a right and good thing to do:

The Bible tells women to dress a certain way, in order to achieve a certain effect, and tells them to do this without giving them a dress code. This means that obedience requires women to make decisions about their sexual attractiveness in their culture. Here is the principle -- certain kinds of obedience cannot happen unless we learn how to go beyond Scripture. Women need to learn how to be attractive without attracting all and sundry, and they must do this without specific warrant from the Scriptures for any one of their particular decisions. 

All these same realities apply to the marriage bed . . . . In order to able to obey this, in order to make love not like they do, it is required that we be able to read what they are doing. And when we read what they are doing, and why, we are not reading it in the pages of the Bible. But we are doing something better -- we are obeying the pages of the Bible.

What are we trying to accomplish anyway?

I find it very difficult, impossible really, to take action unless I first understand a thing. So it's been very much on my mind to grapple with the mission of the church. I know what individual Christians are called to do, but have been less sure of the role of the church as the formal institution imagined by the New Testament. Once again, I happened upon a useful book – What Is the Mission of the Church? Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert. I'm aware that this is written towards one end of the spectrum of views on these issues, but I trust that won't prevent me from reaching my own conclusions ;).

After an introductory chapter, the book does some thorough-going exegetical work in Genesis 12, Exodus 19, Matthew 28, Mark 13 and 14, Luke 4 and 24, John 20, Acts 1, and Paul's letters (other passages are explored in later chapters). You will have to read the book to see how their working goes, but a shorthand way of doing some of it is to ask, 'How would this passage/book read if it were talking about building community or improving economic participation (etc)?' This sort of question exposes the word-based ministry found throughout somewhere like the book of Acts. We don't see the apostles stopping to advocate for the poor in the cities of the Ancient World or instructing others to do so. Their primary concern and what they spend their time doing is to spread the Gospel of life and to see believers built up in their faith. It is this that DeYoung and Gilbert conclude is the mission of the church – “to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship the Lord and obey his commands now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father.”1

Now the reason that God's Word focuses on proclamation of the Gospel and teaching of disciples is not because ending poverty, conflict, and environmental degradation aren't important – but because this is Jesus' work, not the church's. What's more, this is work he has already accomplished on the cross, the results of which will be finally and fully realised at his return. Jesus doesn't need our help in bringing about world peace, for he has already done it. It's not for us to build the Kingdom, we are simply to enter in. And so the most compassionate thing we can do for suffering people is to urge them to join his people and then to together pray to hurry the return of King Jesus. This is exactly what he has commanded his church to do. Of course each Christian still needs to live as his faithful servant, and that may mean caring for other people or for the environment in some practical way, but we shouldn't think we are 'helping Jesus out'.

There are of course passages that exhort us to care for the vulnerable and suffering. DeYoung and Gilbert don't argue with this – it's just that they don't see these passages speaking of the mission of the church. They also argue that this care is rather more narrow than we might think. The Bible urges especial concern for the destitute among fellow believers (cf Mt 10:40-42; 25:31-46; 2 Cor 8:13-15; Gal 2:10; 6:10), for people who are oppressed and exploited, and for those near to us in some way. The second of these categories is bound up with the biblical conception of 'justice' – which is not so much concerned with the aid and empowerment of the poor and disenfranchised, but rather with putting a stop to “a corrupted judicial system, an arbitrary legal code, and outright cruelty to the poor”2 and a concern that people “should not steal, bribe, or cheat”3. From this the authors conclude:

We dare say that most Christians in America are not guilty of these sorts of injustices, nor should they be made to feel that they are . . . . If we are guilty of injustice individually or collectively, let us be rebuked in the strongest terms. By the same token, if we are guilty of hoarding our resources and failing to show generosity, then let us repent, receive forgiveness, and change. But when it comes to doing good in our communities and in the world, let's not turn every possibility into a responsibility and every opportunity into an ought. If we want to see our brothers and sisters do more for the poor and afflicted, we'll go farther and be on safer ground if we use grace as our motivating principle instead of guilt.4

The third point (care for those near to us in some way) is illustrated in the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Rich Man and Lazarus – “the rich man in Luke 16 is damned because he ignores poor Lazarus at his gate. His sin is a sin of omission. But this omission is more than a general failure to 'do more' or 'do enough'. His extravagant wealth makes him blind to the needs right in front of him.”5 Similarly in 1 John 3:17 failure to help a brother in need is a grave sin. However Paul is much less severe in 2 Corinthians 8-9 – because the brothers live some distance away and are not part of his readers' local church community (cf 8:8; 9:5).6 DeYoung and Gilbert observe:

There are no easy answers even with the principle of moral proximity, but without it God's call to compassion seems like a cruel joke. We can't possibly respond to everyone who asks for money. We can't give to every organization helping the poor. Some Christians make it sound like every poor person in Africa is akin to a man dying on our church's doorstep, and neglecting starving children in India is like ignoring our own child drowning right in front of us. We are told that any difference in our emotional reaction or tangible response shows just how little we care about suffering in the world. This rhetoric is manipulative and morally dubious.7

They helpfully add, “This doesn't mean we can be uncaring to everyone but our friends, close relatives, and people next door, but it means that what we ought to do in one situation is what we may do in another.”8

Let's end on an upbeat note:

If we want every church to move into the city, drink fair-trade coffee, focus on ending world hunger, and feel like guilty oppressors when we don't do these things, we're going to have a hard time backing that up with Scripture. But if we want every church to look outside itself, exercise love beyond its doors, and give generously to those in need (especially those on its member list), we will have ample biblical support.

All that is to say, as we see the physical needs all around us, let's motivate each other by pointing out salt-and-light opportunities instead of going farther than the Bible warrants and shaming each other with do-this-list-or-you're-sinning responsibilities. We would do well to focus less on prophetic 'social justice' announcements and more on boring old love. Love creatively. Love wildly. Love dangerously.9

1 K DeYoung, G Gilbert, What Is the Mission of the Church? Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission (Illinois: Crossway, 2011), 62. (italics theirs)

2 Ibid, 159.

3 Ibid,161.

4 Ibid,176-77.

5 Ibid, 167. (italics theirs)

6 Ibid, 170, 185.

7 Ibid, 184-85.

8 Ibid, 184. (italics theirs)

9 Ibid, 193. (bold theirs)