It's Freedom Day! Today it's been exactly fifteen years since South Africa held its first non-racial, democratic elections. Fifteen years since God worked a miracle of peace and reconciliation in this land that even atheists were unable to deny. All of which makes me feel bad that I've celebrated this public holiday like most students have: catching up on work. But the day hasn't slipped by completely unobserved; I've been thinking a lot lately about freedom, and what this inspiring but slippery word really means today.
At the moment, the most obvious meaning of freedom seems to be the one exercised on Wednesday last week, when millions of us again went to the polls to elect a new government. I was amazed at the high turnout these elections received: I ended up jumping between three different polling stations because of the length of the queues. It's really great that people were so enthusiastic to participate in democracy. They were using their freedom to choose which party they would like to govern them.
The Bible also talks a lot about freedom. A verse which I have meditated on a lot in the past couple of months says "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:36). In other words, if Jesus sets you free, you are absolutely free. That implies that true freedom is the freedom that Jesus gives. A while ago I wrote a letter to The Oppidan Press, a local campus newspaper, and closed it by saying: "I urge you to take a good long look at the people around you and find out who the really free ones are. You may be surprised at what you find." Yes, Christians are the ones who are truly free. But why doesn't the world usually see it that way? We're more likely to be labelled "legalistic" or "rule-bound" than "free". In fact, I've got a non-Christian friend who regularly complains at how meticulously I stick by rules. How can that possibly be?
Well, let me first say that it's often at least partly our own fault that people see us as being "unfree". Often we add spurious rules to our own lives and then live under bondage to them, and I'm talking as much about myself here as I am about anyone else. In my quiet time notes last week, Bill Domeris wrote that we can easily become slaves to the latest Christian fashion: if at the moment everyone is emphasizing fasting a particular way, or giving to the poor a particular way, or studying the Bible a particular way, we suddenly act as if you aren't a Christian if you don't do it like that. Whenever we do that, consciously or unconsciously, we are twisting the Good News, and giving the impression that our salvation is something we could earn by keeping laws. But as the Bible says, "If we could be saved by keeping the law, then there was no need for Christ to die." (Galatians 2:21).
But there's a far more important reason why the world doesn't recognize how free we are. It's that we're dead to sin, but alive in Christ. Non-Christians think that they can exercise their freedom by doing what they like, but we can see that by doing so, they are enslaving themselves to sin. Romans 6:15-18 clears it up nicely: "So since God's grace has set us free from the law, does this mean we can go on sinning? Of course not! Don't you realize that whatever you choose to obey becomes your master? You can choose sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God and receive his approval. Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you have obeyed with all your heart the new teaching God has given you. Now you are free from sin, your old master, and you have become slaves to your new master, righteousness."
So perhaps a better definition of freedom is this one, attributed to George Orwell: "Real freedom is being able to choose your own task-master." That's exactly what we do at election time, when we decide collectively who will rule over us. And it's what we do in life, too. Whatever we do, something or someone will be our master and I don't know about you, but I'd rather have our perfect, merciful and gracious God as a Master than anyone else. Now that's freedom!
Monday, April 27, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Two deaths, two lives, one Easter
This Easter has been shaped for me by two deaths and two lives. I say "shaped for me", because God has caused these two deaths and lives to echo through my mind this Easter time, teaching me many things. I hope he's been teaching you too.
I'll start with the two deaths: both are utter tragedies, two boys' lives cut horrifically short. I heard of the first one the night before Good Friday, as I was travelling on the bus to Cape Town to spend Easter with my family. A nine-year-old kid from our church, Timmy Fick, was killed in a car accident; his parents and big brother are recovering from many physical injuries. I can't even guess at the deeper emotional injuries they must have. When the news was SMSed to me, I let out a howl and started sobbing right there in the bus.
The second death was soberly announced in the Easter Sunday services. A teenager, a regular at the youth group of my parents' church, had committed suicide just the day before Timmy passed away. I don't know if I ever met him, don't know what drove him to take his life. I also can't even guess at the anguish his family feels, and their unanswered questions.
But there's one thing I know for sure about both these boys: if they had put their faith in Jesus to take away their sins, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). That's the incredible gift that Jesus gave us at the first Easter, when he died for our sins. I don't have words to describe how horrible their deaths are, but I also don't have words to describe the joy I have in knowing these simple facts about salvation.
Still, I find the contrast between these two boys striking: Timmy, at nine years old, had a great lust for life and a bright-coloured, clear-cut faith in Jesus. The teenager, just eight years older, just couldn't find enough hope to carry on living life; perplexity had turned his world to grey. How can just a few years do that to us? Why do we have all the answers, and all the hope in the world, at nine, and none of it left at seventeen?
This brings me to the two lives I've thought about this Easter. The first one is that of my Saviour and friend, Jesus Christ. He, after all, is who it's all about. And he's alive, unmistakably, irrevocably, outrageously alive. And he said "Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." (Mark 10:15). I now know exactly why. We often think of Christmas as a time for children, and Easter as a time for being grown-up, for being serious and thinking of the great, weighty implications of Jesus' death. And that's all right – for Good Friday. But Easter Sunday is easily as much a day to act like a child as any other. What better response is there to the incredible news of Jesus' resurrection than to go absolutely ballistic, dancing and singing and screaming and shouting with joy, just like a kid?
And so, to come to the second life that's been on my mind this Easter, my own life, that's exactly what I've done. As we came home from the Sunrise Service on Easter morning, we must have all been in a similar, jubilant mood. My Mom and her friend Gwen heard a song they loved on the radio, and turned it up so that half the neighbourhood could hear. When we got inside, I turned on the music loud again, and we kept singing and laughing over breakfast, right through to the morning service.
And that's not where I intend to stop. I've been given a message of joy to spread, and the gift of life to the full (John 10:10). I've been a child before, and I've been a teenager. I know that there are plenty of perplexing and depressing things out there in the world. I don't intend to be naive. But my best friend conquered the grave for me, and he knows the answers to all the perplexing questions I may have. So right now, the most reasonable thing I can do is leave those questions with him and enjoy the eternal life he's given me. Yes, there will be suffering, and I'll have to put to death parts of me that don't fit in with his plan. But the joy I'll have as a result makes the pain seem insignificant. There are beautiful mountains to bound over, roads to whiz along on my bike, and people to see come alive. It's my way of honouring the memory of these two special boys who died. And more importantly, it's my way of glorifying my best friend Jesus.
I'll start with the two deaths: both are utter tragedies, two boys' lives cut horrifically short. I heard of the first one the night before Good Friday, as I was travelling on the bus to Cape Town to spend Easter with my family. A nine-year-old kid from our church, Timmy Fick, was killed in a car accident; his parents and big brother are recovering from many physical injuries. I can't even guess at the deeper emotional injuries they must have. When the news was SMSed to me, I let out a howl and started sobbing right there in the bus.
The second death was soberly announced in the Easter Sunday services. A teenager, a regular at the youth group of my parents' church, had committed suicide just the day before Timmy passed away. I don't know if I ever met him, don't know what drove him to take his life. I also can't even guess at the anguish his family feels, and their unanswered questions.
But there's one thing I know for sure about both these boys: if they had put their faith in Jesus to take away their sins, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). That's the incredible gift that Jesus gave us at the first Easter, when he died for our sins. I don't have words to describe how horrible their deaths are, but I also don't have words to describe the joy I have in knowing these simple facts about salvation.
Still, I find the contrast between these two boys striking: Timmy, at nine years old, had a great lust for life and a bright-coloured, clear-cut faith in Jesus. The teenager, just eight years older, just couldn't find enough hope to carry on living life; perplexity had turned his world to grey. How can just a few years do that to us? Why do we have all the answers, and all the hope in the world, at nine, and none of it left at seventeen?
This brings me to the two lives I've thought about this Easter. The first one is that of my Saviour and friend, Jesus Christ. He, after all, is who it's all about. And he's alive, unmistakably, irrevocably, outrageously alive. And he said "Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." (Mark 10:15). I now know exactly why. We often think of Christmas as a time for children, and Easter as a time for being grown-up, for being serious and thinking of the great, weighty implications of Jesus' death. And that's all right – for Good Friday. But Easter Sunday is easily as much a day to act like a child as any other. What better response is there to the incredible news of Jesus' resurrection than to go absolutely ballistic, dancing and singing and screaming and shouting with joy, just like a kid?
And so, to come to the second life that's been on my mind this Easter, my own life, that's exactly what I've done. As we came home from the Sunrise Service on Easter morning, we must have all been in a similar, jubilant mood. My Mom and her friend Gwen heard a song they loved on the radio, and turned it up so that half the neighbourhood could hear. When we got inside, I turned on the music loud again, and we kept singing and laughing over breakfast, right through to the morning service.
And that's not where I intend to stop. I've been given a message of joy to spread, and the gift of life to the full (John 10:10). I've been a child before, and I've been a teenager. I know that there are plenty of perplexing and depressing things out there in the world. I don't intend to be naive. But my best friend conquered the grave for me, and he knows the answers to all the perplexing questions I may have. So right now, the most reasonable thing I can do is leave those questions with him and enjoy the eternal life he's given me. Yes, there will be suffering, and I'll have to put to death parts of me that don't fit in with his plan. But the joy I'll have as a result makes the pain seem insignificant. There are beautiful mountains to bound over, roads to whiz along on my bike, and people to see come alive. It's my way of honouring the memory of these two special boys who died. And more importantly, it's my way of glorifying my best friend Jesus.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
(Re)creating Counter-Cultural Christlike Community
I've just come back to Grahamstown from a mind-blowing, soul-refreshing conference in Pietermaritzburg entitled "Reason and the Gospel in Varsity Outreach: Rekindling the Vision of Francis Schaeffer". In a few hours, I'll be off again to Cape Town, to celebrate Easter with my (biological) family, but now as I try to process the flood of stimulating teaching we were given at the conference, I thought I needed to blog a few of my thoughts.
Before the conference, I was concerned that it was simply going to be a rehash of Francis Schaeffer's work, which confronted the culture and worldview of the Western world with the truth of God's Word. If you've never heard of Schaeffer before, I suggest you check out http://www.francisschaefferfoundation.com/. I wondered how much relevance all his work done in the 1970s could help us now in our task of making disciples on the university campuses of postmodern South Africa. I didn't have to wonder long: Schaeffer was so ahead of his time, and his thinking so applicable to real evangelism and discipleship, that the conference was a huge blessing.
The two main thrusts of the conference were that we need to encourage people on our campuses to think with Christian minds (and do so ourselves), and that we need to create authentic, caring, Christlike communities. I could talk for ages on either subject, but what really impressed me (probably because I had never noticed it before) was the emphasis on Christlike community.
Ranald Macaulay, the main teacher at the conference, was Schaeffer's son-in-law. I was privileged to have breakfast with him on one of the mornings of the conference, and loved the way that he took a genuine interest in everyone at the table. He said that Schaeffer displayed the same concern for individuals, often spending time on his day off to take walks with young seekers who came to his home, answering their questions. Where he disagreed with them, he explained his point of view "with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:16).
In one session, Ranald taught on how what he calls the "Virus of Technique" has left us alienated from each other in the modern world, and even in the Church. Basically, our use of technology (including communications media, which is perverse seeing as they are meant to bring people together) has led us to focus on 'programs' (with one 'm' and no 'e') instead of people. Our technology has insulated us from really engaging in each other's lives. And so people in our age are hungry for authentic community. But at the same time, Church has become as 'mediated' as the rest of the world, with our media star pastors, hyped music and excellent shows on Sundays, but little influence the rest of the week.
Ranald read some hard-hitting quotes which resonated deeply with me. One excellent one was this: "The choice for God now has to become one in which the church begins to form itself, by God's grace and truth, into an outcropping of counter-cultural spirituality. It is after all only when we see what the church is willing to give up by developing this antithesis that we see what it is actually for."
Once this teaching session was over, I looked around the table at the other delegates from Rhodes, and their jaws, like mine, were on the floor in amazement. This is what we'd been talking about in our C@R leadership meetings. It's the 'counter-cultural spirituality' expressed in trends like the 24-7 prayer movement and the New Monasticism. It's what we need at Rhodes to draw unbelievers to the only place where they'll find unconditional love! And if it can work anywhere, it can work in the intimate small-town environment of Rhodes University, where students are hungry to engage more deeply.
But how do we get there? That's the question that I was grappling with on the way home, and still looms large in my mind. Cell groups are meant to be doing this job of providing community, but so often they fall short as we slip into ritualized, impersonal ways of interacting. It's not something that can be implemented by a 'program'; it's a change of heart, a work of the Holy Spirit. I've seen it happen among the leaders of Christians @ Rhodes, and among the core group of Isaiah 26:8. It's starting to happen again between me and a few new friends who are thirsting for something deeper. But how do we spread this until all believers exist in this state of oneness, until it reaches beyond various disparate clusters and we form a cohesive body? How can Christians @ Rhodes, individual societies and the churches in our town work to encourage it?
I don't know. But I know that God does know, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is what he's planning as the next step for Rhodes. Please pray with me that he shows us the way forward.
Before the conference, I was concerned that it was simply going to be a rehash of Francis Schaeffer's work, which confronted the culture and worldview of the Western world with the truth of God's Word. If you've never heard of Schaeffer before, I suggest you check out http://www.francisschaefferfoundation.com/. I wondered how much relevance all his work done in the 1970s could help us now in our task of making disciples on the university campuses of postmodern South Africa. I didn't have to wonder long: Schaeffer was so ahead of his time, and his thinking so applicable to real evangelism and discipleship, that the conference was a huge blessing.
The two main thrusts of the conference were that we need to encourage people on our campuses to think with Christian minds (and do so ourselves), and that we need to create authentic, caring, Christlike communities. I could talk for ages on either subject, but what really impressed me (probably because I had never noticed it before) was the emphasis on Christlike community.
Ranald Macaulay, the main teacher at the conference, was Schaeffer's son-in-law. I was privileged to have breakfast with him on one of the mornings of the conference, and loved the way that he took a genuine interest in everyone at the table. He said that Schaeffer displayed the same concern for individuals, often spending time on his day off to take walks with young seekers who came to his home, answering their questions. Where he disagreed with them, he explained his point of view "with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:16).
In one session, Ranald taught on how what he calls the "Virus of Technique" has left us alienated from each other in the modern world, and even in the Church. Basically, our use of technology (including communications media, which is perverse seeing as they are meant to bring people together) has led us to focus on 'programs' (with one 'm' and no 'e') instead of people. Our technology has insulated us from really engaging in each other's lives. And so people in our age are hungry for authentic community. But at the same time, Church has become as 'mediated' as the rest of the world, with our media star pastors, hyped music and excellent shows on Sundays, but little influence the rest of the week.
Ranald read some hard-hitting quotes which resonated deeply with me. One excellent one was this: "The choice for God now has to become one in which the church begins to form itself, by God's grace and truth, into an outcropping of counter-cultural spirituality. It is after all only when we see what the church is willing to give up by developing this antithesis that we see what it is actually for."
Once this teaching session was over, I looked around the table at the other delegates from Rhodes, and their jaws, like mine, were on the floor in amazement. This is what we'd been talking about in our C@R leadership meetings. It's the 'counter-cultural spirituality' expressed in trends like the 24-7 prayer movement and the New Monasticism. It's what we need at Rhodes to draw unbelievers to the only place where they'll find unconditional love! And if it can work anywhere, it can work in the intimate small-town environment of Rhodes University, where students are hungry to engage more deeply.
But how do we get there? That's the question that I was grappling with on the way home, and still looms large in my mind. Cell groups are meant to be doing this job of providing community, but so often they fall short as we slip into ritualized, impersonal ways of interacting. It's not something that can be implemented by a 'program'; it's a change of heart, a work of the Holy Spirit. I've seen it happen among the leaders of Christians @ Rhodes, and among the core group of Isaiah 26:8. It's starting to happen again between me and a few new friends who are thirsting for something deeper. But how do we spread this until all believers exist in this state of oneness, until it reaches beyond various disparate clusters and we form a cohesive body? How can Christians @ Rhodes, individual societies and the churches in our town work to encourage it?
I don't know. But I know that God does know, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is what he's planning as the next step for Rhodes. Please pray with me that he shows us the way forward.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Pray that Mvume Dandala will COPE
On Friday my digsmate James, his girlfriend Jo and I were driving to East London. As we were chatting, James mentioned that he had heard somewhere that a Methodist ex-bishop was going to run as the Congress of the People's presidential candidate. I thought about it for a moment and then laughed it off: "Naah, that's a long shot."
Well, it turned out the long shot was right. A bit later in the trip we heard a press release on the radio news announcing Mvume Dandala's candidacy. Immediately, I was excited. I met Mvume about ten years ago when he was the presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. He came to preach at a church event in Springs, and my father was the superintendent minister in charge of the Methodist churches in Springs at the time. He gave an amazing sermon, dripping with passion for God's people to get out and do the work of making disciples in the world. After the sermon, he came back to our house for tea and was really friendly.
That was just a brief encounter long ago, but what I've heard about Mvume from other sources since then has only been good. He went on to become general secretary of the All-Africa Council of Churches, based in Kenya. I take that as a sign that he has a heart for church unity just as I do. He's been involved in political peace negotiations both in South Africa in the bad old days of apartheid, and in Kenya after their more recent bout of post-election violence.
Imagine what such a leader of real integrity could do to the South African political scene right now? My mind reeled at the thoughts. But I was brought harshly back to reality when I remembered the last Methodist presiding bishop to enter political leadership, Stanley Mogoba. He became the leader of the deeply divided Pan-Africanist Congress in 1997 and while the party seemed to have enjoyed a short period of growth under his leadership, it remained pretty much divided and in political oblivion when his term ended in 2003. He seems to be remembered more for some injudicious remarks he apparently made about gays and lesbians, and for advocating amputation as a punishment for criminals, than for any good he did for the PAC or the country while leading the party. It seemed like a sad ending to Mogoba's great career of service.
I started feeling still more ambivalent when I talked with the family friends I was staying with in East London that evening. One said that men of the cloth had no business getting involved in partisan politics. Of course, it's right that the Church should be seen to transcend party politics, and the Methodist Church's current presiding bishop, Ivan Abrahams, did a good thing when he said that the church does not support any one party. As Jim Wallis in the USA loves to remind people, God does not belong to any one political party, and his people should be the ultimate swing voters, ready to vote for any party they believe best represents what is on his heart.
Despite all this, we're not going to have any Christian voice in political parties at all if we believers choose to remain outside the messiness of party politics, and Mvume has every right to get involved in a political party if that's where God is calling him. I'm sure he'd be one of the last people to suggest that COPE is the only party that Christians should vote for.
At the end of the day, Mvume Dandala, like Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and George Bush for that matter, is just a brother in Christ who has been sent into the harsh world of politics, where he requires much wisdom to retain his integrity and lead by following Jesus. So, as one of my father's colleagues said recently, we who are his brothers and sisters need to be praying hard for him. Let's not let our political leaders down in our duty to "pray... for kings and all others who are in authority, so that we can live in peace and quietness, in godliness and dignity." (1 Timothy 2:2) May our brothers and sisters in politics be able to live this way too!
Well, it turned out the long shot was right. A bit later in the trip we heard a press release on the radio news announcing Mvume Dandala's candidacy. Immediately, I was excited. I met Mvume about ten years ago when he was the presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. He came to preach at a church event in Springs, and my father was the superintendent minister in charge of the Methodist churches in Springs at the time. He gave an amazing sermon, dripping with passion for God's people to get out and do the work of making disciples in the world. After the sermon, he came back to our house for tea and was really friendly.
That was just a brief encounter long ago, but what I've heard about Mvume from other sources since then has only been good. He went on to become general secretary of the All-Africa Council of Churches, based in Kenya. I take that as a sign that he has a heart for church unity just as I do. He's been involved in political peace negotiations both in South Africa in the bad old days of apartheid, and in Kenya after their more recent bout of post-election violence.
Imagine what such a leader of real integrity could do to the South African political scene right now? My mind reeled at the thoughts. But I was brought harshly back to reality when I remembered the last Methodist presiding bishop to enter political leadership, Stanley Mogoba. He became the leader of the deeply divided Pan-Africanist Congress in 1997 and while the party seemed to have enjoyed a short period of growth under his leadership, it remained pretty much divided and in political oblivion when his term ended in 2003. He seems to be remembered more for some injudicious remarks he apparently made about gays and lesbians, and for advocating amputation as a punishment for criminals, than for any good he did for the PAC or the country while leading the party. It seemed like a sad ending to Mogoba's great career of service.
I started feeling still more ambivalent when I talked with the family friends I was staying with in East London that evening. One said that men of the cloth had no business getting involved in partisan politics. Of course, it's right that the Church should be seen to transcend party politics, and the Methodist Church's current presiding bishop, Ivan Abrahams, did a good thing when he said that the church does not support any one party. As Jim Wallis in the USA loves to remind people, God does not belong to any one political party, and his people should be the ultimate swing voters, ready to vote for any party they believe best represents what is on his heart.
Despite all this, we're not going to have any Christian voice in political parties at all if we believers choose to remain outside the messiness of party politics, and Mvume has every right to get involved in a political party if that's where God is calling him. I'm sure he'd be one of the last people to suggest that COPE is the only party that Christians should vote for.
At the end of the day, Mvume Dandala, like Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and George Bush for that matter, is just a brother in Christ who has been sent into the harsh world of politics, where he requires much wisdom to retain his integrity and lead by following Jesus. So, as one of my father's colleagues said recently, we who are his brothers and sisters need to be praying hard for him. Let's not let our political leaders down in our duty to "pray... for kings and all others who are in authority, so that we can live in peace and quietness, in godliness and dignity." (1 Timothy 2:2) May our brothers and sisters in politics be able to live this way too!
Monday, February 16, 2009
O-Week: The Adventure Continues
Orientation Week at Rhodes is like a wave on a stormy day at Jeffreys Bay: you don't ride it; it rids you. The drinking crowd all have stories about nights they can't remember. (I don't quite know how it's possible to tell a story about stuff you can't remember, but many Rhodents are quite good at it.) And the Christians' stories can sometimes be just as wild.
Take Tuesday morning. I was in the Linguistics department and one of the lecturers asked me how I was. "Well, but sleep-deprived," was my answer.
"Why?" he asked.
"It's O-Week," I said.
"Oh, why did I ask?" he replied, not daring to probe for specifics.
Little did he know that the reason I was sleep-deprived was that I'd woken up before 5 that morning to take a graveyard shift in our O-Week 24-hour prayer room, after getting to bed past midnight, having socialized the evening away at an Isaiah 26:8 coffee bar. Just to top it off, I'd done a 30km training ride on my bike with my digsmate James after my prayer room slot.
As Christians @ Rhodes chairperson, I planned to spread myself out, visiting at least one evening event hosted by each Christian society. I had a wonderful time at each of these: they were all hugely blessed by God's Spirit and a bright, friendly atmosphere. People came to know Jesus, and they got in touch with friends they'll keep forever. But as usual, the highlights of O-Week were the unplanned moments when God took over and did something great.
On the Saturday, which also happened to be Valentine's Day, we had planned a Church Crawl, a walking tour to show first-years where all the churches in central Grahamstown are and what they're like, to encourage them to visit some and find one to call home. It was a great idea, but for one thing: it was raining that night.
I should have smelt trouble when on Thursday I saw that rain was forecast for the day of the Church Crawl, but I blithely thought it would probably happen at some other time in the day and not affect us too much. But on the day, it started raining in the early afternoon, and carried on and on and on and on. Meanwhile, I was praying everywhere I went, asking God to dry up the weather. As the evening drew closer, I oscillated between despair that no one would come and the thing would just be one big fiasco, and hope that things seemed to be clearing up. They didn't.
Nevertheless, about 20 people joined me under the Rhodes Theatre's porch, ready to explore. Among them were some random exchange students staying in Port Elizabeth, who had come up to Grahamstown for the weekend and decided that our Church Crawl was just the kind of guided tour they wanted. These 20 people were the most intrepid students I've ever seen! We squelched all around central Grahamstown in wet shoes, visiting all the churches on the programme with hardly any complaint about the weather.
And the stops at the different churches were wonderful. We'd asked each church to give a five-minute presentation welcoming the students and telling them what their churches were like in the most creative way possible. Some churches had audiovisual presentations; one even led us in five minutes of worship. The presentations showcased the beautiful diversity of Christ's Church, and as a friend remarked to me afterwards, you could feel the presence of God in all of the churches and their warm welcomes. On the way back, the new students excitedly chatted about which church(es) they would visit the next day.
I somehow got the feeling that God had allowed the rain to continue so that only really earnest first-years who loved the Church would be brave enough to come along with us. These people had been stretched in what they were prepared to do to find where God wanted them to be, and he blessed them greatly for it.
Then on Monday afternoon, after O-Week had finally wound up, and I was trying to slow down to the normality of termtime life, I got a random phone call saying something like "Hi, is that Ian? The university gave us your number. We're on a prayer journey, and would like to know if you have anything on that we can participate in today." I told the guy on the phone that his team could come and pray in our prayer room, and agreed to meet them to show them the way in an hour's time.
When I met them, I found out that they were from United Christian Student Association (UCSA) in Jeffreys Bay, that they were going around the Eastern Cape praying in different places, and had been led by the Spirit to stop in Grahamstown. Here they had found out that the previous week was O-Week and that it was a big event in the life of the city, so they had gone to the university administration, who had directed them to me. I told them how much of a Godsend they were, and how much in need of prayer we were. I explained that while the Christian societies had made great gains over O-Week, there were also tragic setbacks, such as the rape of a student in a local pub on Friday night. They prayed with me in the prayer room, writing encouragements on our posters on the walls and in the prayer journal we kept in the room for O-Week. They prayed for mercy for the many people here who have turned away from God, and really just strengthened us, saying that revival here would not come quickly or easily, but it will happen.
The prayer team had been going around completely on faith, not arranging places to stay ahead of time. So that evening, I tried to find people who would be willing to put some of them up for the night, when I went to our men's ministry fellowship meeting at church. I got a few very kind offers, but when I called them again, I found that God had already provided them with accommodation. He's so amazing!
So I'm left now without having got much academic work done in a week and a bit, wondering at what God is doing and trying to fit all the pieces together. I can't wait to see what the final picture will look like, but what I do know is that these are just a few baby steps of obedience on the great adventure of following Jesus. Watch this space!
Take Tuesday morning. I was in the Linguistics department and one of the lecturers asked me how I was. "Well, but sleep-deprived," was my answer.
"Why?" he asked.
"It's O-Week," I said.
"Oh, why did I ask?" he replied, not daring to probe for specifics.
Little did he know that the reason I was sleep-deprived was that I'd woken up before 5 that morning to take a graveyard shift in our O-Week 24-hour prayer room, after getting to bed past midnight, having socialized the evening away at an Isaiah 26:8 coffee bar. Just to top it off, I'd done a 30km training ride on my bike with my digsmate James after my prayer room slot.
As Christians @ Rhodes chairperson, I planned to spread myself out, visiting at least one evening event hosted by each Christian society. I had a wonderful time at each of these: they were all hugely blessed by God's Spirit and a bright, friendly atmosphere. People came to know Jesus, and they got in touch with friends they'll keep forever. But as usual, the highlights of O-Week were the unplanned moments when God took over and did something great.
On the Saturday, which also happened to be Valentine's Day, we had planned a Church Crawl, a walking tour to show first-years where all the churches in central Grahamstown are and what they're like, to encourage them to visit some and find one to call home. It was a great idea, but for one thing: it was raining that night.
I should have smelt trouble when on Thursday I saw that rain was forecast for the day of the Church Crawl, but I blithely thought it would probably happen at some other time in the day and not affect us too much. But on the day, it started raining in the early afternoon, and carried on and on and on and on. Meanwhile, I was praying everywhere I went, asking God to dry up the weather. As the evening drew closer, I oscillated between despair that no one would come and the thing would just be one big fiasco, and hope that things seemed to be clearing up. They didn't.
Nevertheless, about 20 people joined me under the Rhodes Theatre's porch, ready to explore. Among them were some random exchange students staying in Port Elizabeth, who had come up to Grahamstown for the weekend and decided that our Church Crawl was just the kind of guided tour they wanted. These 20 people were the most intrepid students I've ever seen! We squelched all around central Grahamstown in wet shoes, visiting all the churches on the programme with hardly any complaint about the weather.
And the stops at the different churches were wonderful. We'd asked each church to give a five-minute presentation welcoming the students and telling them what their churches were like in the most creative way possible. Some churches had audiovisual presentations; one even led us in five minutes of worship. The presentations showcased the beautiful diversity of Christ's Church, and as a friend remarked to me afterwards, you could feel the presence of God in all of the churches and their warm welcomes. On the way back, the new students excitedly chatted about which church(es) they would visit the next day.
I somehow got the feeling that God had allowed the rain to continue so that only really earnest first-years who loved the Church would be brave enough to come along with us. These people had been stretched in what they were prepared to do to find where God wanted them to be, and he blessed them greatly for it.
Then on Monday afternoon, after O-Week had finally wound up, and I was trying to slow down to the normality of termtime life, I got a random phone call saying something like "Hi, is that Ian? The university gave us your number. We're on a prayer journey, and would like to know if you have anything on that we can participate in today." I told the guy on the phone that his team could come and pray in our prayer room, and agreed to meet them to show them the way in an hour's time.
When I met them, I found out that they were from United Christian Student Association (UCSA) in Jeffreys Bay, that they were going around the Eastern Cape praying in different places, and had been led by the Spirit to stop in Grahamstown. Here they had found out that the previous week was O-Week and that it was a big event in the life of the city, so they had gone to the university administration, who had directed them to me. I told them how much of a Godsend they were, and how much in need of prayer we were. I explained that while the Christian societies had made great gains over O-Week, there were also tragic setbacks, such as the rape of a student in a local pub on Friday night. They prayed with me in the prayer room, writing encouragements on our posters on the walls and in the prayer journal we kept in the room for O-Week. They prayed for mercy for the many people here who have turned away from God, and really just strengthened us, saying that revival here would not come quickly or easily, but it will happen.
The prayer team had been going around completely on faith, not arranging places to stay ahead of time. So that evening, I tried to find people who would be willing to put some of them up for the night, when I went to our men's ministry fellowship meeting at church. I got a few very kind offers, but when I called them again, I found that God had already provided them with accommodation. He's so amazing!
So I'm left now without having got much academic work done in a week and a bit, wondering at what God is doing and trying to fit all the pieces together. I can't wait to see what the final picture will look like, but what I do know is that these are just a few baby steps of obedience on the great adventure of following Jesus. Watch this space!
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Saddle up Your Horses!
A couple weeks ago I had a moment. It was a stunningly relaxed, balmy summer Sunday, and I was taking full advantage of it, lying on my bed and listening to a CD of beautiful Christian rock I had borrowed from my digsmate. There it hit me: There's no other place in the world where I'd want to be than right now and right here with God. There's no other life I'd rather live than the one I'm living now with him. It's the great adventure of following Christ.
Now to understand this moment of mine fully, we need to back up to last year, when I was doing something pretty ordinary, writing an advertisement for a Christians @ Rhodes term service to send out to a general student mailing list. A little while later, I got a reply from the list administrator, a powerful official in the Dean of Students' office, saying that she'd seen my advert and wanted to know if we could advertise a march that the Dean of Students division was organising for right after the service. I said I'd look into it, and we did announce the march at the service. I was the only one who went through to it. It wasn't hugely meaningful for me; I don't even remember what it was for.
But the official in the Dean of Students' office now had my email address, and I'd established some kind of vague contact with her. Now you must understand that the Dean of Students division and the Christian community on campus have traditionally not been seen to have a great relationship, due to a bit of a sour history. So I was very surprised when this official emailed me a couple weeks ago, asking if Christians @ Rhodes would like to co-host an event with them as part of Anti-Alcohol Abuse Week. I thought it was a great idea, and the rest of the leadership team agreed.
Meanwhile, Joe, the Isaiah 26:8 society chairperson, had emailed me in December about the possibility of Christians @ Rhodes negotiating with the other Christian societies about doing a joint programme of Orientation Week evening events. In the past, each society had just done their own thing to reach out to first-years during Orientation Week, leaving us open to criticisms that we were just recruiting for our own societies, which according to the Dean of Students division was a no-no. I thought it was worth a try to organise a joint programme, so I went ahead and started talking with the other societies about it.
Unfortunately, by the time everyone woke up to the new year, some societies' O-Week programmes were already in place, and so we weren't able to organise one combined event for every night of the week as we had hoped. Instead, I thought of designing one poster with all the societies' activities on it, so that people could get the picture that we were working together and not trying to compete with each other. Everyone was enthusiastic about this idea.
Then when I got to Grahamstown, I scheduled an appointment with a couple of pastors to talk about the plans for O-Week. One pastor told me that he'd been pleading unsuccessfully with the official in the Dean of Students' office to let his society advertise their events on campus. However, the official said to him that if Christians @ Rhodes wanted to put up a poster, we would be allowed to do it. He suggested that we add a combined Christians @ Rhodes event to the poster as well, to make it look less like Christians @ Rhodes advertising what the different societies were doing, and more like an O-Week programme that we were sharing with the societies. I told him that I'd speak with the official and see what she'd let us get away with.
I must admit I was rather nervous, and took a good amount of prayer and false-starts before I could go up to her office and speak to her. But when we chatted, I talked about the usual animosity that there seemed to be between the Dean of Students division and the Christian societies around O-Week, and said I thought there was a way we could co-operate. I told her about the idea of the joint poster and combined event, and said I could negotiate with the societies to try to prevent clashes between their events and the official Dean of Students/SRC events. She not only allowed us to put up a poster, but also said that she would be happy for her office to stick it up in all the university residences! I thanked her, and struggled to keep my cool until I was safely out of the building. But once I was outside, I had to shout and sing and dance around for joy. With the bad vibes that usually seemed to exist between us and the Dean of Students division, this was a miracle!
So two days later, I found myself on my bed listening to music and thinking through all this. I laughed to myself, hardly believing that somehow I had gone from negotiating between the Christian societies to mediating between the Christian community and the Dean of Students division, and that now the official I had feared for so long was offering to stick up our posters for us! These are things that only God can do.
And I thought, "What other kind of life would I be living? What could be more of an adventure than this? What work is there that satisfies like serving God?" As I said to a friend a couple of nights later, I know I haven't arrived yet. I have so much still to learn, so much to surrender to God. But I know I'm on the way there, and the journey is literally incredible! God is on the move here.
And so, as an old Steven Curtis Chapman song goes, it's time to saddle up our horses and ride out into the wild unknown of God's grace. Who knows what we may find this year?
Now to understand this moment of mine fully, we need to back up to last year, when I was doing something pretty ordinary, writing an advertisement for a Christians @ Rhodes term service to send out to a general student mailing list. A little while later, I got a reply from the list administrator, a powerful official in the Dean of Students' office, saying that she'd seen my advert and wanted to know if we could advertise a march that the Dean of Students division was organising for right after the service. I said I'd look into it, and we did announce the march at the service. I was the only one who went through to it. It wasn't hugely meaningful for me; I don't even remember what it was for.
But the official in the Dean of Students' office now had my email address, and I'd established some kind of vague contact with her. Now you must understand that the Dean of Students division and the Christian community on campus have traditionally not been seen to have a great relationship, due to a bit of a sour history. So I was very surprised when this official emailed me a couple weeks ago, asking if Christians @ Rhodes would like to co-host an event with them as part of Anti-Alcohol Abuse Week. I thought it was a great idea, and the rest of the leadership team agreed.
Meanwhile, Joe, the Isaiah 26:8 society chairperson, had emailed me in December about the possibility of Christians @ Rhodes negotiating with the other Christian societies about doing a joint programme of Orientation Week evening events. In the past, each society had just done their own thing to reach out to first-years during Orientation Week, leaving us open to criticisms that we were just recruiting for our own societies, which according to the Dean of Students division was a no-no. I thought it was worth a try to organise a joint programme, so I went ahead and started talking with the other societies about it.
Unfortunately, by the time everyone woke up to the new year, some societies' O-Week programmes were already in place, and so we weren't able to organise one combined event for every night of the week as we had hoped. Instead, I thought of designing one poster with all the societies' activities on it, so that people could get the picture that we were working together and not trying to compete with each other. Everyone was enthusiastic about this idea.
Then when I got to Grahamstown, I scheduled an appointment with a couple of pastors to talk about the plans for O-Week. One pastor told me that he'd been pleading unsuccessfully with the official in the Dean of Students' office to let his society advertise their events on campus. However, the official said to him that if Christians @ Rhodes wanted to put up a poster, we would be allowed to do it. He suggested that we add a combined Christians @ Rhodes event to the poster as well, to make it look less like Christians @ Rhodes advertising what the different societies were doing, and more like an O-Week programme that we were sharing with the societies. I told him that I'd speak with the official and see what she'd let us get away with.
I must admit I was rather nervous, and took a good amount of prayer and false-starts before I could go up to her office and speak to her. But when we chatted, I talked about the usual animosity that there seemed to be between the Dean of Students division and the Christian societies around O-Week, and said I thought there was a way we could co-operate. I told her about the idea of the joint poster and combined event, and said I could negotiate with the societies to try to prevent clashes between their events and the official Dean of Students/SRC events. She not only allowed us to put up a poster, but also said that she would be happy for her office to stick it up in all the university residences! I thanked her, and struggled to keep my cool until I was safely out of the building. But once I was outside, I had to shout and sing and dance around for joy. With the bad vibes that usually seemed to exist between us and the Dean of Students division, this was a miracle!
So two days later, I found myself on my bed listening to music and thinking through all this. I laughed to myself, hardly believing that somehow I had gone from negotiating between the Christian societies to mediating between the Christian community and the Dean of Students division, and that now the official I had feared for so long was offering to stick up our posters for us! These are things that only God can do.
And I thought, "What other kind of life would I be living? What could be more of an adventure than this? What work is there that satisfies like serving God?" As I said to a friend a couple of nights later, I know I haven't arrived yet. I have so much still to learn, so much to surrender to God. But I know I'm on the way there, and the journey is literally incredible! God is on the move here.
And so, as an old Steven Curtis Chapman song goes, it's time to saddle up our horses and ride out into the wild unknown of God's grace. Who knows what we may find this year?
Friday, January 30, 2009
Three Days in Parliament
I'm happy to report that I'm back in Grahamstown and slowly settling in to digs life. It's been an exciting time, with plenty of plans milling around in my head for Christians @ Rhodes and for my Master's degree. And that's why I ended up spending three of my last days in Cape Town at Parliament.
You see, last year a woman in my parents' church who is one of the managers of Parliament's operations happened to mention to my Mom that there were a couple of areas in Parliament that were desperately in need of some linguistic research. My Mom told me, and I had an interview with the Parliament manager. After hearing that Parliament was opening early for the year, I scheduled in a few days to observe what was going on there and see if there was an area I could concentrate my Master's degree on, before I headed back to Grahamstown,.
Well, the linguistic side of things was very interesting, but I'm going to have about two years to look at that, so I thought I'd blog just about the experience of being there.
I took a bus into the centre of Cape Town on a Tuesday to go and sit in on a parliamentary committee meeting which was set up to decide whether or not to fire Vusi Pikoli, the National Director of Public Prosecutions. The bus leaves my parents' neighbourhood way early to get to town by 9am, and the meeting only started at 10am, so I packed my Bible and snuck into St George's Cathedral for a quiet time before the meeting started.
Getting into Parliament in the first place was quite a mission. I expected security checks, but nothing like what I found there. At first I called at a boom gate into the parliamentary precinct, but the policeman on duty there said I wasn't allowed in without a permit. I had heard the previous day that there was a visitors' centre, so I asked the cop for directions to that. I had to walk around a long block and through some glass doors and a metal detector before I could even report to the visitors' centre desk and ask for a permit. Then I could walk through to the building where the meeting was to be held, through another metal detector. All this time I was rather clueless about where to go and what to do. My mind cast back to those anthropologists we had talked about in class, adventurers who landed on a remote island armed with little more than a toothbrush and hunting knife, unable to understand the natives' language. Fortunately a security guard at the second metal detector saw my lostness and showed me through to the Old Assembly Chamber where the meeting was happening.
I was directed to the public gallery, where I could watch the action happen one floor below. MPs milled in and out, shaking hands and hugging each other with surprising congeniality. Then they took their place sitting in the rows of green leather benches staring each other down along the sides of the room: four rows for the ruling party on the left; four rows for the opposition on the right; chairpersons in three chairs in the middle, facing towards me. All the benches had desks in front of them with microphones, and whenever people wanted to speak, they would push a button on their desks to switch on a little red light indicating that their microphone was on.
On the first day I was there, Vusi Pikoli gave a presentation on why he should be allowed to keep his job, followed by some long question-and-answer sessions where he was grilled by the MPs. The next day Minister of Justice Enver Surty and Frank Chikane from the president's office came in ostensibly to answer questions from the MPs, but really just to give reasons why he should be fired. The whole thing was quite a charade actually, with the ANC MPs desperately scratching around for reasons to fire Pikoli and the opposition expressing its disapproval at every turn, asking Pikoli what he thinks the real motive for his suspension was. Someone's written a very good opinion piece on the committee meetings I went to, which I suggest you read if you'd like to find out more about the political issues at the meetings: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-01-26-tragedy-and-farce. I don't know if I could say it better, so I won't.
Two of the things that struck me about my visit to Parliament were the put-on politeness of the MPs and the genuine friendliness of the staff that I talked to. Parliamentary etiquette prescribes a very polite way of saying things: plenty of 'thank you's are said and MPs are referred to as "The Honourable" so and so. This type of language is used even when debate gets heated. Also, Chikane, Surty and some of the ANC MPs professed to be friends of Pikoli on the one hand, but harshly criticised him, arguing that he was unfit for office, on the other. I can only imagine how much he felt betrayed by this.
On the other hand, I found the parliamentary staff excellent in their willingness to go out of their way to help me. The security guard who showed me into the public gallery struck up a conversation with me the next day, showing interest in what I was doing. And on my third day in Parliament I had an appointment to interview the head of the language services division. He was wonderful in giving me a tour around the division and in introducing me to others whose work I was interested in. I had a very fruitful morning talking to them.
Why was there such a difference between the false politeness of the MPs and the friendliness of the parliamentary staff? I think it must have something to do with their respective jobs: the staff are there to serve, while the MPs are there to oversee what government does, be critical and score a few political points along the way if possible. But it was more than just a job thing; it was an attitude thing. It makes sense of Jesus' words: "You know that in this world kings are tyrants, and officials lord it over the people beneath them. But among you it should be quite different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant." (Matthew 20:25-26). If we are servants, we'll have the right attitude to leadership, and false politeness will fade away in the face of genuine interest in others' well-being. Or at least that's what my three days in Parliament taught me.
You see, last year a woman in my parents' church who is one of the managers of Parliament's operations happened to mention to my Mom that there were a couple of areas in Parliament that were desperately in need of some linguistic research. My Mom told me, and I had an interview with the Parliament manager. After hearing that Parliament was opening early for the year, I scheduled in a few days to observe what was going on there and see if there was an area I could concentrate my Master's degree on, before I headed back to Grahamstown,.
Well, the linguistic side of things was very interesting, but I'm going to have about two years to look at that, so I thought I'd blog just about the experience of being there.
I took a bus into the centre of Cape Town on a Tuesday to go and sit in on a parliamentary committee meeting which was set up to decide whether or not to fire Vusi Pikoli, the National Director of Public Prosecutions. The bus leaves my parents' neighbourhood way early to get to town by 9am, and the meeting only started at 10am, so I packed my Bible and snuck into St George's Cathedral for a quiet time before the meeting started.
Getting into Parliament in the first place was quite a mission. I expected security checks, but nothing like what I found there. At first I called at a boom gate into the parliamentary precinct, but the policeman on duty there said I wasn't allowed in without a permit. I had heard the previous day that there was a visitors' centre, so I asked the cop for directions to that. I had to walk around a long block and through some glass doors and a metal detector before I could even report to the visitors' centre desk and ask for a permit. Then I could walk through to the building where the meeting was to be held, through another metal detector. All this time I was rather clueless about where to go and what to do. My mind cast back to those anthropologists we had talked about in class, adventurers who landed on a remote island armed with little more than a toothbrush and hunting knife, unable to understand the natives' language. Fortunately a security guard at the second metal detector saw my lostness and showed me through to the Old Assembly Chamber where the meeting was happening.
I was directed to the public gallery, where I could watch the action happen one floor below. MPs milled in and out, shaking hands and hugging each other with surprising congeniality. Then they took their place sitting in the rows of green leather benches staring each other down along the sides of the room: four rows for the ruling party on the left; four rows for the opposition on the right; chairpersons in three chairs in the middle, facing towards me. All the benches had desks in front of them with microphones, and whenever people wanted to speak, they would push a button on their desks to switch on a little red light indicating that their microphone was on.
On the first day I was there, Vusi Pikoli gave a presentation on why he should be allowed to keep his job, followed by some long question-and-answer sessions where he was grilled by the MPs. The next day Minister of Justice Enver Surty and Frank Chikane from the president's office came in ostensibly to answer questions from the MPs, but really just to give reasons why he should be fired. The whole thing was quite a charade actually, with the ANC MPs desperately scratching around for reasons to fire Pikoli and the opposition expressing its disapproval at every turn, asking Pikoli what he thinks the real motive for his suspension was. Someone's written a very good opinion piece on the committee meetings I went to, which I suggest you read if you'd like to find out more about the political issues at the meetings: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-01-26-tragedy-and-farce. I don't know if I could say it better, so I won't.
Two of the things that struck me about my visit to Parliament were the put-on politeness of the MPs and the genuine friendliness of the staff that I talked to. Parliamentary etiquette prescribes a very polite way of saying things: plenty of 'thank you's are said and MPs are referred to as "The Honourable" so and so. This type of language is used even when debate gets heated. Also, Chikane, Surty and some of the ANC MPs professed to be friends of Pikoli on the one hand, but harshly criticised him, arguing that he was unfit for office, on the other. I can only imagine how much he felt betrayed by this.
On the other hand, I found the parliamentary staff excellent in their willingness to go out of their way to help me. The security guard who showed me into the public gallery struck up a conversation with me the next day, showing interest in what I was doing. And on my third day in Parliament I had an appointment to interview the head of the language services division. He was wonderful in giving me a tour around the division and in introducing me to others whose work I was interested in. I had a very fruitful morning talking to them.
Why was there such a difference between the false politeness of the MPs and the friendliness of the parliamentary staff? I think it must have something to do with their respective jobs: the staff are there to serve, while the MPs are there to oversee what government does, be critical and score a few political points along the way if possible. But it was more than just a job thing; it was an attitude thing. It makes sense of Jesus' words: "You know that in this world kings are tyrants, and officials lord it over the people beneath them. But among you it should be quite different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant." (Matthew 20:25-26). If we are servants, we'll have the right attitude to leadership, and false politeness will fade away in the face of genuine interest in others' well-being. Or at least that's what my three days in Parliament taught me.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Make Sure the Yoke isn't on You
This weekend I had a tough decision to make, and turned to the Bible for some sound advice. One of the verses I looked up was this one:
"Don't team up with unbelievers." (2 Corinthians 6:14, NLT)
Or, as the more literal ESV has it, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers." Now this is a well-known verse, which in my experience used most of the time to discourage Christians from dating non-believers. You know the drill: "No, Johnny, you can't go out with Jenny, no matter how hot she is, because she's a non-Christian."
"But what if our relationship ends up leading her to Christ?"
"With respect, Johnny, it's more likely it'll end up leading you the other way. Just trust God's Word on this one. You can't be unequally yoked. It just won't work."
Yes, I've said that speech too. And it's true; it's a good one. But is 'teaming up with unbelievers' limited to romantic relationships? Does it mean that I can't even be on the same soccer team with an unbeliever? What on earth does this verse mean? That's what I was wondering.
I had a couple of days of angst about it before I decided to fire up my e-Sword and figure out once and for all what this whole 'unequally yoked' deal is all about. In the Greek.
So here it is: the Greek word for 'unequally-yoked-with' is heterozugeo. If you're sharp, you'll notice that the hetero- part is the same prefix that we use in words like 'heterogeneous' and 'heterosexual' to mean 'other or different'. So that's pretty clear. Being unequally yoked has to do with being connected to people different from you in the sense that they don't believe in Jesus.
The other part, -zugeo, comes from a word that means, um, well, 'yoke'. Now unless you were born in the time of the Voortrekkers you're unlikely ever to have seen one of these things. Apparently a yoke is a big piece of wood that fits over the necks of two oxen pulling an ox-wagon or, more to the point, a plough. So picture you as one of the oxen, and an unbeliever (or a few) harnessed on the other side of this yoke, and you'll get some idea of what the verse is talking about. I took three things out of this (not so comfortable) image.
1. Being 'unequally yoked' is about when you're working together for the same purpose. Oxen are yoked together to pull a wagon or plough a field or otherwise make themselves useful. If you're just hanging around with unbelievers, hoping that you can witness to them and bring them to Christ, there's nothing wrong with that. After all, if we're not around unbelievers, how are we meant to make disciples as Jesus told us to? But if you're working together with unbelievers on something like a business partnership where you've got some common goal, then you may be 'unequally yoked'. Advance to point 2 to find out if you are.
2. Being 'unequally yoked' is about being tied down. After all, if you're an ox, and you're yoked to another ox who wants to turn right, you've gotta turn right with it! It's easy to see how this could be a problem for believers. If you're in a partnership where you're obliged to do something with another person, and he or she starts doing things that don't honour God, you're stuck. This is, I guess, why romantic relationships with non-Christians are not a good idea. Our partners may put us in a position where it's a choice of their way or the highway, and their way involves some dodgy stuff. But on the other side, if you're working together with non-Christians in such a way that you're not obliged to do anything you don't want you, you're fine.
3. Being 'unequally yoked' gets you nowhere. Try to picture a little ox on the right hand side of the yoke, and a huge one on left hand side. Where do you think they're going to go? The big, strong ox will probably pull the wagon and the little ox towards the left, and they'll keep going round in circles. Not so helpful. Neither is teaming up with unbelievers if you're working toward a common purpose, and tied down to each other.
Obviously, it's impossible to get away from all unbelievers, and a bad idea too, as we've seen. So in this world we've constantly got to be checking our relationships to see if we're getting 'unequally yoked', in unhealthy relationships with unbelievers. So ask God to help you make sure that the yoke doesn't get onto you!
"Don't team up with unbelievers." (2 Corinthians 6:14, NLT)
Or, as the more literal ESV has it, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers." Now this is a well-known verse, which in my experience used most of the time to discourage Christians from dating non-believers. You know the drill: "No, Johnny, you can't go out with Jenny, no matter how hot she is, because she's a non-Christian."
"But what if our relationship ends up leading her to Christ?"
"With respect, Johnny, it's more likely it'll end up leading you the other way. Just trust God's Word on this one. You can't be unequally yoked. It just won't work."
Yes, I've said that speech too. And it's true; it's a good one. But is 'teaming up with unbelievers' limited to romantic relationships? Does it mean that I can't even be on the same soccer team with an unbeliever? What on earth does this verse mean? That's what I was wondering.
I had a couple of days of angst about it before I decided to fire up my e-Sword and figure out once and for all what this whole 'unequally yoked' deal is all about. In the Greek.
So here it is: the Greek word for 'unequally-yoked-with' is heterozugeo. If you're sharp, you'll notice that the hetero- part is the same prefix that we use in words like 'heterogeneous' and 'heterosexual' to mean 'other or different'. So that's pretty clear. Being unequally yoked has to do with being connected to people different from you in the sense that they don't believe in Jesus.
The other part, -zugeo, comes from a word that means, um, well, 'yoke'. Now unless you were born in the time of the Voortrekkers you're unlikely ever to have seen one of these things. Apparently a yoke is a big piece of wood that fits over the necks of two oxen pulling an ox-wagon or, more to the point, a plough. So picture you as one of the oxen, and an unbeliever (or a few) harnessed on the other side of this yoke, and you'll get some idea of what the verse is talking about. I took three things out of this (not so comfortable) image.
1. Being 'unequally yoked' is about when you're working together for the same purpose. Oxen are yoked together to pull a wagon or plough a field or otherwise make themselves useful. If you're just hanging around with unbelievers, hoping that you can witness to them and bring them to Christ, there's nothing wrong with that. After all, if we're not around unbelievers, how are we meant to make disciples as Jesus told us to? But if you're working together with unbelievers on something like a business partnership where you've got some common goal, then you may be 'unequally yoked'. Advance to point 2 to find out if you are.
2. Being 'unequally yoked' is about being tied down. After all, if you're an ox, and you're yoked to another ox who wants to turn right, you've gotta turn right with it! It's easy to see how this could be a problem for believers. If you're in a partnership where you're obliged to do something with another person, and he or she starts doing things that don't honour God, you're stuck. This is, I guess, why romantic relationships with non-Christians are not a good idea. Our partners may put us in a position where it's a choice of their way or the highway, and their way involves some dodgy stuff. But on the other side, if you're working together with non-Christians in such a way that you're not obliged to do anything you don't want you, you're fine.
3. Being 'unequally yoked' gets you nowhere. Try to picture a little ox on the right hand side of the yoke, and a huge one on left hand side. Where do you think they're going to go? The big, strong ox will probably pull the wagon and the little ox towards the left, and they'll keep going round in circles. Not so helpful. Neither is teaming up with unbelievers if you're working toward a common purpose, and tied down to each other.
Obviously, it's impossible to get away from all unbelievers, and a bad idea too, as we've seen. So in this world we've constantly got to be checking our relationships to see if we're getting 'unequally yoked', in unhealthy relationships with unbelievers. So ask God to help you make sure that the yoke doesn't get onto you!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
A Correction, or On Sour Grapes and Puckering Mouths
In a couple of recent blog posts, I've been raging on like a minor prophet about how South Africans share a collective responsibility for the recent xenophobic violence and our government's reticence to deal more toughly with Mugabe and his cronies. But while I was on holiday, my father said something that made me change my thinking a little.
We were discussing Ezekiel 18:2-4, where the Lord says, "Why do you quote this proverb in the land of Israel: 'The parents have eaten sour grapes, but their children's mouths pucker at the taste'? As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, you will not say this proverb anymore in Israel. For all people are mine to judge both parents and children alike. And this is my rule: the person who sins will be the one who dies."
The old proverb means that the children will be punished for the actions of their parents. A group would be punished for the actions of those in the group. There was collective responsibility, and collective punishment in Old Testament times. But Ezekiel prophesies about a time when each person will be accountable for his/her own sins; there will be no more collective responsibility. My father pointed this out to us.
In Jeremiah 31:29-30, God cites the same proverb and repeats that it will not be used any more for the same reason. But here this dawn of individual responsibility for sins is associated with the beginning of the new covenant which God negotiated with us through Jesus.
So it seems we don't need to worry that God will judge all of us South Africans for what some people in the government and on the streets have done. But he will judge us for our individual attitudes towards those in need. Seems we still have a lot of repenting to do!
However, that must not stop us from interceding for those in our nation or city who have done wrong and are under judgment. Paul gives us a good example when he says "My heart is filled with bitter sorrow and unending grief for my people, my Jewish brothers and sisters. I would be willing to be forever cursed cut off from Christ! if that would save them" (Romans 9:2-3). Paul would be willing to take his people's sins on himself. And that's exactly what Jesus did when he took our sins on the cross.
These two are brilliant examples for us to keep crying out to God for our people who don't know him, asking that he would save them from their wickedness. There are plenty of others in the Old Testament: Moses, Nehemiah, Daniel. So let's do what they would have done and pray earnestly for our people.
We were discussing Ezekiel 18:2-4, where the Lord says, "Why do you quote this proverb in the land of Israel: 'The parents have eaten sour grapes, but their children's mouths pucker at the taste'? As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, you will not say this proverb anymore in Israel. For all people are mine to judge both parents and children alike. And this is my rule: the person who sins will be the one who dies."
The old proverb means that the children will be punished for the actions of their parents. A group would be punished for the actions of those in the group. There was collective responsibility, and collective punishment in Old Testament times. But Ezekiel prophesies about a time when each person will be accountable for his/her own sins; there will be no more collective responsibility. My father pointed this out to us.
In Jeremiah 31:29-30, God cites the same proverb and repeats that it will not be used any more for the same reason. But here this dawn of individual responsibility for sins is associated with the beginning of the new covenant which God negotiated with us through Jesus.
So it seems we don't need to worry that God will judge all of us South Africans for what some people in the government and on the streets have done. But he will judge us for our individual attitudes towards those in need. Seems we still have a lot of repenting to do!
However, that must not stop us from interceding for those in our nation or city who have done wrong and are under judgment. Paul gives us a good example when he says "My heart is filled with bitter sorrow and unending grief for my people, my Jewish brothers and sisters. I would be willing to be forever cursed cut off from Christ! if that would save them" (Romans 9:2-3). Paul would be willing to take his people's sins on himself. And that's exactly what Jesus did when he took our sins on the cross.
These two are brilliant examples for us to keep crying out to God for our people who don't know him, asking that he would save them from their wickedness. There are plenty of others in the Old Testament: Moses, Nehemiah, Daniel. So let's do what they would have done and pray earnestly for our people.
Being the Bridegroom’s friend
Sunrise. The bridegroom gets up and says to me, "Thus begins the day." It’s his day, his bride’s day, their wedding day. Soon there is a flurry of activity as we all get into our wedding clothes. The other young men in the bridegroom’s entourage descend on the house we’re staying in. His future brother-in-law brings breakfast. As we eat, each of us offers the bridegroom some encouraging words. We crack a few jokes. We ask if he’s feeling nervous, but he says he is confident. All that separates him from his beloved is a walk down the aisle. When the time comes, we rush in convoy across town to the chapel. The bridegroom has come.
It’s been a while since I last blogged, and Christmas, a holiday at Jeffreys Bay and much water has flowed under the bridge since our epic trip up to Harare, Zimbabwe for the wedding of two of my friends. Nevertheless, I thought I owed you, friends, an account of how it went up there. It was an amazing time.
I’ll start with the trip up. I flew up from Cape Town to Johannesburg and met Steve and Ros, two of my friends, up there. And that’s where all the fun started. Suffice it to say that entering Park Station in Johannesburg is like entering a parallel universe where African time (and African efficiency) rules. Our bus was one and a half hours late leaving from Joburg, and although the border crossing was fairly smooth, we were five and a half hours late by the time we reached Harare. And that makes 20 hours on a bus. We dubbed it ‘a wedding bus’ because most of the people on it were not in fact Zimbos going home, but South Africans going to different weddings in Zim. Obviously there are more crazy people like us than we thought. We comforted each other through the trip now and then by saying "This is an adventure!" And it was.
So we arrived in Harare at the dodgiest bus depot where you have to cling to all your luggage in case it decides to grow legs, in the rain, while many of our friends were enjoying the bride's kitchen tea and so could not pick us up. Thank God for Ros’s friend’s father who got us out of there to a place where we could sit and plan our next move. There were a few more communication mishaps and no one seemed to know where I was meant to be staying, so our friends Jess and Emma took me back to their family's home, where I slept (fairly comfortably) on the lounge floor.
The next day Ros and one of her Zim contacts came to take us to Danai Children’s Home, to deliver the supplies we had collected in South Africa for the home. That was one of the most joyful experiences of the trip. The children’s home was a normal suburban house and many of the children were away on Christmas holidays, but most of the babies and toddlers were still there. It was great to see that they all looked well-looked-after, despite all the difficulties of keeping a home afloat in Zim’s collapsed economy. Steve and I had a great time playing with the boys, and the staff were hugely grateful for all the nappies, food, clothes and medicines we brought up.
Jess had found out that I was meant to be staying in the house that Jono had borrowed for himself and some of his friends to stay in around the time of the wedding, and so in the evening he drove Steve and me there. It was great to see my old accountability partner John there.
Well, the next day dawned and it was time for the wedding. The service was at the chapel of the private school where Kath and Jess have been teaching, set among beautiful white buildings and lush, green lawns. It was brilliant to meet some old friends in the parking lot outside, people like Bryan and Phiwe. Inside, a little choir of schoolgirls was rehearsing "Take My Life and Let it Be" for the service. The music was wonderful, with our friend Anne playing the piano and two violinists accompanying her. They played "Ode to Joy" as Kath came down the aisle, looking radiant and (as we said to each other later) "very much like Kath". Of course, Jono wasn’t looking shabby either. Jono and Kath had chosen two very apt Bible verses for the ceremony, Romans 12:1-2 and 1 Peter 1:5-7. The minister, an elderly relative of Kath’s, preached a rambling sermon, but one thing stood out clearly: this was no ordinary couple, because they had chosen not to conform themselves to the pattern of this world, but instead to build their relationship around Christ.
The reception was in Kath’s parents’ huge back garden. When we arrived, everyone was standing on the lawn, talking in clumps and sipping punch while waiters walked around with trays of snacks. After a while the rain came down and chased us all under a marquee where tables had been set out for the meal. I was seated at a table with Lauren, Steve, John, and Jerry and Sarah, both of whom I hadn’t seen for a long time, as well as some others.
It was a true wedding feast: the food was so incredible that for a while we found it hard to believe we were in a starving country. For starters there were springbok carpaccio, pâtés and plenty of other things to put on bread. The main course included lamb on the spit, Zanzibar chicken and beef, and there were little brownies and pecan nut pies for dessert, as well as a range of cheeses. Interspersed with this were all the usual speeches and toasts and a litany of thanks for different relatives who had brought up different parts of the meal from South Africa with them.
One of the best things about the reception was that it was long and leisurely, starting at noon and stretching into the evening, allowing plenty of time to catch up with old friends. When many of your guests have come a long, long way for the wedding, you might as well make it last. There was a great vibe as families and friends came up and danced together, and I’m glad to report that Jerry and Steve did an excellent rendition of "The Shower" on the dance floor. Jono and Kath must have left at about 6:30pm, and we left a little later, at 7, to go back to the borrowed house minus the bridegroom and some of the groomsmen who’d been staying there.
As you might have gathered from my intro to this post, I felt many times during the trip as though I were in one of the Bible’s parables about a wedding. One scripture that I identified with a lot was John 3:29-30, where John the Baptist says "A bridegroom’s friend rejoices with him. I am the bridegroom’s friend, and I am filled with joy at his success. He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less." Of course, the bridegroom he was talking about was Jesus, and his bride is the people he has redeemed, his Church.
Now, the bottom line of this lesson is that it’s not about me. At the wedding it was my friend the bridegroom’s day, and I was there to support him and celebrate with him, not to receive any recognition for myself. I might have spent much time and money getting there and enduring such a hard journey, but I didn't need or deserve any recognition for that, because it was a privilege to be there. In the same way, when we serve God, it’s not about us. We may have sacrificed a lot of time, money and effort to serve, but that’s not the point. The point is that we have the amazing privilege of seeing what God is doing to win people to himself, and partying with him when it happens. Our egos must stay out of the picture. We must never claim any of God’s glory for ourselves.
All in all we had a valuable time in Harare. Among other things, it was good to see for myself in more detail how dire the situation in Zim is, but how people are managing to survive through God's grace alone. Let's keep praying for them! The journey back was just as arduous (and late) as the journey there, but I was back with my family for Christmas, enjoying another celebration as the Bridegroom's friend.
It’s been a while since I last blogged, and Christmas, a holiday at Jeffreys Bay and much water has flowed under the bridge since our epic trip up to Harare, Zimbabwe for the wedding of two of my friends. Nevertheless, I thought I owed you, friends, an account of how it went up there. It was an amazing time.
I’ll start with the trip up. I flew up from Cape Town to Johannesburg and met Steve and Ros, two of my friends, up there. And that’s where all the fun started. Suffice it to say that entering Park Station in Johannesburg is like entering a parallel universe where African time (and African efficiency) rules. Our bus was one and a half hours late leaving from Joburg, and although the border crossing was fairly smooth, we were five and a half hours late by the time we reached Harare. And that makes 20 hours on a bus. We dubbed it ‘a wedding bus’ because most of the people on it were not in fact Zimbos going home, but South Africans going to different weddings in Zim. Obviously there are more crazy people like us than we thought. We comforted each other through the trip now and then by saying "This is an adventure!" And it was.
So we arrived in Harare at the dodgiest bus depot where you have to cling to all your luggage in case it decides to grow legs, in the rain, while many of our friends were enjoying the bride's kitchen tea and so could not pick us up. Thank God for Ros’s friend’s father who got us out of there to a place where we could sit and plan our next move. There were a few more communication mishaps and no one seemed to know where I was meant to be staying, so our friends Jess and Emma took me back to their family's home, where I slept (fairly comfortably) on the lounge floor.
The next day Ros and one of her Zim contacts came to take us to Danai Children’s Home, to deliver the supplies we had collected in South Africa for the home. That was one of the most joyful experiences of the trip. The children’s home was a normal suburban house and many of the children were away on Christmas holidays, but most of the babies and toddlers were still there. It was great to see that they all looked well-looked-after, despite all the difficulties of keeping a home afloat in Zim’s collapsed economy. Steve and I had a great time playing with the boys, and the staff were hugely grateful for all the nappies, food, clothes and medicines we brought up.
Jess had found out that I was meant to be staying in the house that Jono had borrowed for himself and some of his friends to stay in around the time of the wedding, and so in the evening he drove Steve and me there. It was great to see my old accountability partner John there.
Well, the next day dawned and it was time for the wedding. The service was at the chapel of the private school where Kath and Jess have been teaching, set among beautiful white buildings and lush, green lawns. It was brilliant to meet some old friends in the parking lot outside, people like Bryan and Phiwe. Inside, a little choir of schoolgirls was rehearsing "Take My Life and Let it Be" for the service. The music was wonderful, with our friend Anne playing the piano and two violinists accompanying her. They played "Ode to Joy" as Kath came down the aisle, looking radiant and (as we said to each other later) "very much like Kath". Of course, Jono wasn’t looking shabby either. Jono and Kath had chosen two very apt Bible verses for the ceremony, Romans 12:1-2 and 1 Peter 1:5-7. The minister, an elderly relative of Kath’s, preached a rambling sermon, but one thing stood out clearly: this was no ordinary couple, because they had chosen not to conform themselves to the pattern of this world, but instead to build their relationship around Christ.
The reception was in Kath’s parents’ huge back garden. When we arrived, everyone was standing on the lawn, talking in clumps and sipping punch while waiters walked around with trays of snacks. After a while the rain came down and chased us all under a marquee where tables had been set out for the meal. I was seated at a table with Lauren, Steve, John, and Jerry and Sarah, both of whom I hadn’t seen for a long time, as well as some others.
It was a true wedding feast: the food was so incredible that for a while we found it hard to believe we were in a starving country. For starters there were springbok carpaccio, pâtés and plenty of other things to put on bread. The main course included lamb on the spit, Zanzibar chicken and beef, and there were little brownies and pecan nut pies for dessert, as well as a range of cheeses. Interspersed with this were all the usual speeches and toasts and a litany of thanks for different relatives who had brought up different parts of the meal from South Africa with them.
One of the best things about the reception was that it was long and leisurely, starting at noon and stretching into the evening, allowing plenty of time to catch up with old friends. When many of your guests have come a long, long way for the wedding, you might as well make it last. There was a great vibe as families and friends came up and danced together, and I’m glad to report that Jerry and Steve did an excellent rendition of "The Shower" on the dance floor. Jono and Kath must have left at about 6:30pm, and we left a little later, at 7, to go back to the borrowed house minus the bridegroom and some of the groomsmen who’d been staying there.
As you might have gathered from my intro to this post, I felt many times during the trip as though I were in one of the Bible’s parables about a wedding. One scripture that I identified with a lot was John 3:29-30, where John the Baptist says "A bridegroom’s friend rejoices with him. I am the bridegroom’s friend, and I am filled with joy at his success. He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less." Of course, the bridegroom he was talking about was Jesus, and his bride is the people he has redeemed, his Church.
Now, the bottom line of this lesson is that it’s not about me. At the wedding it was my friend the bridegroom’s day, and I was there to support him and celebrate with him, not to receive any recognition for myself. I might have spent much time and money getting there and enduring such a hard journey, but I didn't need or deserve any recognition for that, because it was a privilege to be there. In the same way, when we serve God, it’s not about us. We may have sacrificed a lot of time, money and effort to serve, but that’s not the point. The point is that we have the amazing privilege of seeing what God is doing to win people to himself, and partying with him when it happens. Our egos must stay out of the picture. We must never claim any of God’s glory for ourselves.
All in all we had a valuable time in Harare. Among other things, it was good to see for myself in more detail how dire the situation in Zim is, but how people are managing to survive through God's grace alone. Let's keep praying for them! The journey back was just as arduous (and late) as the journey there, but I was back with my family for Christmas, enjoying another celebration as the Bridegroom's friend.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Be reconciled to God!
I'm sitting in my bedroom, enjoying the exquisite Cape Town summer weather coming through my window. Everything seems to have slowed down today, even the southeasterly wind which is my nemesis every time I set out on a bicycle. It's December 16, the Day of Reconciliation.
Now I realize I'm getting a little predictable in marking these high days and holidays, but 'tis the season to do that, and we often let these days go by without thinking of their beautiful meanings. Among other things, today is my parents' wedding anniversary. Back when they were married, it was the Day of the Vow, and they joked that theirs was the Vow of the Day. The fact that it's the Day of Reconciliation doesn't mean that there is too much reconciliation needed between them, thank the Lord.
But a much bigger reconciliation is needed, I've been realizing recently: a reconciliation between the people of South Africa and God. Anyone with a head for the news can see the many ways we've rebelled against him. God gave us a peaceful transition to democracy which was nothing short of miraculous (anyone doubting that should pick up A Witness For Ever by Michael Cassidy for a good read of the incredible things that happened behind the scenes in the negotiations leading up to 1994). Yet since then we've turned our backs on him in just about every way possible. I was watching a documentary yesterday called Behind the Rainbow, tracing the history of the ANC from the 1950s up to the divisive Polokwane conference last year, and the overwhelming sense one got was of a nation that, in the words of the narrator, had "lost its innocence".
One thing that shows this incredibly starkly is our collective attitude towards our neighbour, Zimbabwe. Last week I was reading the obscure minor prophet Obadiah, who prophesied doom over Edom because of their actions towards their neighbours Israel, and I was mortified to see how many of God's judgments against them could be levelled at us:
"You deserted your relatives in Israel [Zimbabwe] during their time of greatest need. You stood aloof, refusing to lift a finger to help when foreign invaders [or a tyrannical government] carried off their wealth and cast lots to divide up Jerusalem [or their farmland]... You shouldn't have done this! You shouldn't have gloated when they exiled your relatives [from Zimbabwe] to distant lands... You shouldn't have stood at the crossroads, killing those who tried to escape. You shouldn't have captured the survivors, handing them over to their enemies [the Zimbabwean authorities] in that terrible time of trouble." (Obadiah 11-14)
It's scandalous. South Africans have done all these things. I can only conclude that we're under God's judgment in a terrible way unless we repent and reconcile with God.
But there's hope. In Ezekiel 22:30, God speaks about looking for someone who would rebuild a symbolic wall of righteousness guarding Israel, someone who would stand in the gap in the wall so he would not have to destroy the land. I know that God has many people in this country who are willing to stand in the gaps of our wall of righteousness.
I'm glad to report that many South Africans are doing that, working against all that's been done to Zim. We've heard the calls from various important people for the government to step up pressure on the Zanu-PF rulers of Zim, and the even more strident calls for Mugabe to be removed entirely. And on the ground, I've just personally collected over R3 200 in donations to take up to a needy orphanage and clinic in the country when I go up there this week for the wedding of Jono and Kath, two of my friends. Add that to the over R6 000 and 51kg of goods my friend Ros has collected, and we're going to be bringing some significant help to those who need it. People have been amazingly generous. And this tide of Christmas goodwill is catching on across the country, as the body of Christ finds ways to channel supplies to people in Zim.
According to 2 Corinthians 5:20, we are Christ's ambassadors in this country. We need to be urging people to be reconciled to him after all the sins we've done, against God, our neighbours and our compatriots. May God please show us how to do this.
Please pray for my friends and me as we make our way over to Zimbabwe, for favour with the border officials and safety. But even more importantly, pray for our country, that the hope of "God and sinners reconciled" would prove true for all of us this Christmas.
Now I realize I'm getting a little predictable in marking these high days and holidays, but 'tis the season to do that, and we often let these days go by without thinking of their beautiful meanings. Among other things, today is my parents' wedding anniversary. Back when they were married, it was the Day of the Vow, and they joked that theirs was the Vow of the Day. The fact that it's the Day of Reconciliation doesn't mean that there is too much reconciliation needed between them, thank the Lord.
But a much bigger reconciliation is needed, I've been realizing recently: a reconciliation between the people of South Africa and God. Anyone with a head for the news can see the many ways we've rebelled against him. God gave us a peaceful transition to democracy which was nothing short of miraculous (anyone doubting that should pick up A Witness For Ever by Michael Cassidy for a good read of the incredible things that happened behind the scenes in the negotiations leading up to 1994). Yet since then we've turned our backs on him in just about every way possible. I was watching a documentary yesterday called Behind the Rainbow, tracing the history of the ANC from the 1950s up to the divisive Polokwane conference last year, and the overwhelming sense one got was of a nation that, in the words of the narrator, had "lost its innocence".
One thing that shows this incredibly starkly is our collective attitude towards our neighbour, Zimbabwe. Last week I was reading the obscure minor prophet Obadiah, who prophesied doom over Edom because of their actions towards their neighbours Israel, and I was mortified to see how many of God's judgments against them could be levelled at us:
"You deserted your relatives in Israel [Zimbabwe] during their time of greatest need. You stood aloof, refusing to lift a finger to help when foreign invaders [or a tyrannical government] carried off their wealth and cast lots to divide up Jerusalem [or their farmland]... You shouldn't have done this! You shouldn't have gloated when they exiled your relatives [from Zimbabwe] to distant lands... You shouldn't have stood at the crossroads, killing those who tried to escape. You shouldn't have captured the survivors, handing them over to their enemies [the Zimbabwean authorities] in that terrible time of trouble." (Obadiah 11-14)
It's scandalous. South Africans have done all these things. I can only conclude that we're under God's judgment in a terrible way unless we repent and reconcile with God.
But there's hope. In Ezekiel 22:30, God speaks about looking for someone who would rebuild a symbolic wall of righteousness guarding Israel, someone who would stand in the gap in the wall so he would not have to destroy the land. I know that God has many people in this country who are willing to stand in the gaps of our wall of righteousness.
I'm glad to report that many South Africans are doing that, working against all that's been done to Zim. We've heard the calls from various important people for the government to step up pressure on the Zanu-PF rulers of Zim, and the even more strident calls for Mugabe to be removed entirely. And on the ground, I've just personally collected over R3 200 in donations to take up to a needy orphanage and clinic in the country when I go up there this week for the wedding of Jono and Kath, two of my friends. Add that to the over R6 000 and 51kg of goods my friend Ros has collected, and we're going to be bringing some significant help to those who need it. People have been amazingly generous. And this tide of Christmas goodwill is catching on across the country, as the body of Christ finds ways to channel supplies to people in Zim.
According to 2 Corinthians 5:20, we are Christ's ambassadors in this country. We need to be urging people to be reconciled to him after all the sins we've done, against God, our neighbours and our compatriots. May God please show us how to do this.
Please pray for my friends and me as we make our way over to Zimbabwe, for favour with the border officials and safety. But even more importantly, pray for our country, that the hope of "God and sinners reconciled" would prove true for all of us this Christmas.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Beating the Holiday Burden
It's been a chilled, but challenging past two weeks. You see, every time I'm on holiday, God seems to turn the screws on me a little tighter when it comes to reminding me of the people out there who I could be sharing his love with. Or maybe it's just that when I'm on holiday, I'm not spending my time working to the same extent and so have one less excuse not to spend my time loving others. Either way, it all adds up to a syndrome I'd like to label the Holiday Burden: I get the feeling I should be using my time for God's Kingdom, then out of fear I make a few excuses, try to put it on hold for a while, with the result that nothing gets done and I just feel more guilty and out of touch with God, disqualifying me from reaching out. Anyone else ever feel like that?
This holiday, I've managed to get myself into the first stages of this dangerous slide, but I might just have found the way to pull out of it too. Here's what God's been teaching me lately:
Step 1: Get rid of the guilt
If this sounds like a strange place to start, I thought so too. God's got a good reason to be angry with me, so why should I stop feeling guilty? Because, of course, God isn't angry with me. It's one of the most basic truths of Christianity, but I still needed to be reminded of it the other day.
On Saturday, my Mom held a Quiet Garden at her house, a time when people from various churches get together just to spend some alone-time with God in the peace and quiet of a garden. I was keen to listen to God and realised I needed the discipline of just sitting and being quiet for a morning to do that, so I joined in. In the garden, I read one of the set passages in my daily quiet time notes, Hebrews 9:11-28. Here the Holy Spirit stresses again and again the once-and-for-all-ness of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. This means that the dreadful act of rebellion I've just committed has already been forgiven and paid for! The only right response is to turn around, repent, get rid of the guilt and begin living like I'm supposed to.
Step 2: Follow your heart
This one sounds completely counter-intuitive as well. Some of the most heinous sins have been committed by people 'following their hearts', and the world tries to brainwash us into doing this all the time: if you want to do something, do it now, because nothing can be wrong if it feels right to you. And now I'm repeating these fiendish lies? Well, not exactly. You see, I'm talking about a different heart. The one God planted in us when we accepted Jesus as our Saviour.
A few weeks ago I led a Bible study on God's promise in Jeremiah 31:31-34. Here God says that he will make a new covenant with Israel, with this as one of God's obligations under it: "I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts." (Jeremiah 31:33). God would put his laws, the commands he wanted the people to obey, in their hearts so that they would want to do what he wanted them to do. Hebrews 8 quotes this passage and explains that it is part of the better covenant that Jesus has now extended to us. So we have been given God's commands on our hearts! This makes sense of what Paul is saying in Philippians 2:13: "For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him." It's all there for us!
Why then do I still chafe against what God is asking me to do so many times? In theory I want to do good, but in practice I shy away from it. It's like the inner war that Paul describes in Romans 7 between our sinful nature and the new nature God has given us. Even though we've got this new nature, we've got to decide to follow it.
On Sunday my Dad preached on Romans 13:8-14. The last verse says, "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." In other words, we've got to put away our 'flesh', our sinful nature, like an old set of clothes, and put on our new nature so that we can be Jesus to others. And when we are Jesus to others, we glorify him! And what's more, we have the greatest joy in the world, that of turning people to the love of Jesus. I was struck the other day reading Luke 24:44-53, at how after Jesus had given the disciples the huge task of the Great Commission and ascended to heaven, leaving them to finish the job with the Holy Spirit, they weren't long-faced, contemplating the enormity of what they'd just been told to do (as I am often!) but "filled with great joy" (Luke 24:51).
So I'm still praying that God will help me put on Christ and beat the Holiday Burden. Let's revel in the huge joy of taking God's love to people we know. Let's do it!
This holiday, I've managed to get myself into the first stages of this dangerous slide, but I might just have found the way to pull out of it too. Here's what God's been teaching me lately:
Step 1: Get rid of the guilt
If this sounds like a strange place to start, I thought so too. God's got a good reason to be angry with me, so why should I stop feeling guilty? Because, of course, God isn't angry with me. It's one of the most basic truths of Christianity, but I still needed to be reminded of it the other day.
On Saturday, my Mom held a Quiet Garden at her house, a time when people from various churches get together just to spend some alone-time with God in the peace and quiet of a garden. I was keen to listen to God and realised I needed the discipline of just sitting and being quiet for a morning to do that, so I joined in. In the garden, I read one of the set passages in my daily quiet time notes, Hebrews 9:11-28. Here the Holy Spirit stresses again and again the once-and-for-all-ness of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. This means that the dreadful act of rebellion I've just committed has already been forgiven and paid for! The only right response is to turn around, repent, get rid of the guilt and begin living like I'm supposed to.
Step 2: Follow your heart
This one sounds completely counter-intuitive as well. Some of the most heinous sins have been committed by people 'following their hearts', and the world tries to brainwash us into doing this all the time: if you want to do something, do it now, because nothing can be wrong if it feels right to you. And now I'm repeating these fiendish lies? Well, not exactly. You see, I'm talking about a different heart. The one God planted in us when we accepted Jesus as our Saviour.
A few weeks ago I led a Bible study on God's promise in Jeremiah 31:31-34. Here God says that he will make a new covenant with Israel, with this as one of God's obligations under it: "I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts." (Jeremiah 31:33). God would put his laws, the commands he wanted the people to obey, in their hearts so that they would want to do what he wanted them to do. Hebrews 8 quotes this passage and explains that it is part of the better covenant that Jesus has now extended to us. So we have been given God's commands on our hearts! This makes sense of what Paul is saying in Philippians 2:13: "For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him." It's all there for us!
Why then do I still chafe against what God is asking me to do so many times? In theory I want to do good, but in practice I shy away from it. It's like the inner war that Paul describes in Romans 7 between our sinful nature and the new nature God has given us. Even though we've got this new nature, we've got to decide to follow it.
On Sunday my Dad preached on Romans 13:8-14. The last verse says, "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." In other words, we've got to put away our 'flesh', our sinful nature, like an old set of clothes, and put on our new nature so that we can be Jesus to others. And when we are Jesus to others, we glorify him! And what's more, we have the greatest joy in the world, that of turning people to the love of Jesus. I was struck the other day reading Luke 24:44-53, at how after Jesus had given the disciples the huge task of the Great Commission and ascended to heaven, leaving them to finish the job with the Holy Spirit, they weren't long-faced, contemplating the enormity of what they'd just been told to do (as I am often!) but "filled with great joy" (Luke 24:51).
So I'm still praying that God will help me put on Christ and beat the Holiday Burden. Let's revel in the huge joy of taking God's love to people we know. Let's do it!
Monday, December 01, 2008
Happy World AIDS Day!
I hope that doesn't sound like too much of a contradiction in terms. Who can be happy about a day in which we're supposed to remember that millions of people are dying from an incurable disease way before their time? Is there some way in which I can grasp at joy in a situation like this? Or do I even care?
To me, AIDS is such an invisible disease, even in South Africa, which is one of the countries worst affected by the disease. AIDS is a disease for 'other people', the poor and black. And even when you speak to them, few are open about being HIV-positive. The virus hides behind the countless symptoms and infections that are the surface causes of people's suffering. I had a jolt the other day when a well-off white friend told me she had been for a battery of blood tests and was afraid that the results would come back saying she was HIV-positive. Praise God, when they came back it turned out she was negative!
But what does God have to say to us about AIDS? We Christians often trumpet the fact that we have the ultimate way to prevent AIDS: sexual abstinence before marriage. And that's wonderful! It truly is something to celebrate, proving once again the wisdom of God's laws against sexual immorality. The NIRSA Declaration of Intent reads:
"We resolve to hold faithfulness in marriage and sexual abstinence before marriage as the only effective way to stop the HIV and AIDS genocide of the human race and to terminate sexual violence. We note further that the Bible holds men primarily responsible for upholding these virtues."
The Church has put together some great abstinence-based and abstinence-plus AIDS awareness campaigns teaching these truths and bringing clarity, while the teachings of secular organisations such as LoveLife seem to have confused people about how to prevent HIV from spreading. But so many people do not seem to be sticking to their pledges of abstinence, and far more are stuck with the virus through no fault of their own, due to mother-to-child transmission, rape and unfaithful marriage partners. And even where people have contracted HIV as a consequence of their own sin, God calls us to love them as we've been loved. So what should we be doing for these people?
I'm reminded of Jesus' words about the final judgment: "I was sick and you cared for me... I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!" (Matthew 26:36;40, NLT). Whether or not we cared for sick people will be one of the things that separates us from unbelievers on Judgment Day! They're that important to God.
Obviously, the first thing these people need to know is that they can know the forgiveness and love of Jesus, and that even though their mortal lives may be cut short, they can have eternal life if they believe in him. It's vital that they come to know this before they die. The second thing we should do (even if it scares us and stretches our faith) is pray for their healing. God is powerful, and he may be looking for people like us to do great miracles in his name. But whether or not he chooses to heal people, he wants them to be loved. So what is the Church doing?
It may not look like we are doing a lot. When World AIDS Day rolls around, secular advocacy groups seem to dominate the scene entirely. But if you take a closer look, you'll probably find the Body of Christ quietly at work both within those organisations (in the form of dedicated staff members and volunteers) and in smaller, lower-profile faith-based organisations. I decided to test this out on Google.co.za and found 107 000 pages from South Africa turned up when I searched for '(church OR Christ*) (HIV OR AIDS)'. Many of them are statements from various churches about HIV/AIDS or church ministries dealing with the disease. Try it for yourself! And then let's not forget all the faithful and faith-filled health professionals working in trying conditions every day to fight the disease.
The NIRSA Declaration of Intent says "We resolve to support current and new initiatives out of the church in tackling and eliminating the HIV/Aids pandemic." Let's do that! I must admit that I have done very little to show love to HIV/AIDS-sufferers. But I want to be willing to improve. And the best way I know to start doing this is by praying.
So will you join me in spending a while in prayer about the HIV/AIDS situation in our country and offering yourself to be used by God in some small way to love those caught in it? Maybe if we do, he'll awaken us to his compassion for the sick that can make even this World AIDS Day a happy day.
To me, AIDS is such an invisible disease, even in South Africa, which is one of the countries worst affected by the disease. AIDS is a disease for 'other people', the poor and black. And even when you speak to them, few are open about being HIV-positive. The virus hides behind the countless symptoms and infections that are the surface causes of people's suffering. I had a jolt the other day when a well-off white friend told me she had been for a battery of blood tests and was afraid that the results would come back saying she was HIV-positive. Praise God, when they came back it turned out she was negative!
But what does God have to say to us about AIDS? We Christians often trumpet the fact that we have the ultimate way to prevent AIDS: sexual abstinence before marriage. And that's wonderful! It truly is something to celebrate, proving once again the wisdom of God's laws against sexual immorality. The NIRSA Declaration of Intent reads:
"We resolve to hold faithfulness in marriage and sexual abstinence before marriage as the only effective way to stop the HIV and AIDS genocide of the human race and to terminate sexual violence. We note further that the Bible holds men primarily responsible for upholding these virtues."
The Church has put together some great abstinence-based and abstinence-plus AIDS awareness campaigns teaching these truths and bringing clarity, while the teachings of secular organisations such as LoveLife seem to have confused people about how to prevent HIV from spreading. But so many people do not seem to be sticking to their pledges of abstinence, and far more are stuck with the virus through no fault of their own, due to mother-to-child transmission, rape and unfaithful marriage partners. And even where people have contracted HIV as a consequence of their own sin, God calls us to love them as we've been loved. So what should we be doing for these people?
I'm reminded of Jesus' words about the final judgment: "I was sick and you cared for me... I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!" (Matthew 26:36;40, NLT). Whether or not we cared for sick people will be one of the things that separates us from unbelievers on Judgment Day! They're that important to God.
Obviously, the first thing these people need to know is that they can know the forgiveness and love of Jesus, and that even though their mortal lives may be cut short, they can have eternal life if they believe in him. It's vital that they come to know this before they die. The second thing we should do (even if it scares us and stretches our faith) is pray for their healing. God is powerful, and he may be looking for people like us to do great miracles in his name. But whether or not he chooses to heal people, he wants them to be loved. So what is the Church doing?
It may not look like we are doing a lot. When World AIDS Day rolls around, secular advocacy groups seem to dominate the scene entirely. But if you take a closer look, you'll probably find the Body of Christ quietly at work both within those organisations (in the form of dedicated staff members and volunteers) and in smaller, lower-profile faith-based organisations. I decided to test this out on Google.co.za and found 107 000 pages from South Africa turned up when I searched for '(church OR Christ*) (HIV OR AIDS)'. Many of them are statements from various churches about HIV/AIDS or church ministries dealing with the disease. Try it for yourself! And then let's not forget all the faithful and faith-filled health professionals working in trying conditions every day to fight the disease.
The NIRSA Declaration of Intent says "We resolve to support current and new initiatives out of the church in tackling and eliminating the HIV/Aids pandemic." Let's do that! I must admit that I have done very little to show love to HIV/AIDS-sufferers. But I want to be willing to improve. And the best way I know to start doing this is by praying.
So will you join me in spending a while in prayer about the HIV/AIDS situation in our country and offering yourself to be used by God in some small way to love those caught in it? Maybe if we do, he'll awaken us to his compassion for the sick that can make even this World AIDS Day a happy day.
Monday, November 24, 2008
My second-last night in College House
Quiet. Except for the rhythmically croaking frogs and the busy twittering of birds, the raps on my keyboard and sporadic voices downstairs. Unusually sporadic. It's an unusual night. It's my second-last night in College House.
For four years I have lived in this fine Herbert Baker-designed edifice, a U-shaped building around a courtyard. For four years I have shared this place with more than 50 other young men, many lost, few found. And what difference has it made? Too little, it seems.
Oh, I've done something, I guess. Started a prayer meeting every week in my room for a few committed souls. And God has been faithful because of that. Four years ago, this place was pretty notorious. People got so drunk they broke the courtyard furniture, burnt off the electric wires on the gate.
Four years down the line, this place is at least respectable. Oh, the guys still get smashed on the weekend and play their music loud and bring girls home in the evenings, but not to the same extent as they used to. But I feel ashamed at trying to describe it that way, because externals aren't what matter; people's hearts do.
So what about their hearts? I've witnessed to only about three people here with my words, and I'd like to say I witnessed to more with my actions, but has that made a difference? Has it made people want to know what I've got that they don't have? No. I haven't shone brightly enough, have been ashamed to talk about my best friend, Jesus. I'm sorry, Father.
And now, it's almost too late. I feel sad at what I've been, and am still, too afraid to do. But I believe there's hope. I believe that prayer will go on in this house; that Jesus will continue to be present in it. He's got his men here, and I'm not leaving the scene entirely; just moving a couple of blocks away. I've already been given the role 'the sober old boy' by my warden, and I intend to play it well. But ja, I'm not the Messiah; just his friend. And God's grace is as faithful as ever.
By the way, read Gondayi's enlightening comment on my last post. He's right, of course. It's crude to cast salvation as something you can 'sell', and maybe I fell into the trap of using the commercialised language of this age. It's not our job to 'sell' the Good News; only tell others what God has done for us. Thank God! Only he can convince people of their need for him. So let's follow him and do what he's told us to do. Now if only it were as easily said as done...
For four years I have lived in this fine Herbert Baker-designed edifice, a U-shaped building around a courtyard. For four years I have shared this place with more than 50 other young men, many lost, few found. And what difference has it made? Too little, it seems.
Oh, I've done something, I guess. Started a prayer meeting every week in my room for a few committed souls. And God has been faithful because of that. Four years ago, this place was pretty notorious. People got so drunk they broke the courtyard furniture, burnt off the electric wires on the gate.
Four years down the line, this place is at least respectable. Oh, the guys still get smashed on the weekend and play their music loud and bring girls home in the evenings, but not to the same extent as they used to. But I feel ashamed at trying to describe it that way, because externals aren't what matter; people's hearts do.
So what about their hearts? I've witnessed to only about three people here with my words, and I'd like to say I witnessed to more with my actions, but has that made a difference? Has it made people want to know what I've got that they don't have? No. I haven't shone brightly enough, have been ashamed to talk about my best friend, Jesus. I'm sorry, Father.
And now, it's almost too late. I feel sad at what I've been, and am still, too afraid to do. But I believe there's hope. I believe that prayer will go on in this house; that Jesus will continue to be present in it. He's got his men here, and I'm not leaving the scene entirely; just moving a couple of blocks away. I've already been given the role 'the sober old boy' by my warden, and I intend to play it well. But ja, I'm not the Messiah; just his friend. And God's grace is as faithful as ever.
By the way, read Gondayi's enlightening comment on my last post. He's right, of course. It's crude to cast salvation as something you can 'sell', and maybe I fell into the trap of using the commercialised language of this age. It's not our job to 'sell' the Good News; only tell others what God has done for us. Thank God! Only he can convince people of their need for him. So let's follow him and do what he's told us to do. Now if only it were as easily said as done...
Monday, November 17, 2008
Some Questions about Unity and Evangelism
I've been reading through Ephesians in my quiet times this past week. It's an incredible book for anyone who loves the Church (with a capital 'C': not just the building down the road, but the incredibly huge family of God's people all over the world). And if you don't love the Church, it'll tell you why you should! What makes it even better is that one of the big themes is Christian unity, and if you know me, you'll know that unity is something I've got a huge soft spot for.
Back in the day when the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write the book, one of the big fault lines in the Church was between Jews and Gentiles. Read Ephesians 2:14-18 to show what Jesus did to bring these two groups together:
"For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death." (NLT)
Jesus smashed the walls that separated these two types of believers, so that we could be one people from the two groups. But as I was reading this, question number one popped into my head:
If Jesus broke down walls between his people, why are we constantly rebuilding them? Why do we separate ourselves from other believers based on race, class, denomination, doctrinal position, worship style, you name it?
Then this morning I read Ephesians 4:1-16. This is one of the most incredible passages on unity there is, and I have to study it a whole lot more. For instance, many of us know this part:
"For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all." (Ephesians 4:4-6, NLT)
It's heady stuff. We share the same body, the same Holy Spirit is in us, we have the same hope, the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, the same God and Father, yet we manage to split off from each other at every opportunity. And it gets better. God helped me see these verses in a whole new light today:
"Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ." (Ephesians 4:11-13, NLT)
I'm no expert on the gifts of the Spirit, but what I do know is that we usually talk about them in the context of one particular congregation. We have apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers who can work together as a radical team to build up what? Our local congregation, right? Wrong! They're there for the complete body of Christ, the whole body that Paul was talking about just a few verses earlier! This leads me to question number two:
Why do so many of our gifted Church leaders often think of themselves as 'church leaders', with their role stopping at only one congregation or denomination? And why do so few seem to be leading us to greater unity, as the Scriptures say will be one of the major consequences of our maturing in the faith?
Then to change tack quite dramatically, some things I've observed have left me with a couple of questions about evangelism. I've been trying hard to talk about Christ to a dear friend of mine, and praying for the Spirit to give me words every step of the way (although, admittedly, many times I fail to listen).
Now over the years, I've noticed two schools of thought about what to tell people about Christ: one is the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, and the other is the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach.
The "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach has much to recommend it: after all, isn't the biggest benefit of our salvation the assurance that we will go to heaven one day when we die? Or is it? Whatever the case may be, this approach is completely lost on my friend. He usually doesn't even think about what will happen tomorrow. Trying to think about what happens after death is just way out for him. And even if it did work, would I just be selling him 'fire insurance', leading him to Christ out of fear, rather than showing him to respond to Christ's love?
On the other hand, the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach isn't always true. In fact, in many parts of the world where persecution happens, your life is guaranteed to become materially worse once you make Christ your Lord. Last night I read a tragic example of how this approach can go wrong.
An article called The Power of Speech tells the story of Daniel Everett, who came to a missionary to the tiny Pirahã tribe in the Amazon basin in the 1970s. Everett learned the tribe's language and wrote a paper about it in which he challenged Noam Chomsky's theories about linguistic universals. As a linguist, I know that's an incredible achievement. However, in spending time with the tribe, Everett also lost his faith. This was the reasoning he gave:
"What should the empirical evidence for religion be? It should produce peaceful, strong, secure people who are right with God and right with the world. I don't see that evidence very often. So then I find myself with the Pirahã. They have all these qualities that I am trying to tell them they could have. They are the ones who are living life the way I'm saying it ought to be lived, they just don't fear heaven and hell."
Obviously I don't know enough about the man to make anything like an accurate diagnosis of what went wrong with his faith, but to me, it sounds like he is suggesting that the proof for Christianity should be well-adjusted Christians here in this world. Now of course, when we walk with God we start to show the fruits of the Spirit, which include peace and build our strength. But if I think of Christ, if I think of the apostles and other heroes of the faith, I don't think of people who were "right with the world". In fact, the very opposite. These were people who had thrown the world away, who battled with it and with their own human inclinations day and night. Without heaven to set their eyes on, they'd be the most miserable people on earth (1 Corinthians 15:19). Maybe being a Christian is not about living a good life, however one may define it; it's about knowing and loving a good God.
So where does that leave us as witnesses? Which approach do we take: the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, or the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach? Or neither? I think the answer might just lie in what I said in the last sentence above. Maybe Christianity's best selling point is not having a great time here on earth or anywhere else. Maybe it's a relationship with the One who loves us most.
That leaves me with one more question:
How do we, as witnesses, sell a relationship with God?
Back in the day when the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write the book, one of the big fault lines in the Church was between Jews and Gentiles. Read Ephesians 2:14-18 to show what Jesus did to bring these two groups together:
"For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death." (NLT)
Jesus smashed the walls that separated these two types of believers, so that we could be one people from the two groups. But as I was reading this, question number one popped into my head:
If Jesus broke down walls between his people, why are we constantly rebuilding them? Why do we separate ourselves from other believers based on race, class, denomination, doctrinal position, worship style, you name it?
Then this morning I read Ephesians 4:1-16. This is one of the most incredible passages on unity there is, and I have to study it a whole lot more. For instance, many of us know this part:
"For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all." (Ephesians 4:4-6, NLT)
It's heady stuff. We share the same body, the same Holy Spirit is in us, we have the same hope, the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, the same God and Father, yet we manage to split off from each other at every opportunity. And it gets better. God helped me see these verses in a whole new light today:
"Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ." (Ephesians 4:11-13, NLT)
I'm no expert on the gifts of the Spirit, but what I do know is that we usually talk about them in the context of one particular congregation. We have apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers who can work together as a radical team to build up what? Our local congregation, right? Wrong! They're there for the complete body of Christ, the whole body that Paul was talking about just a few verses earlier! This leads me to question number two:
Why do so many of our gifted Church leaders often think of themselves as 'church leaders', with their role stopping at only one congregation or denomination? And why do so few seem to be leading us to greater unity, as the Scriptures say will be one of the major consequences of our maturing in the faith?
Then to change tack quite dramatically, some things I've observed have left me with a couple of questions about evangelism. I've been trying hard to talk about Christ to a dear friend of mine, and praying for the Spirit to give me words every step of the way (although, admittedly, many times I fail to listen).
Now over the years, I've noticed two schools of thought about what to tell people about Christ: one is the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, and the other is the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach.
The "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach has much to recommend it: after all, isn't the biggest benefit of our salvation the assurance that we will go to heaven one day when we die? Or is it? Whatever the case may be, this approach is completely lost on my friend. He usually doesn't even think about what will happen tomorrow. Trying to think about what happens after death is just way out for him. And even if it did work, would I just be selling him 'fire insurance', leading him to Christ out of fear, rather than showing him to respond to Christ's love?
On the other hand, the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach isn't always true. In fact, in many parts of the world where persecution happens, your life is guaranteed to become materially worse once you make Christ your Lord. Last night I read a tragic example of how this approach can go wrong.
An article called The Power of Speech tells the story of Daniel Everett, who came to a missionary to the tiny Pirahã tribe in the Amazon basin in the 1970s. Everett learned the tribe's language and wrote a paper about it in which he challenged Noam Chomsky's theories about linguistic universals. As a linguist, I know that's an incredible achievement. However, in spending time with the tribe, Everett also lost his faith. This was the reasoning he gave:
"What should the empirical evidence for religion be? It should produce peaceful, strong, secure people who are right with God and right with the world. I don't see that evidence very often. So then I find myself with the Pirahã. They have all these qualities that I am trying to tell them they could have. They are the ones who are living life the way I'm saying it ought to be lived, they just don't fear heaven and hell."
Obviously I don't know enough about the man to make anything like an accurate diagnosis of what went wrong with his faith, but to me, it sounds like he is suggesting that the proof for Christianity should be well-adjusted Christians here in this world. Now of course, when we walk with God we start to show the fruits of the Spirit, which include peace and build our strength. But if I think of Christ, if I think of the apostles and other heroes of the faith, I don't think of people who were "right with the world". In fact, the very opposite. These were people who had thrown the world away, who battled with it and with their own human inclinations day and night. Without heaven to set their eyes on, they'd be the most miserable people on earth (1 Corinthians 15:19). Maybe being a Christian is not about living a good life, however one may define it; it's about knowing and loving a good God.
So where does that leave us as witnesses? Which approach do we take: the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, or the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach? Or neither? I think the answer might just lie in what I said in the last sentence above. Maybe Christianity's best selling point is not having a great time here on earth or anywhere else. Maybe it's a relationship with the One who loves us most.
That leaves me with one more question:
How do we, as witnesses, sell a relationship with God?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Oh, everything will change!
So by now those of you au fait with the 268 canon of music will know that I've got "The Glory of it All" by David Crowder*Band in my mind. One of my favourite parts of the song is this:
After night comes a light;
Dawn is here, dawn is here.
It's a new day, a new day!
Oh everything will change;
Things will never be the same.
We will never be the same! (Repeat line as desired)
Not the deepest of words, I must agree, but what I love is the sheer delight with which you can sing them. The old is past and we're never going back there! We're changing into something far better, reflecting God's glory more.
I mention all this because we've just been through been a huge week (or so) of changes that excite me. Wednesday we woke up to hear that Barack Obama had been elected as the USA's first black president. Friday we found out that Shikota's new political party had been named "Congress of the People". And (on a more personal note) Thursday I signed a lease for my digs for next year.
The political stuff first: I'm unashamedly delighted about President-Elect Obama. The things I've been reading out of America have been wonderful, comparing this week to our own heady days of 1994 with people partying in the streets for joy. He's done the inconceivable in breaking racial barriers and inspiring new hope in a USA that many of us had written off as incurably self-interested and narrow-minded when Bush won his second term four years ago, effectively sentencing the world to four more years of war in Iraq and threats of war in other places, not to mention lack of will to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. I'm reminded that "All governments have been placed in power by God" (Romans 13:2 NLT) and I'm grateful for this new USA government.
Then closer to home, I've really started to think that the ANC really did South Africa a favour when it elected Jacob Zuma president and later sacked Thabo Mbeki. No, I'm no Zuma fan, and I'm still rather worried at the thought of a president who already has a less-than-savoury reputation for his sexual exploits and ignorance about AIDS, not to mention the charges of corruption which he tries to evade at every turn. But without these events, we may never have been witness to the birth of a party which shows the potential to become a real challenger to the ANC at election time. That would be brilliant for our democracy, as long as our people do not choose the 'low road' of political violence as they have in the past.
And what's more, the Congress of the People (or COP, as they're calling themselves) are trying so hard to be everything that Zuma is not, that most of their rhetoric so far has stressed the need for clean government, the independence of the judiciary, and the need to build a society upholding the values of respect, integrity and ubuntu. Beautiful stuff!
Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that Obama and the COP are political saviours who will ensure a bright future for us all. As is often the case with politics, good policies are bundled with bad, and people don't keep to their promises. We can't be sure of what lies ahead, but we can pray to the God of what lies ahead about these political developments, asking him to do with them what he wills. Our Christian brother Barack Obama needs our prayers now, as do our president and all our political leaders in this confusing time.
And that brings me to the third change of the week: my digs lease. For me, it's also a leap into the unknown. I don't know how well I'll adapt to life in digs, whether I'll like my new digsmates as much after a few months of living with them (no offence, guys!), if my new room is going to be big enough for me... But I'm excited about the change that God is bringing about in my life, and trusting that he'll glorify his name through it. In the end, that's what life on Earth is all about. Oh, the glory of it all!
After night comes a light;
Dawn is here, dawn is here.
It's a new day, a new day!
Oh everything will change;
Things will never be the same.
We will never be the same! (Repeat line as desired)
Not the deepest of words, I must agree, but what I love is the sheer delight with which you can sing them. The old is past and we're never going back there! We're changing into something far better, reflecting God's glory more.
I mention all this because we've just been through been a huge week (or so) of changes that excite me. Wednesday we woke up to hear that Barack Obama had been elected as the USA's first black president. Friday we found out that Shikota's new political party had been named "Congress of the People". And (on a more personal note) Thursday I signed a lease for my digs for next year.
The political stuff first: I'm unashamedly delighted about President-Elect Obama. The things I've been reading out of America have been wonderful, comparing this week to our own heady days of 1994 with people partying in the streets for joy. He's done the inconceivable in breaking racial barriers and inspiring new hope in a USA that many of us had written off as incurably self-interested and narrow-minded when Bush won his second term four years ago, effectively sentencing the world to four more years of war in Iraq and threats of war in other places, not to mention lack of will to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. I'm reminded that "All governments have been placed in power by God" (Romans 13:2 NLT) and I'm grateful for this new USA government.
Then closer to home, I've really started to think that the ANC really did South Africa a favour when it elected Jacob Zuma president and later sacked Thabo Mbeki. No, I'm no Zuma fan, and I'm still rather worried at the thought of a president who already has a less-than-savoury reputation for his sexual exploits and ignorance about AIDS, not to mention the charges of corruption which he tries to evade at every turn. But without these events, we may never have been witness to the birth of a party which shows the potential to become a real challenger to the ANC at election time. That would be brilliant for our democracy, as long as our people do not choose the 'low road' of political violence as they have in the past.
And what's more, the Congress of the People (or COP, as they're calling themselves) are trying so hard to be everything that Zuma is not, that most of their rhetoric so far has stressed the need for clean government, the independence of the judiciary, and the need to build a society upholding the values of respect, integrity and ubuntu. Beautiful stuff!
Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that Obama and the COP are political saviours who will ensure a bright future for us all. As is often the case with politics, good policies are bundled with bad, and people don't keep to their promises. We can't be sure of what lies ahead, but we can pray to the God of what lies ahead about these political developments, asking him to do with them what he wills. Our Christian brother Barack Obama needs our prayers now, as do our president and all our political leaders in this confusing time.
And that brings me to the third change of the week: my digs lease. For me, it's also a leap into the unknown. I don't know how well I'll adapt to life in digs, whether I'll like my new digsmates as much after a few months of living with them (no offence, guys!), if my new room is going to be big enough for me... But I'm excited about the change that God is bringing about in my life, and trusting that he'll glorify his name through it. In the end, that's what life on Earth is all about. Oh, the glory of it all!
Monday, November 03, 2008
A holy huddle or a radical family?
So I was planning to follow up last week's post with one on how we need an alternative Christian public sphere, a place where we can share and discuss our views with each other. But then some really exciting things happened and got me thinking that we don't just need to swop opinions with each other; we need to be a different kind of community.
You see, I had the privilege of taking two friends down to Jeffreys Bay for Swot Week. Now you don't want to get me started on how awesome J-Bay is and how I always meet with God while I'm there, and this time was no exception.
It started with a chat I had with one of these friends, Leanne du Preez, at a coffee shop opposite the beach. We talked about how there are certain people who always get us going, spiritually. Each of us know the people we can go to just to chat, bounce some ideas off, pray with. The people who stimulate us in our faith so much that we feel like we could do anything with God after speaking with them. I'll call them encouragers.
Well, as God would have it, one of my encouragers lives in Jeffreys Bay: a family friend who is about my Mom's age. Her name is Avril. Avril truly tries to live in intimate communion with God and obey him at every step, and every time I come to Jeffreys Bay regales me with stories of the incredible things God has been doing with her. I really wanted Leanne and my other friend, Shellique Carby, to meet her and be encouraged by her too. So I invited her round for supper one evening. And yes, true to form, that evening was hugely blessed.
Things were a little awkward when we sat down and began chatting. After all, why would she want to meet my student friends? But as soon as we got down to telling her all about the great things God did through Christians @ Rhodes Week of Worship, and she told us about some of the miraculous things that had happened to her just recently, the vibe changed. This wasn't me introducing my friends to some random, middle-aged lady any more. This was church; this was family breaking bread together.
We got into some deep discussions about problems in each other's lives over coffee and koeksusters after the meal. It got a little intense at times, and after a short while we found we were talking around in circles. It was clear that none of us had the answers, but our Father did. So we got down and prayed about them. Avril began praying in short, simple sentences, letting her words be few as the Scriptures tell us we should. What followed was an intense time of praying into each other's lives. Both Avril and Leanne received some answers they'd been waiting a long time to hear. The room was so filled with God's presence that Leanne's hands were trembling. At the end we hugged each other and I was just laughing for joy in the Lord's presence. God had used each of us to minister to each other!
As Avril left, Leanne commented that it felt like she had known her forever, when we had spent only six hours together. We had a spiritual connection: the same Spirit is in us!
I've been thinking about that time and delighting in my memories of it for a few days now. But it hasn't been the only time this week when I've been overjoyed to be part of God's family. I've been overjoyed at news of brothers and sisters getting together in partnerships in which they have the potential to do far more for the kingdom of God than both of them could do separately. I've been 'adopted' as an extra sibling by another friend of mine. Yet at times I've felt ashamed at these thoughts: Why should I be so happy at being in this holy huddle when there are so many out there who are out in the cold, far from God?
Then this morning, I read something that pulled it all together for me. In Acts 18:9-10, God encourages Paul in a vision. He says "Don't be afraid! Speak out! Don't be silent! For I am with you, and no one will harm you because many people here in this city belong to me." Paul had good reason to be very afraid. He was in an incredibly dark city, Corinth. The god Aphrodite was the centre of attraction, and she was worshipped through all manner of sexually immoral acts. Yet Paul could stand up and speak out because God had many people in that city!
If you read the whole passage, from verse 1 to verse 17, you see these 'many people' in action. Aquila and Priscilla (an example of a couple that functioned like a ministry partnership if ever there was one) took Paul in when he arrived in town, and allowed him to earn an income working in their business. Later, a guy called Titius Justus hosted him. Silas and Timothy came around, allowing Paul to focus his attentions on telling the Good News to the Jews. And Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, no doubt was a great help when he became a believer along with his family.
But notice the purpose of all this teamwork: it wasn't just to make each other feel nice and loved. It was to support each other so that Paul and others could carry on fearlessly telling the Good News! In the same way, we have to be a radical family for each other, helping each other to spread the Good News of the kingdom.
One of the things I told Leanne back in the coffee shop was something my father told me: Major church growth happens when you've got a small group of like-minded people feeding off each other's energy and vision. It's happened in churches like Willow Creek in the USA and Holy Trinity Brompton in Britain. It happened in Corinth. And it can happen here too, if we dare turn our fellowship outwards.
PS. After all that earnestness, here's some pure family lightheartedness to break the exam tension. Take a moment to visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTYr3JuueF4!
You see, I had the privilege of taking two friends down to Jeffreys Bay for Swot Week. Now you don't want to get me started on how awesome J-Bay is and how I always meet with God while I'm there, and this time was no exception.
It started with a chat I had with one of these friends, Leanne du Preez, at a coffee shop opposite the beach. We talked about how there are certain people who always get us going, spiritually. Each of us know the people we can go to just to chat, bounce some ideas off, pray with. The people who stimulate us in our faith so much that we feel like we could do anything with God after speaking with them. I'll call them encouragers.
Well, as God would have it, one of my encouragers lives in Jeffreys Bay: a family friend who is about my Mom's age. Her name is Avril. Avril truly tries to live in intimate communion with God and obey him at every step, and every time I come to Jeffreys Bay regales me with stories of the incredible things God has been doing with her. I really wanted Leanne and my other friend, Shellique Carby, to meet her and be encouraged by her too. So I invited her round for supper one evening. And yes, true to form, that evening was hugely blessed.
Things were a little awkward when we sat down and began chatting. After all, why would she want to meet my student friends? But as soon as we got down to telling her all about the great things God did through Christians @ Rhodes Week of Worship, and she told us about some of the miraculous things that had happened to her just recently, the vibe changed. This wasn't me introducing my friends to some random, middle-aged lady any more. This was church; this was family breaking bread together.
We got into some deep discussions about problems in each other's lives over coffee and koeksusters after the meal. It got a little intense at times, and after a short while we found we were talking around in circles. It was clear that none of us had the answers, but our Father did. So we got down and prayed about them. Avril began praying in short, simple sentences, letting her words be few as the Scriptures tell us we should. What followed was an intense time of praying into each other's lives. Both Avril and Leanne received some answers they'd been waiting a long time to hear. The room was so filled with God's presence that Leanne's hands were trembling. At the end we hugged each other and I was just laughing for joy in the Lord's presence. God had used each of us to minister to each other!
As Avril left, Leanne commented that it felt like she had known her forever, when we had spent only six hours together. We had a spiritual connection: the same Spirit is in us!
I've been thinking about that time and delighting in my memories of it for a few days now. But it hasn't been the only time this week when I've been overjoyed to be part of God's family. I've been overjoyed at news of brothers and sisters getting together in partnerships in which they have the potential to do far more for the kingdom of God than both of them could do separately. I've been 'adopted' as an extra sibling by another friend of mine. Yet at times I've felt ashamed at these thoughts: Why should I be so happy at being in this holy huddle when there are so many out there who are out in the cold, far from God?
Then this morning, I read something that pulled it all together for me. In Acts 18:9-10, God encourages Paul in a vision. He says "Don't be afraid! Speak out! Don't be silent! For I am with you, and no one will harm you because many people here in this city belong to me." Paul had good reason to be very afraid. He was in an incredibly dark city, Corinth. The god Aphrodite was the centre of attraction, and she was worshipped through all manner of sexually immoral acts. Yet Paul could stand up and speak out because God had many people in that city!
If you read the whole passage, from verse 1 to verse 17, you see these 'many people' in action. Aquila and Priscilla (an example of a couple that functioned like a ministry partnership if ever there was one) took Paul in when he arrived in town, and allowed him to earn an income working in their business. Later, a guy called Titius Justus hosted him. Silas and Timothy came around, allowing Paul to focus his attentions on telling the Good News to the Jews. And Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, no doubt was a great help when he became a believer along with his family.
But notice the purpose of all this teamwork: it wasn't just to make each other feel nice and loved. It was to support each other so that Paul and others could carry on fearlessly telling the Good News! In the same way, we have to be a radical family for each other, helping each other to spread the Good News of the kingdom.
One of the things I told Leanne back in the coffee shop was something my father told me: Major church growth happens when you've got a small group of like-minded people feeding off each other's energy and vision. It's happened in churches like Willow Creek in the USA and Holy Trinity Brompton in Britain. It happened in Corinth. And it can happen here too, if we dare turn our fellowship outwards.
PS. After all that earnestness, here's some pure family lightheartedness to break the exam tension. Take a moment to visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTYr3JuueF4!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
"The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship"
It's been way too long since I did some blogging, but seeing as the madness of my fourth term of Honours has passed and some big ideas have started rolling back to me, I thought this would be the perfect time to revive the habit.
For the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking about what kind of Master's thesis I'd like to do next year. Ideas have come and gone, but I'm firmly decided on one thing: I can only do a Master's thesis grounded on something I believe in. Enter some big ideas about Christian scholarship. After all, we have feminist scholarship, postmodern scholarship, Marxist scholarship. Why can't we actually study the world from a point of view that actually has real solutions, like God's?
Then on Saturday night, just before I went to bed, I idly decided to Google Scholar the string "Christian scholarship" and see what came up. And lo and behold, first on the list was a book with the most exciting title I've seen in a long time: "The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship". Unfortunately I've not been able to read more than the cover blurb so I don't know how good the book is, but I think the author (and I) may be on to something.
The scary thing is that in today's academic environment, the idea of Christian scholarship is completely outrageous. There are two possible reasons for this. Either it's acceptable to inject just about any ideology but Christianity into one's work. You can be a Christian in your own time, but heaven (or The Universe, or whatever folks believe in) forbid that you openly take a Christian viewpoint in your work. You can draw on any number of amorphous spiritualities, African or Eastern, but don't dare look at the cross. Or – and this is even more scary – very few of us have actually even tried to view their studies from a Christian perspective.
But the exciting thing is that the time may just be ripe for a revival of Christian scholarship. Western Christians are discovering that their faith has implications for broader society beyond the usual wedge issues of abortion and gay marriage, as Jim Wallis is fond of pointing out. Here in South Africa, the National Initiative for Reformation in South Africa is getting some Christians thinking about the power of the Good News to transform society. And that, for me, is a huge breath of fresh air when the only academics talking about societal transformation seem to be steeped in Marxist ideology.
And also, postmodernism might just provide the right climate for Christian scholarship to be revived in secular universities. These days we as Humanities students are encouraged,, to confess our ideological commitments and unashamedly consider their implications for our analyses, and rightly so. What better opportunity is there to confess Christ as Lord of our work? It's time that we called the postmodernists' bluff: if they're going to be open to everyone's ideologies, well, they're going to have to be open to ours as well.
But first, as Harry Blamires says in The Christian Mind, we're going to have to learn to think like Christians. The key verse for us must be Romans 12:1: "Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think." We've got a lot of listening and learning to do, letting God's Word and Spirit be our lecturers. Fortunately, we've got the work of some brave thinkers to help us, legends of a previous generation like C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, and new visionaries like Landa Cope. But there's a lot more thinking that needs to be done.
I don't know about you, but I'm keen for the challenge. Let's ask our friend the Holy Spirit to teach us, and then give us strength to withstand the flak when it comes. Let's be outrageous!
For the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking about what kind of Master's thesis I'd like to do next year. Ideas have come and gone, but I'm firmly decided on one thing: I can only do a Master's thesis grounded on something I believe in. Enter some big ideas about Christian scholarship. After all, we have feminist scholarship, postmodern scholarship, Marxist scholarship. Why can't we actually study the world from a point of view that actually has real solutions, like God's?
Then on Saturday night, just before I went to bed, I idly decided to Google Scholar the string "Christian scholarship" and see what came up. And lo and behold, first on the list was a book with the most exciting title I've seen in a long time: "The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship". Unfortunately I've not been able to read more than the cover blurb so I don't know how good the book is, but I think the author (and I) may be on to something.
The scary thing is that in today's academic environment, the idea of Christian scholarship is completely outrageous. There are two possible reasons for this. Either it's acceptable to inject just about any ideology but Christianity into one's work. You can be a Christian in your own time, but heaven (or The Universe, or whatever folks believe in) forbid that you openly take a Christian viewpoint in your work. You can draw on any number of amorphous spiritualities, African or Eastern, but don't dare look at the cross. Or – and this is even more scary – very few of us have actually even tried to view their studies from a Christian perspective.
But the exciting thing is that the time may just be ripe for a revival of Christian scholarship. Western Christians are discovering that their faith has implications for broader society beyond the usual wedge issues of abortion and gay marriage, as Jim Wallis is fond of pointing out. Here in South Africa, the National Initiative for Reformation in South Africa is getting some Christians thinking about the power of the Good News to transform society. And that, for me, is a huge breath of fresh air when the only academics talking about societal transformation seem to be steeped in Marxist ideology.
And also, postmodernism might just provide the right climate for Christian scholarship to be revived in secular universities. These days we as Humanities students are encouraged,, to confess our ideological commitments and unashamedly consider their implications for our analyses, and rightly so. What better opportunity is there to confess Christ as Lord of our work? It's time that we called the postmodernists' bluff: if they're going to be open to everyone's ideologies, well, they're going to have to be open to ours as well.
But first, as Harry Blamires says in The Christian Mind, we're going to have to learn to think like Christians. The key verse for us must be Romans 12:1: "Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think." We've got a lot of listening and learning to do, letting God's Word and Spirit be our lecturers. Fortunately, we've got the work of some brave thinkers to help us, legends of a previous generation like C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, and new visionaries like Landa Cope. But there's a lot more thinking that needs to be done.
I don't know about you, but I'm keen for the challenge. Let's ask our friend the Holy Spirit to teach us, and then give us strength to withstand the flak when it comes. Let's be outrageous!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Passion Johannesburg: Fruitcakes for the Lord!
It's a good thing that Christians are allowed to go a little crazy sometimes; how can we not when we try to comprehend the incredible things God has done for us? Recently I and eleven other Christians @ Rhodes who took a bus up to Johannesburg for the weekend to join in the Passion conference there experienced exactly how insane things can get when we live for God's name and renown.
Of course, we took full advantage of sitting in the sparsely populated white plastic chairs at the back of the hall. There was space for us to worship any way God led us: sitting down, standing, jumping, chair-surfing or kneeling. Chris Tomlin and Fee rocked the hall alive with songs like "How Great is our God", "Hosanna", "Let God Arise", "God of this City", "We Shine" and "Amazing Grace".
The first miracle of the trip was that we got there at all. Money and time were tight, so we decided to cut our schedule as close as possible by taking a bus leaving Kimberley Hall at 6:40pm on Friday night and arriving in Midrand, Johannesburg just 50 minutes before the conference was due to start on the morning of Saturday 9 August. The bus was only slightly late, so we got into the conference hall at Gallagher Estate just as it was about to start. And the bus trips there and back were the zaniest I've ever had. Just look at these photos if you think I'm kidding:
The conference was just one of seventeen stops on a world tour organised to give university students from Tokyo to Sao Paulo a chance to catch the vision of making their lives count for God's name and renown. It's an offshoot of the events held every year in the USA, which a few Rhodes students past and present have been blessed to attend. So you can imagine how excited we were, filing into the massive hall to take our seats behind 6 000 other students who'd come with hearts keyed up to meet with God. Later on, Louie Giglio, the conference's speaker, joked that the crowd stretched all the way to Pretoria, and that's how long the distance to the stage seemed to us.
Of course, we took full advantage of sitting in the sparsely populated white plastic chairs at the back of the hall. There was space for us to worship any way God led us: sitting down, standing, jumping, chair-surfing or kneeling. Chris Tomlin and Fee rocked the hall alive with songs like "How Great is our God", "Hosanna", "Let God Arise", "God of this City", "We Shine" and "Amazing Grace".
In the conference's first session, Louie quoted 2 Corinthians 5:13: "If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you." He said that if we've experienced the wonder of what God did for us on the cross, it should overwhelm us to the point that we just want to go crazy about it at times. But at other times, we have to keep our cool and remain sane so that we can relate to the people we minister to, and help them to meet Jesus too, so they can go crazy for him! I loved the way he put that.
Later, Louie told the story of a student called Ashley who was a complete heathen, far from believing in Jesus. It so happened that she got a Christian digsmate for her last term at university, and she thought this girl was so crazy that she nicknamed her "Fruitcake". Anyway, Fruitcake helped her through a couple of crises just by being a friend and not judging her, and eventually got a chance to show her some DVDs of Louie's talks. Through the help of Fruitcake and Louie's talks, Ashley discovered grace and gave her life to Christ!
I won't spoil the end of the story for you, just in case you ever get a chance to hear it yourself (it's on Louie's DVD entitled "Hope", apparently), but the story reminded me just how simple it can be to make your life count for God's glory. All it takes is a heart that's totally in love with Jesus and is willing to pass on his love to others.
The story also reminded me how incredible our salvation is. Before Louie told Ashley's story, I was enjoying the times of worship through music, but still felt a stupid desire to be noticed, to get some more credit for having come all the way from Grahamstown for this thing. But after I heard the first part of the story in the afternoon, I was just so astonished at how God's grace can turn a life around (and has turned my life around) that all those proud thoughts faded into oblivion and no one could stop me from going absolutely ballistic in God's presence.
Passion Johannesburg gave me a total new perspective on my future. Before, it seemed cloudy and uncertain to me, because I'm not sure where I'll be next year or even if I'd enjoy doing Master's. Now, even though I have no more certainty about where to go, my heart is light and I'm full of excitement, because wherever I go, I can glorify the one who gave up everything for me. As one of the songs we sang goes, "Take my life and let it be all for you and for your glory." That's the only thing that matters.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Some thoughts from the Mana Pools Men's Camp
Amazing places, amazing wildlife, amazing people and an amazing God: these are the things I'll think about when remembering our trip to the Mana Pools Men's Camp in Zimbabwe this July. And 'amazing' is a terrible understatement.
One of the most incredible things about the Mana Pools camp was the way in which you couldn't separate the spiritual side of the weekend from the other activities we did. Being out in the wild with no walls or fences to insulate us from the rest of God's creation made me realise exactly how closely physical realities out there can mirror spiritual realities in our everyday life.
The camp was designed as a time of physical and spiritual rest for all of us: our Zimbabwean brothers were separated from their daily troubles by the Zambezi Escarpment, a range of wooded hills setting Mana Pools apart from the oppressive atmosphere looming over most of the country. I was more than 2 000km away from home and took the opportunity to seek God's presence and ask him some questions about my future. He answered these by pointing to the wonderful complexity of his creation all around me, and refreshing my wonder at the small corner of it that I study: the way we humans use our God-given capacity for language to convey so many ideas and attitudes, to fight so many struggles in an infinite variety of ways.
I was also reminded powerfully of the reality of the struggles we fight, not "against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world..." (Ephesians 6:11). At Mana Pools we had to be constantly alert, watching for dangerous animals who could be lurking anywhere. A talk we had on avoiding sexual temptation was interrupted when a lioness walked through the campsite. A scripture came to my mind: "Be careful! Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). I have to keep on watching out for spiritual attacks, especially at home in Grahamstown where I least expect them.
God taught me a further great lesson through the lives of the people we met at Mana Pools and on the way there and back. We had gone to Mana Pools partly to encourage our brothers from Zimbabwe. We blessed them by bringing up groceries from South Africa for the camp and also simply by being willing to come there and show that they were not isolated from the rest of the body of Christ. But they encouraged us far more by their living testimonies of how their faith had grown through suffering. We saw how the troubles in Zimbabwe have caused some to grow bitter, but others have depended on God for all their needs, and he has met them in miraculous ways. Some have lost everything and forgiven those who took it from them. Others graciously shared food and fuel with us, even though both are in short supply. One of the Bible study sessions was on learning to be content in every situation, following the example of Paul in Philippians 4:12.
For me, the scripture that summed up the lessons of the camp was Job 38, where God answers Job's questions about his suffering with even more questions: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?... Who defined the boundaries of the sea?... Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east?" and so on and so on. God's magnificent creation shows us that he is firmly in control of our circumstances, unlike us, and so we can trust him in every situation. While we may not be able to comprehend the reasons for our suffering, he does, and he can help us through it.
And, as James says, "when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything" (James 1:3–4). God is looking to develop that strength of character in all of us, so we'd do well to learn it from nature and from the example of Christians growing under pressure in places like Zimbabwe.
One of the most incredible things about the Mana Pools camp was the way in which you couldn't separate the spiritual side of the weekend from the other activities we did. Being out in the wild with no walls or fences to insulate us from the rest of God's creation made me realise exactly how closely physical realities out there can mirror spiritual realities in our everyday life.
The camp was designed as a time of physical and spiritual rest for all of us: our Zimbabwean brothers were separated from their daily troubles by the Zambezi Escarpment, a range of wooded hills setting Mana Pools apart from the oppressive atmosphere looming over most of the country. I was more than 2 000km away from home and took the opportunity to seek God's presence and ask him some questions about my future. He answered these by pointing to the wonderful complexity of his creation all around me, and refreshing my wonder at the small corner of it that I study: the way we humans use our God-given capacity for language to convey so many ideas and attitudes, to fight so many struggles in an infinite variety of ways.
I was also reminded powerfully of the reality of the struggles we fight, not "against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world..." (Ephesians 6:11). At Mana Pools we had to be constantly alert, watching for dangerous animals who could be lurking anywhere. A talk we had on avoiding sexual temptation was interrupted when a lioness walked through the campsite. A scripture came to my mind: "Be careful! Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). I have to keep on watching out for spiritual attacks, especially at home in Grahamstown where I least expect them.
God taught me a further great lesson through the lives of the people we met at Mana Pools and on the way there and back. We had gone to Mana Pools partly to encourage our brothers from Zimbabwe. We blessed them by bringing up groceries from South Africa for the camp and also simply by being willing to come there and show that they were not isolated from the rest of the body of Christ. But they encouraged us far more by their living testimonies of how their faith had grown through suffering. We saw how the troubles in Zimbabwe have caused some to grow bitter, but others have depended on God for all their needs, and he has met them in miraculous ways. Some have lost everything and forgiven those who took it from them. Others graciously shared food and fuel with us, even though both are in short supply. One of the Bible study sessions was on learning to be content in every situation, following the example of Paul in Philippians 4:12.
For me, the scripture that summed up the lessons of the camp was Job 38, where God answers Job's questions about his suffering with even more questions: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?... Who defined the boundaries of the sea?... Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east?" and so on and so on. God's magnificent creation shows us that he is firmly in control of our circumstances, unlike us, and so we can trust him in every situation. While we may not be able to comprehend the reasons for our suffering, he does, and he can help us through it.
And, as James says, "when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything" (James 1:3–4). God is looking to develop that strength of character in all of us, so we'd do well to learn it from nature and from the example of Christians growing under pressure in places like Zimbabwe.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Only God can rescue Zimbabwe!
On Sunday I arrived in Jeffreys Bay, very much ready for a holiday after probably the longest and busiest term I've ever had at Rhodes University. I am still hoping for a vacation filled with seeking God's face and hearing his voice, getting my mind and heart in order for the next semester and the plans I must make for next year.
When evening comes, I sat down and watch the news to find that Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from Zimbabwe's runoff elections this week. My immediate reaction was, "I need to pray." I'm so saddened that a faint glimmer of hope for Zimbabwe has died. Nevertheless, I can only think that the MDC made the right decision: if Tsvangirai had won the run-off, Zanu-PF may well have unleashed civil war, as Mugabe has threatened many times over the past few weeks. Even after the withdrawal, the situation is still perilous. How long can this last?
So after the news and after I finished supper, I knelt down and flipped through my Bible for one of those nice psalms that rages at the injustice of it all and calls down thunder and lightning from heaven on evil people who just carry on prospering. I settled on Psalm 10, which expressed more or less what I was feeling at the time. The wonderful thing about psalms like these, though, is that they rarely end in anger. Through writing the psalm, the author works through his emotions to the point where he is able to give them all to God, and trust him to deal with the wicked. (Incidentally, this is also Exhibit A in my argument that emo rock can add a lot to our understanding of worship!) Psalm 10 ends this way:
"Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless.
Surely you will listen to their cries and comfort them.
You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed,
So people can no longer terrify them." (Psalm 10:17–18, NLT)
I love it! God will not let the helpless remain helpless. Justice will come, if not in this life then in the life to come. And the Lord is still in control.
All of this explains why I was so amused when Mugabe pronounced last week that only God could remove him from office. Funnily enough, a prayer point in my church's bulletin from Sunday 15 June (a few days before Mugabe said this) said "Pray for the land of ZIMBABWE...only God can restore this land and its people." When I was shopping with a Zimbabwean friend on Sunday before I left to Grahamstown, she took one look at the newspapers and said "I'm so glad [Mugabe's] said that. It challenges God to take him out."
I, for one, hope God rises to the provocation, but I know that his plans are not ours and his sense of timing is far better than our limited thinking. He doesn't need to pander to Robert Mugabe's threats, but I know he loves the people of Zim. So let's pray for them right now. Pray that the Lord will be glorified in that country, despite all human plans.
Please pray also for us: a group of seven of us from Grahamstown Baptist Church's 222 Men's Ministry are travelling up to Zimbabwe to join in Chisipite Baptist Church's men's camp at Mana Pools on the Zambezi. It promises to be an amazing time of teaching and relaxation, but pray that we'll be safe travelling through Zimbabwe on our way there and back, and that we can be a blessing and encouragement to those who are suffering there. When we come back, I'll let you know how it went.
When evening comes, I sat down and watch the news to find that Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from Zimbabwe's runoff elections this week. My immediate reaction was, "I need to pray." I'm so saddened that a faint glimmer of hope for Zimbabwe has died. Nevertheless, I can only think that the MDC made the right decision: if Tsvangirai had won the run-off, Zanu-PF may well have unleashed civil war, as Mugabe has threatened many times over the past few weeks. Even after the withdrawal, the situation is still perilous. How long can this last?
So after the news and after I finished supper, I knelt down and flipped through my Bible for one of those nice psalms that rages at the injustice of it all and calls down thunder and lightning from heaven on evil people who just carry on prospering. I settled on Psalm 10, which expressed more or less what I was feeling at the time. The wonderful thing about psalms like these, though, is that they rarely end in anger. Through writing the psalm, the author works through his emotions to the point where he is able to give them all to God, and trust him to deal with the wicked. (Incidentally, this is also Exhibit A in my argument that emo rock can add a lot to our understanding of worship!) Psalm 10 ends this way:
"Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless.
Surely you will listen to their cries and comfort them.
You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed,
So people can no longer terrify them." (Psalm 10:17–18, NLT)
I love it! God will not let the helpless remain helpless. Justice will come, if not in this life then in the life to come. And the Lord is still in control.
All of this explains why I was so amused when Mugabe pronounced last week that only God could remove him from office. Funnily enough, a prayer point in my church's bulletin from Sunday 15 June (a few days before Mugabe said this) said "Pray for the land of ZIMBABWE...only God can restore this land and its people." When I was shopping with a Zimbabwean friend on Sunday before I left to Grahamstown, she took one look at the newspapers and said "I'm so glad [Mugabe's] said that. It challenges God to take him out."
I, for one, hope God rises to the provocation, but I know that his plans are not ours and his sense of timing is far better than our limited thinking. He doesn't need to pander to Robert Mugabe's threats, but I know he loves the people of Zim. So let's pray for them right now. Pray that the Lord will be glorified in that country, despite all human plans.
Please pray also for us: a group of seven of us from Grahamstown Baptist Church's 222 Men's Ministry are travelling up to Zimbabwe to join in Chisipite Baptist Church's men's camp at Mana Pools on the Zambezi. It promises to be an amazing time of teaching and relaxation, but pray that we'll be safe travelling through Zimbabwe on our way there and back, and that we can be a blessing and encouragement to those who are suffering there. When we come back, I'll let you know how it went.
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