Month: August 2007

Categories
Books

An Extraordinary Man

WhippedI recently read on someone’s blog (unfortunately I can’t remember whose) that the book Mahatma Gandhi: An Interpretation was the most influential book in the blogger’s life. I was intrigued by that statement, but wasn’t going to do anything about it until I found that a scanned copy of the book could be downloaded from the Internet for free. I couldn’t argue with the cost, so I read the book.

The author E Stanley Jones, who was a close friend of Gandhi, is a bit too fulsome in his praise for my liking, but he manages to capture some remarkable details about Gandhi’s life when he says (page 8), “I kneel at the feet of Christ and give him my full and final allegiance. And yet a little man, who fought a system in the framework of which I stand, has taught me more of the spirit of Christ than perhaps any other man in East or West.”

What would a Christian lifestyle look like today if someone really took Jesus seriously? It would surely involve living modestly, serving the poor, and fighting against the forces of oppression, but using love and not violence as a weapon. Gandhi, although not a Christian, took Jesus’s teachings seriously and used non-violent resistance and unfailing politeness as his main weapons in achieving independence for India, refusing to retaliate for the violence, derision and persecution which he suffered.

Categories
Poverty

Making Poverty Personal

PoorWhat should individual Christians be doing to address poverty? There are two parts to the equation: one is arranging the funding to tackle poverty, and the other is using those funds wisely. Whilst governments are able to provide the greatest amount of resources, a difficulty is that the larger the amount of funding available, the more difficult it is to spend that money effectively. I don’t believe governments will solve poverty.

God has provided Christians who live in the West with enormous personal wealth, when viewed on a global scale. The average income of an Australian over the course of a lifetime is around 200 times the income of a typical African. If you accept the Biblical principle that the resources which come under your control while you are on earth do not belong to you and you cannot take them with you when you die – you are merely a trustee for a limited period of time – then you will surely agree that as God’s trustee you should be allocating a significant proportion of those resources to the poor.

It is not enough for you just to send money to a charity and let them distribute it. You need to meet some people who are living in poverty. You need to learn from them about their struggles and how to see the world through their eyes. You need to smell the smells of the slums, and to walk for a while in the shoes of the poor. You need to take their advice on how to assist them, and you need to be humble enough to listen to their criticism as you make mistakes along the way. And along with your money, you need to give yourself.

Categories
Future

Bribery keeps Kenyans poor

OppressionAccording to Proverbs, By justice a king gives a country stability, but one who is greedy for bribes tears it down. Transparency International Kenya has recently released its Kenya Bribery Index 2007, a detailed report on the extent of bribery in the country. If the report is accurate, it is quite easy to see how the culture of bribery distorts the economy enough to keep the majority of Kenyans extremely poor.

Kenyans encounter bribery in 54% of their interactions with institutions, and the average person pays 2.5 bribes per year. The most common reason for a bribe was law enforcement, and the organisation most prone to bribery was the Kenya Police Force. Second on the list was the Transport Licensing Board, which helps to explain why a high percentage of drivers seem to have obtained licenses without passing a driving test.

More than 75% of the clients of the following organisations encountered bribery: Immigration Department, CDF Office (Constituency Development Fund), Transport Licensing Board, and Parliament. The largest bribes were typically bribes that employees had to pay to be given jobs. The people hardest hit by corruption are those who are least able to afford the bribes.

Categories
Present

Standing out from the crowd

ProtestWhat should be the most noticeable things which stand out about the lifestyle of a follower of Jesus? Some people try to be outstandingly strict in adhering to moral rules. Some try to be outstandingly politically conservative. Some try to be outspoken against the abandoning of wholesome values. And some are just outstandingly weird.

It seems to be that none of these outward appearances accurately reflects the message of Jesus. According to the gospels, a true follower of Jesus would be someone who shows remarkable forgiveness, love for enemies, concern for the outcast, hunger for righteousness, humility, self-sacrifice, and earnest desire for peace. A true follower is characterised by generosity, patience, kindness, unselfishness and self-control.

Conceptually, it really isn’t hard to stand out from the crowd as a follower of Jesus. The crowd as a whole don’t display these character traits. If you start acting like a true follower of Jesus, surely other people are going to notice. But still, there’s something that holds us back. Somehow it’s much easier to be the enforcer of moral values than to be a dispenser of Jesus’s grace.

Categories
Past

Echoes of Jesus

PeaceThere is something embarrassing about observing someone who claims not to be a Christian, but who follows certain parts of the teachings of Jesus far more seriously than typical people who do claim to be Christians. Someone who turns the other cheek when Christians are calling for revenge. Someone who forgives when Christians are calling for punishment. Someone who shows love for his enemies when Christians are fighting theirs.

The problem is that very few Christians actually follow Jesus. Mohandas Gandhi, on the other hand, a Hindu, was greatly influenced by Jesus. Ironically, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Hindu scripture which Gandhi regarded as sacred, is a philosophical justification of the use of force, yet Gandhi’s whole message in life was based around the need to avoid violence of any kind while standing up for what is right.

The teachings of Jesus about forgiveness and love are usually regarded as impractical when it comes to real-world issues such as national security and control of terrorism; however, Gandhi’s life demonstrates that Jesus’s principles can be embodied with considerable effect – one man was able to inspire the second-largest nation on earth to engage in non-violent resistance, successfully achieving the goal of independence.

Categories
Faith

Faith Struggles of Mother Teresa

DesertAn article published yesterday by Time contains details of writings of Mother Teresa indicating that she went through spiritual dryness – a failure to sense the presence of God – for most of the period of her ministry amongst the poor. Mother Teresa wanted the writings to be destroyed, but they were kept by the church, and have now been published.

In one meditation, Mother Teresa writes: I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?” In a letter she writes: …the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.

Spiritual dryness or running on empty is a common problem for workaholic Christian leaders. The normally prescribed treatments are taking a break from work, structuring a regular time into each day to pray and listen to God, and taking periodic retreats to seek God’s heart and to derive inspiration and encouragement from other Christian leaders. Faith is like a marriage relationship; every incident which happens along the way is an opportunity to grow closer together or further apart. But it seems that for Mother Teresa the relationship was dry in spite of all her efforts to make it work.

Categories
Books

The Forgotten Ways

AncientI haven’t found Alan Hirsch’s book The Forgotten Ways to be easy to read. I’ve found it disturbing, irritating, uncomfortable and thought-provoking. One of the things that Alan says is that the missional church needs to have liminality and communitas. Liminality involves being on the marginal edge, possibly but not necessarily in a position involving danger and disorientation. Communitas means the sort of relationships formed through shared ordeals.

No longer can the church hide safely inside buildings in the confident expectation that people will come to it. No longer can church be something which affects only the Sunday mornings in a believer’s life. Church needs to be reincarnated as something in the community all day every day. The holy huddle of comfortable fellowship needs to be replaced by the sort of friendships which can only arise when comrades risk all in pursuit of a vital purpose.

Something that I’m not sure about is whether Alan is right when he seems to imply that the new missional approach needs to be done by smaller bands in informal settings. In my own experience, smaller missional groups have not been as effective as larger groups. Alan is right in suggesting that the larger the group is, the more difficulty you have in deploying the talents of all members fully; but it seems to me that the smaller the group is, the more trouble you have in finding people with gifts and talents sufficient to create momentum.

Categories
Poverty

Poverty Caused by Insurgency

Grim ReaperIt’s hard to believe that there are still places on the Earth where angry men with AK47 rifles might appear at any time, killing, raping and plundering anyone in sight. It’s even harder to bear the knowledge that one of those young men might be your own son, abducted a few years ago as a child and brainwashed into a culture of fear, violence and superstition.

That’s how things have been for many years in northern Uganda. Perhaps it’s coming to an end, but the future is very uncertain. Joseph Kony is the spiritual leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, conjuring magic to make his followers immune to bullets. The LRA sustains its rebel activities by kidnapping boys and brainwashing them by exposing them to slaughter and extreme violence. Girls are kidnapped for use as sex slaves. No-one really can remember what they are rebelling against.

As a result of the constant insurgency, the people in northern Uganda are extremely poor, and they have lived in a state of constant trauma for many years. Now that the insurgency might be coming to an end, they need to work out how to treat the perpetrators of the crimes, bearing in mind that the perpetrators are their own sons, brainwashed and unrecognisable as a result of the terror which they have endured.

Categories
Future

Melbourne’s future growth

TrafficWhen travelling to the city, I usually catch a train before the morning peak hour, and I usually travel home after the evening peak hour, but in the past week I’ve caught peak hour trains twice, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Our road are too congested; our public transport is overloaded: what does the future hold for the city of Melbourne? According to an article in yesterday’s Age newspaper, no vision means no future.

The Victorian State Government does in fact have a strategy document entitled Melbourne 2030: Planning for Sustainable Growth. It says that Melbourne will grow by up to 1 million people over the next 25 years. Part of the strategy is “better management of metropolitan growth”, but I wonder whether this isn’t like a policeman standing beside a road waving at traffic as it goes past, but not actually directing the traffic.

I also wonder how Melbourne’s churches are planning to cater for the 33% increase in the number of people in the city. I wonder how much strategic planning and investment is going into starting new churches in the growth corridors. What is the best way to serve the people in the new housing estates? How the church be an active participant in creating the new communities?

Categories
Present

Global Christian Adventure

Global AdventureI have now set up a new website at globalchristianadventure.com, relating to a Course, a Book and a Trip. The Course will be run on three successive Wednesday evenings in September at Syndal Baptist Church, Melbourne, Australia. It’s about the new global rules of engagement for fully committed followers of Jesus. The first week we’ll be asking, “Who are all these people living in the world?”. The second week we’ll be talking about poverty, disease and corruption. The third week we’ll be investigating, “How does the Good News spread?”

The Book is something that I’ve written to provide resource materials for the course. In addition to covering the three topics from the course, it has chapters on Islam, Atheism, Understanding and Influencing our Culture, and the New Global Rules of Engagement. A sample chapter is available for download from the website. The book is due to arrive from the printer towards the end of next week.

The Trip is a 3-week visit to Kenya and Uganda leaving from Melbourne straight after Christmas this year. We’ll be visiting the Dagoretti Corner Baptist Church in the slums in Nairobi (which I visit every year), and we’ll also be helping to build a school/church building in Kaberamaido District, Uganda. This is in an area where poverty has been caused by frequent looting and depredations at the hands of militia. If you’re interested, download the further information from the website and get in contact as soon as possible.