Month: March 2008

Categories
Past

Isaac Newton

Apple HeadOn this day 281 years ago, Sir Isaac Newton died at the age of 84. In 1687 he published what has been regarded as the greatest work in the history of science, entitled Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (“Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”). The book consists of three volumes, the first two entitled “On the Motion of Bodies” (including a mathematical exposition of calculus), and the third entitled “On the System of the World” (including universal gravitation).

Newton is regarded as the person who first described universal gravitation and the laws of inertia, acceleration and reciprocal actions. He described the principles of conservation of momentum and angular momentum. He invented the reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour using a prism to break white light down into different colours. He demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, and formulated a law of cooling.

Newton was also a profoundly religious person. He said, “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.” During his lifetime, he actually wrote more on religion than he wrote on science. He saw God as the master creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation.

Categories
Faith

The opposite of faith is legalism

Red TapeThere is a curious feature in the life cycle of churches. They start out as faith enterprises when they are planted. Then over time things become systematised and ritualised. Eventually legalism takes over. At the start, everyone depends on God. No-one knows for sure what will happen next week, or whether anyone will turn up for the next service. No-one knows for sure where money is going to come from. It’s a high-risk enterprise, and the people trust in God because it will all fail unless he shows up.

Then the church starts to become successful. A dependable group of committed people get involved. A critical mass is reached. The church becomes “viable” when there is enough money in the offertory plate each week to pay all the bills. But at the very moment the church becomes “viable”, the seeds of strangulation are sown. It is no longer necessary to take risks and trust in God to provide, because there are enough resources already. Now it becomes a matter of setting up systems which will keep the “success” flowing. After a long time, the “rules” of the system become more important than listening to God’s voice, and legalism becomes firmly entrenched.

Jesus was often accused of being a rule-breaker. When accused of breaking the rules of the Sabbath, he said, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” Churches that operate according to a system of rules are offering sacrifices when God is desiring mercy instead.

Categories
Books

Living Justly

JusticeWhere does an ordinary person who wants to live like Jesus start? Some simple ways are discussed in Justice in the Burbs: Being the Hands of Jesus Wherever you Live, by Will and Lisa Samson. It’s an unusual book, interweaving a fictional story about a family who try to live “justly” with observations from the authors’ real-life efforts. The type of “justice” described in the book is a strange blend of serving the poor, living frugally, environmentalism and political correctness.

In the introduction, the authors indicate that the issues of justice addressed by the book apply to people who are not Christians, but their reasoning throughout the rest of the book relies exclusively on the teachings of Jesus, leaving the reader wondering whether the authors believe that all religions must teach the same things. The particular actions recommended in the book are: consume less fuel, food, electricity and water; look for ways of serving neighbourhood kids and lonely people, while reducing the time you spend at church, work, and in your children’s activities; become involved with organisations which serve the poor; buy used goods, buy less stuff, and recycle; and buy “fair trade” products.

The book tackles some important subjects, and Christians do need to spend more efforts engaging with the poor and disadvantaged, and caring for the environment. The book is reasonably well-written, even if I am not a big fan of the fiction-made-up-to-illustrate-a-point segments. However, I was left with the impression that the authors’ message was a collection of loosely-related small ideas, rather than a coherent vision for living justly in suburbia today.

Categories
Poverty

Haste leads to poverty

WarMarkets cannot create prosperity without robust public institutions, according to controversial economist Joseph Stiglitz, as reported in The Age this week. Stiglitz is a past winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, and he was Bill Clinton’s chief economic adviser and then chief economist of the World Bank. He argues that the International Monetary Fund has devastated developing economies with its one-size-fits-all deregulation regime.

Stiglitz has now co-authored The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. It’s not a polite question to ask, but it’s certainly one which needs to be addressed: What are the costs of the Iraq War, and what are the benefits? There have been considerably more coalition-of-the-willing soldiers killed in Iraq than there were civilians killed in the 9/11 attacks, and vastly greater numbers of Iraqi civilians have been killed. There were no weapons of mass destruction found, and there was no apparent link between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. The economic costs have been enormous, for what benefit?

The current US recession is probably attributable in large part to the Iraq war. Stiglitz’s new book goes into some details about the economic damage which has been caused. According to an editorial review, “This book will forever change the way we think about the war.”

Categories
Future

Bishop Spong’s crystal ball

Crystal BallReligiousTolerance.org refers to some predictions made by Bishop John Shelby Spong about the future of the church. His predictions and my comments follow:

Church attendance is in decline worldwide.

Actually, it is increasing. Attendance by those of Bishop Spong’s persuasion is declining worldwide.

Books used in worship, prayers, and liturgy are starting to reject the concept that God is “an external power capable of being manipulated by the prayers of the faithful.”

Churches that use such books are in serious and rapid decline.

The loss of priestly authority and priestly respect will continue.

Yes, I think it will.

Lay people will “preside at the Eucharist during the next century, even in Catholic circles.”

Quite possibly.

Worship “will not be oriented toward an external God but toward the world of our human community.”

Only at New Age events.

The church will direct its energy towards the seeking of truth, rather than defending its previously determined, narrow, definition of truth.

Jesus said, “I am the truth.” Churches which seek Jesus will thrive.

The church will reject many traditional beliefs, such as the Christmas star, the angels visiting the shepherds, the wise men, the physical resuscitation of Jesus, the angels rolling away the stone from the tomb, bodies that appear and disappear, etc.

There is no sign of the church wanting to follow Bishop Spong’s lead in this regard.

Rituals which recognize the transitions of life will have to be recreated. Baptism has been “so filled with the theistic language of a supernatural deity as to be repugnant to an increasing number of believers today.” It will become a “ritual that calls each candidate to be all that that person was created to be.”

Probably not on this planet.

The ritual of the mass in which bread and wine are converted into the body and blood of Jesus will be replaced by the original Christian ritual, the shared meal – open to all who are hungry.

Quite possibly.

Categories
Present

Africa’s king of terror

TerroristIf you’re African and prefer to seize power by force because no-one in their right minds would ever vote for you, where do you go for support? The answer is, you will always find a warm welcome in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan terrorist training camps. Gaddafi has now been the sponsor of a considerable proportion of insurrection, destabilisation and indiscriminate violence across Africa for more than 30 years. If there is any single person who can claim credit for widespread African poverty and corruption, Gaddafi is your man.

Gaddafi visited Uganda last week, and let fly with several of his well-considered pieces of political philosophy. He urged heads of African governments to abandon constitutionalism so as to extend their terms of rule. He singled out Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe and Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni as the most “visionary” leaders on the continent today. Mugabe, of course, holds the world record for creating the fastest economic decline of any country and the highest inflation rate.

For good measure, and just in time for Easter, Gaddafi proclaimed that the Bible is a forgery: “The Bible we have now is not the one that was revealed to Issa [Jesus] and the Old Testament is not the one that was revealed to Musa [Moses]. Muhammad is mentioned in both (original versions), but the Tora and Bible we have now, there is no mention of him.” I’m sure we’re all looking forward to the day when archaeologists dig up an “original” version of the Bible which does mention Muhammad.

Categories
Past

King James

KingOn this day 405 years ago, King James I succeeded Queen Elizabeth I as monarch of England. Two years later he was the one of the subjects of a famous assassination plot known as the Gunpowder Plot, which is commemorated each year on 5 November as Guy Fawkes Day. The reign of King James coincided with the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan literature, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne and Sir Francis Bacon.

In January 1604, King James convened the Hampton Court Conference to address various concerns which had been raised by Puritans. This led to the royal commissioning of a new translation of the Bible, which was published in 1611 as the Authorised Version, now commonly known as the King James Version, although he was not personally one of the translators. The King James Version is considered one of the greatest literary achievements of the period.

King James died in 1625, but the Bible translation which he had commissioned lived on to become the most widely published book in history, with over one billion copies in print. The King James Version was translated primarily from the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts which were available at the time. Newer translations such as the New International Version are based partly on ancient manuscripts which are considered to be more reliable, although the differences in wording are quite minor.

Categories
Faith

Is it all true?

Empty TombI read a newspaper article today which dismissed Easter as an unlikely story. But is a story even worth telling or remembering if it is a “likely” story? An event is only significant and worth commemorating if it is “unlikely”. The real question is not “Is the resurrection of a man unlikely?” – of course it is – but “Is the resurrection of Jesus true?” If you believe in the existence of a God powerful enough to bring the universe into existence and everything in it, then it is a small thing to believe that God can bring his son back to life.

When John the Baptist was in prison about to be executed by the king, even he started to doubt whether Jesus was the Messiah. He sent two men to find out, and Jesus’s answer was: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind can see, the lame can walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf can hear, the dead come back to life, and the poor are hearing the good news.” In other words, the best way to see whether Jesus really was the Messiah was to look at the changes he had caused in people’s lives.

In many ways, the best evidence about who Jesus is can still be found by looking at the lives that have been transformed through the work of Jesus in their lives. On the other hand, perhaps the most convincing evidence against the resurrection is the lack of any discernible change for the better in the lives of many who claim to be followers of Jesus.

Categories
Books

Church Marketing

MarketMarketing is the “management of perception”, and it’s something that every church does, whether or not they do it explicitly, according to Richard Reising in his book Church Marketing 101: Preparing Your Church for Greater Growth. Managing perception is about effectively presenting reality, not manipulating the truth, and as a result the biggest marketing issues for most churches are not producing advertising materials, but the manner in which the church welcomes visitors, practises community, and serves others in the local community.

According to the author, “All inviters put their reputations on the line every time they invite someone to church. You can rest assured that your church members will not invite someone if they do not expect a positive outcome… If your church is having to beg, push, cajole, offer incentives, or even just remind people in your membership to invite others, it is a telltale sign that, for whatever reason, they do not believe the ministry that takes place will make a successful connection with the people they would invite.” So the church needs to deal with obstacles to hospitality, comfort, compatibility, consistency, relevance, understanding and sensitivity.

The book is not an “ideas” book for “ways to promote your church”. It is something more fundamental and strategic than that. It explains how marketing affects every area of your church, and it explains why you are not ready to start promoting and advertising until you have dealt with the obstacles which will inevitably limit the success of any advertising campaign. A very useful book for church strategists.

Categories
Poverty

Rethinking AIDS in Africa

FlattenedThe statistical information which we have about the prevalence and spread of AIDS in Africa is fairly rudimentary. As a result many of the commonly held beliefs about AIDS in Africa and the economic and cultural circumstances in which it spreads may be incorrect, according to University of Chicago economist Emily Oster, speaking at the TED conference in March 2007.

The available figures seem to show that the AIDS epidemic has had very little effect on the incidence of extra-marital sex in Africa, whereas it had a significant effect on the incidence of unprotected gay sex in the west. This appears puzzling, in view of the high risk of contracting AIDS. However, Ms Oster suggests that in areas where there is already a reduced life expectancy because of malaria, there is no great incentive for people to avoid AIDS, whereas in areas which have a reasonable life expectancy, there is a substantial reduction in unprotected extra-marital sex.

Current statistics on AIDS prevalence depend on unreliable estimates. If mortality data – which is available – is used, the implied HIV infection rates are significantly lower than currently accepted rates. There seems to be a correlation between export activity and infection rates, with people such as truck drivers and migrants more likely to be infected, and the successful anti-AIDS program in Uganda occurred at the same time as a significant decline in export activity.