“Here Lived a Great Street Sweeper…”

9 05 2012

I’ve got two questions I’m going to ask you. Here’s the first one:

“So, what do you do?”

This is one of those standard questions we get asked when we meet somebody  new. Most of us answer with our job: “I’m a plumber”, etc. But why don’t we say, “I play football”, or “I drive my car”? Intuitively, the question expects that we will answer it with our occupation. Furthermore, an interesting grammatical shift happens here: “What do you do?” is answered with “I am…” So, what we do as an occupation is now how we define our very identity. Most of us, in fact, probably identify ourselves by our jobs before we do by our families (only those who work as parents all day answer “I’m a mum or dad”), or by our nation (not many answer, “I am an Australian/American/Italian, etc”).

And yet, there’s a flip side to this, seen in the answer to the next question:

“So, how’s work?”

Now, what emotion does that question evoke in you? Many of us immediately feel the urge to start complaining. The few of us who actually feel enthusiastic about the answer, often get rather nasty looks from people: everybody else hates their job, why should we be the lucky ones who don’t?

So it seems that now, our chief identity marker has to be linked with misery and frustration. This hardly seems to be a good situation!

Part of the issue is that there has been a shift over time, seen in the very word we use to describe our job: it is now occupation, but it used to be primarily a profession, and before that, it was primarily a vocation.

Vocation comes from the Latin for call (vocatio is the root for vocal, as well). Up until the Reformation, most people believed that God only called those who went into clerical or monastic jobs. But the Reformers argued that God calls people into whatever job they do. This meant that there was as much vocation in being a blacksmith as being a monk. Eventually, Catholics agreed (most notably Francis de Sales). But it was England’s Puritans who really took this on, leading to the “Protestant work ethic”. Puritans were often an employer’s best workers, because they worked not just for their boss, but for God Himself. This made work have a new dignity, and it’s precisely at this time that we really see work becoming a primary identity marker.

Secularisation tries to destroy that idea, making us feel that our jobs have nothing to do with God at all. You can see this in the shift from talking about our vocation to our profession. God didn’t call us to our work any more – we did. We professed it. At first, this was a celebration of our autonomy. We decided who we were. In the 1950s and 1960s “boom”, this seemed pretty true, since most middle-class people could choose their jobs.

But ultimately, we discovered that our job wasn’t always our choice. Our boss told us what to do. It thus became just something to occupy our time, our occupation. This has now happened to most of us, but it obviously was a reality for many from low socio-economic groups long before. Martin Luther King Jr once spoke to such a group, some African-American school kids about their job prospects, and this is what he said:

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures… like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.[1]

King realised that having an occupation or even a profession just isn’t enough. What we need is a calling. And the only way to have a calling, is to have Somebody Who calls. The fact that such a Caller exists was a great reality that we really need to rediscover. His calling brings a whole new dignity, purpose and focus into our job, and may well change how we answer the question, “So, how’s work?”

Matt Gray


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The Losers Who Keep on Winning

18 04 2012

We love winners. The only time that we sometimes start to like losers is when they start to win – then we call them underdogs. But sometimes, we like that losers are losers, because they used to be winners, and we didn’t like them when they were winners. Besides, underdogs can be dangerous. In The Hunger Games, Donald Sutherland’s President is told, “Everybody loves an underdog.” He responds, “I don’t.” He then points out that the underdog districts are underdogs for a reason. They contain valuable natural resources that the Capitol exploits. There is a fine line between an underdog winning, and a exploited group rebelling.

So, what is the Church? A winner? A loser? Are they the exploitative Capitol? Or are they the exploited underdog? Do you want them to win, or lose? The overwhelming sense in our society is that the Church has lost. It’s a loser. And that’s a good thing, because apparently the Church was once a terrible winner. It seems that wider society, generally, sees the Church as a tired, fat, old Capitol. The underdogs are rising against it, and when they win, everybody will cheer.

But who is this “underdog”? What has the Church been supposedly oppressing? Has the Church been oppressing the poor? Really? That’s news to the countless millions, if not billions of poor people that Christians have helped over the centuries, thanks to groups like the Salvation Army, or the Franciscans, to name just a few. Often the only people who stood with the poor, the quintessential underdogs, were the Christians. If the Church loses, believe me, it will not be a good thing for the poor. And who is telling society, again and again, that the Church does not stand with the underdog? Isn’t it the media, who are run by the wealthy, the influential, and the powerful? If anybody is the Capitol, surely, it’s the media, not the Church.

In reality, people have always found ways of making the Church sound like we are losing, and that it’s good that we lose. And then we’ve won.

Christianity began in the Roman Empire, and was persecuted with increasing vigour until everybody thought we’d lost. Right at that moment, we took over Rome. Then, when the Roman Empire crumbled, everybody thought we’d crumble with it. The barbarians, with their pagan gods, would win, and we’d lose. Then we took over the barbarian Franks and Britons. Then, when the barbarians gave way to the Vikings and the growth of feudalism, we took over the Vikings (now called Normans) and feudalism. And when out of the tattered remnants of the English Civil War, secularism promised the end of Christianity, within a century the Wesleyan Revivals spilled over the nation. At every point, people said we had lost.

And here is an amazing realisation. We have often been the underdogs. And then, we lose.  We die. In fact, it’s actually when we die, that we usually win. G. K. Chesterton said, “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”[1] Easter is about Jesus being the Underdog, that everybody wanted to lose. Good Friday felt really good for the Pharisees, Pilate’s Roman government, the masses. They thought they had won. But Easter Sunday shows that Jesus wins. Always. And Jesus, through His Body on earth now, the Church, has been doing the same thing, over and over, ever since.

Whether you are a Christian or not, you may think that the Church today is dying. You may think our ethics is archaic, that our credibility is shot, that we are an exploitative Capitol that robs from the poor and downtrodden underdog. If you think that, I’d ask you, firstly, to check your source – Capitols from Rome, to Paris, to Mecca, to Moscow, to Hollywood have been saying that about us for centuries. Most of those who said such things are now gone. You don’t even know their names. But we are still here. I invite you to join the everwinning underdog, the Church, as they serve the everwinning Lord Jesus Christ.

Matt Gray

[1]    G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (New York, NY: Dodd  Mead & Co., 1925), chap. 2.6.


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Celebrity or Friend?

26 03 2012

Do you know any celebrities? I mean, we all “know” a lot of celebrities… otherwise, they’re not really celebrities. Of course, many celebrities have a persona that has very little to do with their ordinary selves. Fans like us live in a world of abstract concepts about celebrities: their albums, their movies, their sporting accomplishments. While we’re sometimes attracted to their “personal” lives, these usually retain the abstract element of celebrity – the big mansion, the crazy romance (and subsequent divorce). Nobody would buy a trashy-magazine with a celebrity on the cover going to the toilet – not because it’s too disgusting, but because it’s too ordinary.

Take the shock-rocker Alice Cooper, for example: his persona is one of a violent psychopath – off stage, he’s a golf-addict. I remember hearing him talk about he and Iggy Pop lamenting their poor short-game. But it had never occurred to me that people like Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop did ordinary things. I just assumed they lived in a perpetual concert.

It’d be interesting – and kinda weird – to speak to one of the ordinary friends of ordinary Alice. It might be difficult for them to explain the ordinary things they do with Alice, day by day, since they are so far removed from our expectations. We might even scoff at their discussion of him going shopping at the supermarket, to which they might say, “Well, you don’t know him like I do”. They might not even like to talk about their friendship with Alice, since it’s part of his personal life.

I think God Himself sometimes suffers from a similar sense of celebrity. In a lot of ways, He’s the Celebrity – most people have heard of Him, in some form or another, even if they have no direct relationship with Him.

One strange thing about how Christians often seek to prove the reality of God, is that we try to prove the celebrity side of Him – His abstract “stats”, like that He created the world (“… in seven days! That’s still a world record!”). This is all a rather odd thing for us to do, because we’re supposed to know God personally, as a Friend, and not merely the Celebrity. We’re supposed to have His Spirit with us as a Friend – and that’s because of God coming as Jesus Christ, Who is called in the Bible “Immanuel”, “God with us”, in relationship with us. God chose in Christ not to stay an abstract, distant Celebrity, but to become our Friend.

No wonder atheists often don’t believe in Him! Many have never met Him, personally. I struggle to conceive Alice Cooper on a golf course. They struggle to conceive of God in relationship with people like them, and us. Alice Cooper’s friend isn’t going to convince me he plays golf by talking about his stage-show. So why do we Christians consistently talk about abstract things in God?

There are two answers to that. The nastiest one is to suggest that some “Christians” are living a sham, and gave up having a personal, experienced relationship with God long ago, if they ever did. All they have left is the abstract notions about God. But I suggest that other Christians are just victims of our prevailing secular culture, that has squeezed their personal life with God into their “personal life”, that privatised secret world, and they feel they’re not allowed to discuss it. I suggest that we Christians need to get back to talking about the God we meet every day. People can argue forever about the abstract nature of an abstract celebrity, but it’s much harder to argue against the intimate relationship we have with a friend.

To my atheist friends, I can tell you that I chat with God every day (sometimes, actually, on the loo), and many times I’ve felt Him chatting back. I wouldn’t be a Christian if it was just knowing about the Celebrity God – I want to know Him, personally, relationally. And seriously, He keeps going on and on, all the time, that He wants you to know Him too. For some of us, we’ll respond that such an appeal to the experiential is too personal, too subjective. We want to talk about rational proofs for the Celebrity. That’s fine, go ahead.

But for some of you, you’re tired of just hearing about the Celebrity. Well, I’ve got Someone I’d like you to meet…

Matt Gray

 


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The Stoopudest Kind of Prejudice

12 03 2012

Last weekend, I saw again the lovely kids’ movie, Gnomeo and Juliet, a great retelling of Shakespeare’s best known work. Aside from the lack of “thee and thou”,  it pretty much sticks with the basic plot. Two families, the Montagues and Capulets, have a long-running fued, which becomes confused when two young members from these rival families fall in love.

Shakespeare’s original Romeo and Juliet of course grabs us most because of the tragedy this rivalry brings upon the lovers – it ultimately kills them. There is still a little of that in Gnomeo and Juliet, although they obviously tame it down a little for the kids. But what this animated retelling does capture, that the original does not, is the sheer and utter stoopudity of the whole situation.

The story begins, “Two households, both alike in dignity” – these are two families that, actually, are pretty respectable. Yet for some unexplained reason, they have come to hate each other. It seems that, for both families, the only reason they hate the other, is because the other hates them. If you asked a Capulet what specifically they don’t like about the Montagues, you sense they’d say, “Well, I don’t know… No, they seem to be fairly nice and everything… it’s just well, they hate us so much, so…” And a Montague would say pretty much the same thing. If the only reason we hate somebody is because they hate us, it’s all becoming a little silly – nothing highlights that more than seeing a bunch of garden gnomes fighting.

Prejudice is always stupid. One of my favourite sayings is, “Prejudice breeds ignorance, and ignorance breeds prejudice”. Usually we have a prejudice towards people we don’t understand, and it is our prejudice that stops us from learning more about them. We feel we don’t need to learn more about them, because whenever we find something we don’t know about them, our prejudice fills in the blanks. You don’t know what “they” eat (whoever “they” are)? Don’t worry, your prejudice will come up with the answer for you – clearly, “they” must eat children, or something. It doesn’t matter to us that this is actually a fiction, because our prejudice reassures us of how right we are, compared to the fiction we have turned “them” into. The most “successful” prejudices are those that so effectively fictionalise “them”, that they cease to be human at all – they become animals, or demons, or at the very least, morons. But precisely because it is fiction, built on stubborn ignorance, is why prejudice is just so stupid.

Prejudice can be caused by stupidly focussing on any number of things: a person’s skin colour, their location, their gender, their family, their style in clothes. But by far the stoopudest prejudice is when we are prejudiced against somebody precisely because we think they are prejudiced against us. That is a stupidity that is so stupidly stupid that it ought to be misspelt. It is the height of stoopudity.

Many people seem to have a prejudice against Christians, because they think we’re all judgemental hypocrites who just want to make them look bad. That might be based on a few Christiany jerks they’ve met, but it’s not based on the vast majority of Christians. I know it’s not, because most of the Christians I know (and I know quite a few) are not like that at all. They’re decent, honest people, who actually have a lot of compassion, if you give them a chance. I might also suggest sometimes certain Christians think wider society is out to get them, when really, people are just trying to make their way as best they can. They make mistakes, sure, but so do all of us.

The solution to the ignorance/prejudice cycle is listening, actually filling the gaps in our knowledge with the reality, not our prejudiced fictions. When we talk to them, we find out “they” don’t eat children, “they” eat burgers, just like, well, “us”. Sure, we might not agree on everything. In fact there may be some big issues to work out. But maybe, if we listen, and throw away our prejudices for a while, we might actually tackle those issues much more effectively. And who knows, we might even fall in love. At the very least, we’ll be no longer seeing a fiction, but the real person before us.

Matt Gray


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Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice

We are the same

10 02 2012

This is the third of three articles to encourage healthier dialogue between evangelical Christians and the homosexual community. As such, the purpose is neither to condemn nor excuse homosexuality, but to seek to find a “common ground” that we all share, in which to begin the conversation.

So often, it seems that Christians and homosexuals see each other as being entirely at opposition. While there are undoubtedly some major issues to work through, perhaps we should start with what we have in common. And there’s actually often a lot more similarities than we usually assume.

For many Christians and homosexuals, there was a terrific, horrific moment in your life. You had wallowed in confusion about who you really are. Then you realised that “who I am” had a name, and you embraced it. This seemed liberating, but it also was really scary. It meant you had to tell your friends that you were now one of “those people”. You knew your friends had all these assumptions about what “those people” are like, much of which were wrong, but they probably wouldn’t listen. You’d eventually lose some of your friends because of this.

Then you thought about your family. And it got even more scary.

See, it’s not just that being Christian or homosexual was something that you did every now or then. It was something that defined your lifestyle, and your identity. It affected your social life, your politics, and who you dated. And it wasn’t a “phase” (no matter how many of your friends or family tried to dismiss it as such). This was who you’re planning to be for the rest of your life.

In some cases, for Christians or homosexuals, you ended up having your family – brothers, sisters, even your mother or father – utterly reject you, because they couldn’t handle who you now were. Sometimes, they did something almost worse – awkward smiles at family gatherings, everyone trying to pretend there isn’t a gigantic elephant in the room.

Then, for Christians and homosexuals, there’s the sea of judgements that people around you subject you to. And they say horrible things. Sometimes, others like you, Christians or homosexuals, were beaten up, or even killed because of this. Part of you fears you might be next.

Sometimes, for Christians and homosexuals, the only people you feel safe to be around are others who like you. They understand you. Together, you feel much stronger than you do “out there” with everybody else.

See? We have more in common that perhaps you thought we did. I admit, sometimes the barriers and fears I’ve described have, for homosexuals, been created by aggressive Christians. But I might gently suggest, some Christians are starting to experience similar barriers and fears, because of aggressive homosexuals.

The other thing to realise is that Jesus actually experienced every single one of these things, too. He realised that He was not like everybody else. He was different. There was a name for Who He was – the Messiah. On one level, that was great, but it also came with some significant costs. It meant that many who He had called friends abandoned Him, even trying to kill Him (Luke 4:22-30). It meant that many in His own family – even His brothers and mother – thought He was crazy (Mark 3:21), tried to shut Him up (Mark 3:31-35) and ridiculed Him (John 7:3-5). It meant whole crowds of people rejected Him, and falsely accused Him of terrible things. Ultimately, the only thing that they could really “pin on Him” was His identity – Who He was. Then they killed Him for it.

But there are some differences between Him, and Christians or homosexuals. Firstly, while Jesus clearly understood the terrible costs His identity would bring, from His friends, His family, and wider society, He was virtually never afraid about those costs. He had a strength that none of us can fathom. Secondly, while He deeply valued spending time with those who had a similar view of His identity, He always had times for others. Always. And He never fell into the same false judgements that everybody else did. He saw them as they really are. And because He rose again, He still sees you as you really are.

Look, I’m not going to pretend that this article, or any of these articles, take away all the issues here. But hopefully, these articles can at least show some ways that we can approach these issues more effectively. Let’s come together, with Jesus somehow in our midst, and start the conversation afresh.

Matt Gray


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The Christian Sodomy Epidemic

8 02 2012

This is the second of three articles to encourage healthier dialogue between evangelical Christians and the homosexual community. As such, the purpose is neither to condemn nor excuse homosexuality, but to seek to find a “common ground” that we all share, in which to begin the conversation.

There is a serious epidemic in Christian circles, that seems to often be left unnoticed. The Church is absolutely riddled with Sodomites.

            The term “Sodomite” comes from a story in the Bible. In Genesis 19, God sent three angels to investigate the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, because He’d heard the townspeople were doing the wrong thing. God told His plan to the great hero Abraham in Genesis 18. Abraham had seen the three angels walking along, and immediately invited them to stay with him before they went to Sodom.

Upon arriving in Sodom, the angels tried to stay in the centre of the city (the equivalent of the local hotel), but were warned against it by an immigrant in Sodom, Abraham’s nephew, Lot. Lot suggested instead that they should stay at his place, behind locked doors. The reason for this was revealed when the townsmen banged on his door, demanding that he throw his guests out to the street, so they could have sex with them. This was the final straw for God. He saved Lot and his daughters, then destroyed the city.

What was the crime of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah? With our pre-installed title of “Sodomite”, and our peculiarly western fixation with sexuality, evangelicals often assume it was their homosexuality. But if we look at both the historical and textual context of the story (in other words, do what we evangelicals often pride ourselves on doing with the Bible), we might see their crime is closer to home.

In fact, it’s all about home. In ancient near eastern society, one of the strongest moral expectations was hospitality. The Sodomites obviously weren’t good hosts to the three visitors, and that is their biggest crime. That might sound strange, unless you’re a nomad who’s wandered around the near eastern desert. To not show hospitality, especially to strangers, is considered criminal in such a context, because it essentially condemns the person to death by dehydration, freezing, heatstroke, or starvation. This is made more clear by the good guys of this story, Abraham and Lot. They show remarkable hospitality to the three strangers, which only heightens the contrast between them and the Sodomites.

Where Sodom is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, one verse (Jude 7) criticises their “sexual immorality” (though, admittedly, that could just as well be because they were rapists, rather than that they were gay). The other verses define Sodom’s sin in terms of hospitality (ie, Jesus in Matthew 11:23-24). In Ezekiel 16:49, God specifically says Sodom’s crime was that they “were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” So, Biblically, a Sodomite is more accurately defined as somebody who does not welcome others.

Hospitality does not mean that you can’t have standards and expectations – you don’t have to allow a guest to leave the fridge-door open. But you need to do the hard thing of finding ways of framing those standards in ways that still help guests – especially the vulnerable – to be made to feel welcome, and safe in your home.

In my previous article, I wrote about 1 Corinthians 6:9-10: “Neither homosexuals… nor the greedy, etc… will inherit the Kingdom of God.” But the very next verse says: “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

This clearly suggests that the Corinthian church was made up of people who had been homosexual, or greedy, or whatever, when they started going there. The Corinthian Christians made them feel welcome, while also somehow finding ways to remain authentic to their belief. Eventually, they found a solution to the guests’ issues that meant the guests could become Christians themselves. The Solution was Jesus and the Spirit of God.

Sadly, some Christians today seem to be as inhospitable as the Sodomites were, especially to homosexuals, but also to other Christians who disagree with them on this issue. And, I might gently suggest, some in the homosexual community are in danger of really becoming Sodomites, by stereotyping Christians and refusing to join them in dialogue. Fortunately, though, many more of us are following the way of Abraham, Lot, and the Corinthians, and offering a refuge for all those who need it, and a space for friendly dialogue. We seek to follow the way of Jesus, Who promised, “I go to prepare a home for you…”(John 14:1-3)

Matt Gray


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“Woe to the Rich”

6 02 2012

This is the first of three articles to encourage healthier dialogue between evangelical Christians and the homosexual community. As such, the purpose is neither to condemn nor excuse homosexuality, but to seek to find a “common ground” that we all share, in which to begin the conversation.

Recently, the issue of how Christians perceive homosexuality has been brought into increasing focus within wider western society. For example, in my home town of Adelaide, Australia, there is a rather famous (or perhaps infamous) group of street preachers, who are preaching primarily about how homosexuals are all going to hell.[1]

Often, it seems, those Christians who attack homosexuality frame things primarily around morality. This is sometimes called legalism, or pseudo-pietism, or Pelagianism. But while Jesus Christ did talk about morality quite a bit, He spent far, far more time talking about something else: namely, Himself. To discuss morality at the start of a conversation about Christianity is to have already missed the point. What we need to do is talk about Jesus. As I said in my previous article for Wondering Fair, “Christians don’t follow rules. They follow the One Who rules.”

This becomes all the more clear when we see how legalists usually frame the discussion about Christianity. In order to assure themselves of how much God approves of them because of their lifestyle, legalists often do two things: they find rules in the Bible that they can live up to; then they find a group that they can compare themselves to, that are not following the rules, and that they are thus “better than”. This is really comforting, at least to begin with.

An “easy target” for this kind of Christian legalism are homosexuals. I’m not going to lie – none of the Biblical passages about homosexuality endorse it, and most seem to be pretty strongly against it: Genesis 19 is the story of Sodom (we’ll look at that in the next article), Romans 1:26-27 isn’t very positive, either. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 is another one discussed:

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor homosexuals nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

The Christian legalist highlights where it says “homosexuals… will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The problem is that when we start looking deeper at the rules in the Bible, we discover there are some pesky ones that we don’t live up to either. For example, verse 10 also says that the greedy won’t inherit the Kingdom either.

How do you define greedy? How about we define it as those who have a lot more than others, at the expense of others, and who are seeking to get more? Well, if that’s the case, most middle-class western consumerists are greedy. If you’ve had a high school education, own a car (let alone a house!), or even have two sets of clothes, you’re doing much better than about 90% of the world’s population. And many of your clothes are made by poor people who are being exploited. Face it, from a global perspective, you’re greedy.

Worse, the Bible seems to offer harsher penalties for the greedy than it does for gays. Jesus Himself (Who never directly discusses homosexuality, by the way) says this about the greedy and wealthy: “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” (Luke 6:24), and “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”(Mark 10:25) And I could go on.

Now, it might be that you and I need to reorganise our financial priorities in the light of these verses, but that’s not my point here. My point is, if we’re focussing just on the rules Jesus and the early Church discussed, this one straight away means we’re all probably in a more hopeless situation than homosexuals are. All of us are doomed in a legalist Christianity. A legalist focus is therefore utterly pointless, as the Adelaide street-preachers (who are spreading their net of condemnation to include pretty much everybody now, too) inadvertently reveal. Instead, we have to make our focus be Jesus Christ, the only Hope for all of us – gay or straight, rich or poor. That may well mean all of us have to face some hard choices about our lifestyle. But such choices will be viewed within a shared experience of hope, rather than hopelessness.


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Rules… or Ruler…

11 01 2012

Rules. Rules. Rules.

One of the most common complaints about Christianity is that it is merely a pile of rules. These rules are sometimes ones about what you should do (ie, “read your Bible”), but more often are about what you shouldn’t do (“do not have sex… well, maybe a little after you get married… but don’t enjoy it…”). This criticism – which emerges out of many people’s experience – upsets us because these rules seem to be primarily there to exert power over people, and to steal away some of their fun.

Now, I could rail against this in a whole host of ways. Or I could also suggest that many of the rules that Christians live by are there to protect people from the un-fun consequences of a false kind of fun. And that would be true, at least for some of them. But I think there’s a better answer:

Christians don’t follow rules. They follow the One Who Rules.

Of course, I recognise that there are some – if not many – people claiming to be Christian, who most certainly do seem to follow rules. One option from that, then, is that those people are not really Christians. And, sometimes, I suggest they are not. But, sometimes (and I’d like to think most of the time) Christians are actually keeping the rules, not following them. That might seem like semantics, but it makes all the difference.

Following is a walking metaphor. It is about letting something determine where you go, letting it rule and direct you. That “something” that you’re following can be a person, or perhaps a goal. If you’re following a person – perhaps a king, or a master, or a teacher – they tell you (or show you) where you need to be going in order to follow them, and out of that emerge your “rules”. You then have two potential pitfalls: you could potentially forget about following the person, and just follow the rules in-and-of-themselves; or you could ignore the rules, as an expression of not being committed to following the person any more. But in either of these options, whether you follow the rules or you stop following them, the result is the same: you stop following the person.

Christians believe that Jesus is the King, the Master, the Teacher – and I might suggest they believe that for good reasons. And Jesus said, “Follow Me”, quite a lot. When asked what following Him would look like, Jesus boiled it down to two directions: “Love God. Love other people.” He also showed what following Him would look like, by loving God passionately, and loving people sacrificially. And then He said again, “Follow Me.” The specific examples that He either taught (ie, “don’t lie”) or did (ie, healing somebody), emerge out of loving God, and loving other people.

Jesus also emphatically criticised any people who claimed to be following God, but who were only interested in following the rules. That’s because most of the time, they were so busy following the rules that they had forgotten Who they were really meant to be following. They had forgotten Who so badly, that when He walked right up to them, and said, “Follow Me”, they didn’t even recognise Him.

Practically, what difference does this make today? Well, a good example is from World War II Germany. Those who just kept the rules and forgot Who they were following, said, “Jesus said not to lie, so when the Nazis ask us where the Jews are hiding, we have to tell them the truth.” The real followers said, “Jesus said following Him was about loving God and loving other people. So when a bunch of guys want to kill some people, we’ll lie to keep those people alive. Because letting them be killed is not loving them.” Most of the time, lying would not have been loving to God or others, and so they had kept that rule. But when it wasn’t loving to God or others, they saw the higher priority, which was following Jesus.

So Jesus isn’t asking you to follow a system, a belief, a mantra, or a set of rules. He’s saying the same thing He’s always said:

“Follow Me.”

Are you?

Matt Gray


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Categories : Making a Difference

Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 Review

25 11 2011

Warning! Massive spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen the movie yet, and don’t like ruined surprises, skip this review!

Up until now, I’ve found the whole Twilight saga a little too dominated by angst. But I actually found the latest one to have some fascinating themes, in particular related to Jesus’ atonement. This installment finally sees the handsome vampire, Edward, marry his girlfriend, Bella. For the first half-hour or so, it is an agonisingly tedious wedding, complete with unsatisfied “third-wheel” and werewolf, Jacob, grumbling away. Then the couple go on their romantic honeymoon. Upto this point, it’s frankly pretty dull.

All that changes.

Astonishingly, Bella becomes pregnant to a vampire-human hybrid. Edward immediately begins to discuss how they “can get it out of you”. Edward’s concerns are quite understandable. When an old woman at their resort sees Bella is pregnant, she simply says, “morte” (“death”). Simply put, Bella must choose between the life of her child, and her own.

At that point, the movie became an abortion debate. While the movie is obviously very “pro-life”, focussing on that might mean the deeper theological symbolism going on here gets missed.

The old woman’s prophesy begins to come true. Before long, Bella grows seriously ill, to the point where she becomes horrifically emaciated – the foetus is literally sucking Bella’s own flesh and blood away. In fact, Edward’s family, who includes a vampire-doctor, constantly tell Bella that the baby is killing her.

But despite the almost-certainty of death, Bella refuses to abort the child. This is not because the child has given her anything, or done anything for her. Indeed, all it seems to do is hurt her. Yet Bella’s unconditional love for her child is enough for her to insist on going through this physical agony.

This culminates in Bella going into labor. The vampire-doctor has been forced away because of other circumstances, so Edward and Jacob must perform a gruesome caesarean to get the child out. Unsurprisingly, almost immediately after she sees her baby daughter, Bella dies. And despite Edward’s desperate attempts to turn Bella now into a vampire, so she can gain vampiric super-powers of recovery, she seems irrevocably dead. It is a poignant story of self-sacrifice and love.

The links between this story and that of Jesus Christ should be obvious. Like Bella, God had no reason whatsoever for saving us from death. Indeed, while Bella’s child was unintentionally hurting her simply as part of its own gestation, we wilfully ignore, reject or try to hurt God. Yet Jesus, the second Person of the Triune God, focusses on our need for life rather than the cost to Himself. He endures similar horrors to Bella’s gestation through His earthly life – political and economic oppression, for example. Ultimately, he dies a grotesque death, simply because of His unconditional, unquenchable love for us.

And of course, Bella somehow comes back to life again, to become a vampire. Jesus came back to life again, His self-sacrifice vindicated in His resurrection through the power of God the Father.

The other fascinating thing about the story is how influential Bella’s loving self-sacrifice is. By supporting her pregnancy, Edward’s vampiric family are considered to have broken a truce with the local werewolves (for reasons too complicated to go into here!). All they would need to do to save themselves a nasty war, is simply hand over Bella and the child to be killed in their place. Yet they are willing to sacrifice their own lives for a woman and child, one of which will most likely die anyway. Even Jacob overcomes his anger at Bella’s rejecting him, sacrificing his own status in the werewolf community in order to save first Bella, and then the newborn child. Similarly, Jesus’ self-sacrifice has been an infectious force throughout history, calling others to sacrifice everything, even their very lives, for those around them.

This has obvious ramifications for those women who find themselves in a similar situation to Bella, carrying a child who ultimately will destroy them, and for those who have lost loved ones in the process of childbirth. I certainly am not here making blanket judgement-calls on what should be done in such situations (these are complicated issues). But I am saying that, recognising that such an event is an example of Christ-like self-sacrifice and love, may give a degree of dignity and meaning in the midst of such a tragedy.

Matt Gray


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Categories : On Anything and Everything

Moments of Generosity and Gratitude

2 11 2011

The other day, a friend of mine began to tell me about an experience that had happened to him recently.

“I was walking to catch my bus from uni, along North Terrace, and I saw a homeless guy just standing on the corner. He was pretty old, and had a long white beard. But just before I’d passed him, I’d watched him make the sign of the cross – I don’t think he was making it to anybody in particular.”

“You don’t see that every day.” I said.

“No. So anyway, then I walked on. But as I was walking, I started to get this feeling. I got the sense that God, well, the Holy Spirit in me, wanted me to go back to the guy.”

This was pretty intriguing! I asked him what exactly he thought the Holy Spirit had wanted him to do.

“Well, it was kinda specific. The day was Monday, and my wife had given me some food – dry biscuits and some fruit-in-jars – for me to have for lunch throughout that week. I hadn’t got to my office yet, so they were still in my bag. I got the sense that God wanted me to go back to the guy and give him my food.”

“Wow. Okay. So did you go?” I asked.

“Well, there was more than that, actually…”

“Really?”

“Yup. I also got the sense that God wanted me to get a blessing from him.”

Now, that was surprising. Receiving blessings is not something people from our part of the Christian tradition would usually do.

“So, did you go?” I asked again.

“Not at first,” he said. “But then my wife rang, and she told me how she’d just picked up a bargain in Glenelg (a swanky seaside suburb here in Adelaide), and now she and my daughter were sitting on the beach, eating ice-cream.”

Now, I know my friend’s wife and kid – they’re hardly at Glenelg every day spending frivolously. I told him that he shouldn’t feel guilty.

“I know. I don’t think it was guilt. More gratitude. There was also a sense that if I did it, I’d be encountering something, um, special, sacred. So I turned around, and started walking to this guy. Every step I took, I was saying to myself, ‘You idiot, this is pointless!’ I was half-hoping that the guy had moved on. But he hadn’t.”

“So what happened when you met him?” I asked eagerly.

“Well,” my friend looked at me shyly, “I pulled out some of the biscuits and a jar of fruit…”

“Wait! Some of the biscuits, and one jar of fruit?” I asked.

“Er, yeah. I dunno, I just panicked. But when I handed them to him, you know what he said?”

“What?”

“He said to me, ‘Too Much!’. I, I was just astonished by that. I felt like it wasn’t enough. And I kinda felt like, his response was too much, for me. He was generous with his gratitude at my generosity. I didn’t deserve that. I suddenly felt grateful.”

“Wow. I can see that.” I said.

“And when I looked into his eyes as he said it, he was so happy. It made me see how God is so happy with the things we do for Him, even though they are so utterly inadequate. And how the happiness He feels at what we do is so gracious. The things we do are so minuscule, really. Yet He seems to say ‘Too much!’. I kinda saw Him saying that to me in the old man’s voice. It was  pretty humbling.”

            “Wow. So did you get a blessing?”

“That was funny.” My friend smiled. “I asked him for a blessing, and then he looked at me, and he said, ‘English, or Latin?’ I wasn’t expecting that! I’d thought he was some uneducated, crazy homeless guy. I stammered and told him that he could choose.”

“So what did he say?”

“He said, ‘In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.’ Then I bowed my head, smiled, we patted each other on the shoulder, and I began to leave. Then he said, ‘The Lord be with you.’ I turned, a bit surprised, and said, ‘Er, and also with you.’ Then that was that.”

My friend then told me how he felt a burning in his chest for the rest of the day, and ruminated on that moment for many days since. And I was left thinking how generous, and sacred, some moments in life can be.

Matt Gray


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