Social Justice

27 01 2012

I was taking a walk at a park when I saw Claudio from the distance. I walked toward him to begin a conversation. He was clearly a ragamuffin and seemed to have some level of mental disorder. I greeted him and asked his name. I remember asking: “Do you have any food to eat?” “I knock at people’s door and eat what they give me” Claudio calmly replied. His eyes seemed distant and his answers were concise. We spoke briefly and I offered help.  He refused any assistance and soon decided to walk away.

A few days later my heart sank once again. My brother told me he had given a pair of shoes he no longer wore to the man who watches over the cars parked on the streets near a university campus. The man’s reaction was one of overwhelmed joy and gratitude (perhaps the same as the one most of us would have if somebody gave us us  us a Ferrari).

You and I live in a world marked by profound social injustice.

According to a study commissioned by the United Nations food agency, about one third of all food produced for human consumption in the world today is wasted or lost. At the same time, according to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single most serious threat to the world’s public health. Around 25000 people die of hunger or hunger-related causes every day, including 6 million children every year.

How does this make you feel? I guess one of the most common reactions in people who genuinely consider or face social injustice is a sense of revolt and revulsion. We want to rightly shout: “This is not fair!” Don’t you agree?

But why is it not fair? Who are we to say this condition is unjust? Though it may seem cruel to even ask these questions, I do it for the sole purpose of reminding us that an absolute outside pattern is necessary for any situation to be considered just or unjust.

As C. S. Lewis expressed: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”[1]

The reality of God, therefore, is what offers humanity a criterion to live by and enables us to determine what is and what is not just. This includes social issues. If the global social injustice breaks our heart, it is because first and foremost it breaks God’s heart. When we cry: “it’s not right!” We are but echoing the cry of God.

There are literally hundreds of references in the bible to God’s concern for social justice. Among them are: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”[2] “For I, the LORD, love justice”[3]. “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.”[4]

God not only speaks against social injustice, he also chose to immerse himself in this reality through the incarnation of Jesus, the God-Son. And moreover, through the death and resurrection of Jesus he inaugurated an injustice-free kingdom which will be fully established after Christ’s second coming. When this happens, the bible affirms, there “…will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain.”[5]

Undoubtedly we must do whatever we can, wherever we can and whenever we can do to eliminate any form of social injustice in the world. But we are not alone on this mission. There’s a God through whom we know what social justice should look like, who has spoken so clearly regarding it and who is establishing a fully just kingdom for those who belong to him.

Hélder Favarin

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

[2] Isaiah 1:17

[3] Isaiah 61:8

[4] Zechariah 7:9

[5] Rev. 21:4


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An Insult to Aspire to

18 01 2012

When was the last time someone threw an insult at you? Was it deserved? Not a possibility one would wish to encourage! How about putting the shoe on the other foot: have you ever insulted someone else, deliberately or otherwise?

I’m sure that most of us try to steer clear of insulting others, and hopefully also of earning insults for ourselves. However, one doesn’t have to look too far to see that some people seem driven towards confrontation. My skin creeps when I see demonstrators at the Oscars waving placards that read ‘God hates fags’ or ‘You’re going to Hell.’ These statements aren’t just insulting, the first is untrue, the second uncertain. They’re the kinds of words practically guaranteed to start arguments. And they’re the kinds of words practically guaranteed to incur a whole slew of inventive and destructive combinations of words by way of response. Is this kind of communication ‘Christian’?

Scanning the Bible, I find no ethical grounds whatsoever for the verbal abuse of others, though there are certainly places where people were sharp with their words. The prophet Elijah used sarcasm to taunt the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:27) and Jesus almost certainly offended two groups of religious leaders by describing them collectively as a “brood of vipers” (Matt. 3:7). Elijah was falsely labelled a ‘troubler of Israel’ (1 Kings 18:17) but I am most interested in the sorts of insults thrown at Jesus. What did people who didn’t like him say about him?

There is at least one insult Jesus received which he actually earned, prefaced though it is by lies. It is this: “friend of sinners.” In Luke 7:34, Jesus himself reports some of the insults in circulation concerning him: ‘The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ Jesus was not a glutton or a drunkard but he was a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

I don’t know about you, but that’s an insult to aspire to. To be blameless with regard to things that harm others and guilty with regard to things that bless is a rule to live your life by. If it were true for all of us, the world would be a different place.

Madi Simpson


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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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Newness

12 12 2011

A few years ago, our Christmas holidays were spent enjoying the BBC’s wildly popular nature series, Planet Earth.  These films are quite simply a magnificent window into life on our planet. They are spectacularly shot, well narrated, and offer some truly rare glimpses into the lives of animals and their environments.

One thing that strikes me, however, whenever I watch Planet Earth is the limited nature of life on earth for non-human species. Despite the overwhelming beauty and marvelous abilities of, say, the snow leopard, the wild bactrian camel, or the hammerhead shark, their entire lives seem to be comprised of a struggle to accomplish two tasks: securing food and mating.

These creatures’ entire existence seems to be dictated to them in advance. There are no “new” options open to, for example, the Walia ibex whose lives consist of struggling for food in the African mountains, avoiding predators, and mating. The beauty of the wildlife portrayed in Planet Earth was sometimes, at least for me, tempered by the harsh and unforgiving nature of the lives of so many of these creatures.

Perhaps bare survival is enough for non-human species. It seems doubtful that too many of these animals spend their wandering days ruminating upon the limited options available to them, or lamenting the biological “determinedness” of their lives.

On one level, of course, our lives are not much different from the animals seen in Planet Earth. Our days are spent securing the resources necessary for survival, and we, too, have an instinct for passing our genes on to the next generation. Just like the animals, our bodies will wear down and, eventually, cease functioning. In many ways we are no different from the wonderful variety of species we share this planet with.

But we are also gloriously different. We have the ability to introduce novelty to the cosmos—to create, to imagine and work toward better futures for ourselves and those who will follow us. Our decisions and actions, individually and collectively, can make a qualitative difference in and for this planet. The New Year’s resolution may be among the most hopeless and poorly grounded of gestures, but the fact remains that we can make changes; we can decide to live better, more human and humane lives. We can do our part to improve the quality of our relationships, we can become more responsible stewards of the time and the gifts that God has given us, we can venture out and take risks, explore previously untried opportunities.

In all of these endeavors failure is, of course, a real possibility but this does not detract from the uniquely human potential for newness. Human beings, like no other creatures on the planet, have a unique God-given ability to freely decide to contribute (or not) to the flourishing of all that God has made.

And this ability, Christians believe, can be even expanded when we come to see  Jesus Christ, God Incarnate who, in the ultimate expression of new possibilities, entered the human condition, began its transformation, and promises to continue to “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). From a Christian perspective, “Happy New Year” can and ought to be more than a hollow wish for a vaguely benign next 365 days; it can be a profound expression of hope and trust in the God who creates, recreates, and allows those who bear his image to participate in the newness.

Ryan Dueck


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When the Living’s Uneasy

18 11 2011

A friend of mine, married with two children, once confessed that he felt a bit guilty about buying a three bedroom house in a leafy, desirable London suburb. It wasn’t that he felt it was the wrong place. On the contrary, it was exactly the right place. Almost too right; a more comfortable, more suitable and more desirable dwelling than the majority of people in the world could ever afford or even imagine calling ‘home.’ My friend had previously worked in Africa and come face to face with serious impoverishment. How now could he justify his well paid job and comfortable lifestyle? What was he supposed to think about these things? And how was he to escape his sense of unease?

There’s a fine line between living well and living rightly. The problem is not that wealth doesn’t satisfy, the problem is that wealth satisfies way too much. It fulfils so many human longings—security, comfort, influence, choice, identity… it seems to make everything ‘alright’ but it can blind us to the fact that hardship is the norm for most of the world’s inhabitants. Too much comfort and security can push us away from those who have the opposite, from those who have less or nothing, and who live in fear as a result of material lack.

A parallel problem is that Jesus chose to identify himself with the poor. This means that, for Christians at least, the extent to which we remove ourselves from the poor is, in some sense, the extent to which we remove ourselves from Christ, from God.

My friend was concerned about all these things. Some kinds of tension are  incompatible with Christian spirituality, but some tensions, I believe, are entirely appropriate. It’s not a bad thing to worry that one’s house is too big or one’s personal expenditure too large. Perhaps they are! And perhaps they can be used differently. Uneasiness on its own does nobody any good. But if unease becomes the seat of fresh vision, and if that vision effects positive change, then there is a place for disquiet in the Christian life.

Madi Simpson


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Durable Legacy

7 11 2011

One afternoon in 1912, Sigmund Freud was enthralled by a statue. It captured his imagination for hours, and returning home from his trip to Rome, he poured himself over pictures and descriptions of that sculpture, analyzing its details and drawing sketches, until, after visiting it still other times, he wrote an essay interpreting it.

The statue was Michelangelo’s Moses, the marble masterpiece which Michelangelo regarded as his most life-like sculpture. Moses sits majestically, with intensity beaming from his face and flexing his muscles. The flow of Moses’ mantle and beard contrast to the robustness of his body, as Moses holds the tablets of the Ten Commandments, looking outraged to the idolatry of his people, who adore a golden calf just below Mount Sinai. The marble statue is so intriguing and realistic that there is even a story that Michelangelo struck Moses’ right knee and shouted, “now speak!”, as he saw it finished. There is actually a scar on the knee, thought to be a mark of Michelangelo’s hammer.

What is it that struck Freud so deeply about this statue? It could have been the skill of the artist, and his mastery of human anatomy and the human soul. It could have been the sculpture’s setting: the central piece of a grandiose tomb pre-ordered by Pope Julius II while he was still alive, anxious to align himself after a great spiritual leader. It could have been the character of Moses himself – the father of the Hebrew people, a looming giant in the arenas of history, law, and religion – or it could have been a combination of all these aspects.

Whatever diverse interests captured Freud attention, I imagine Michelangelo’s Moses got Freud thinking at least a bit about his own legacy. (Freud wrestled with Moses’ legacy throughout his life, and his very last book, written well into his eighties, is called Moses and Monotheism.) One of the greatest artists of history portrayed one of the great leaders of history to – Freud hoped – a great interpreter of the human psyche. Moses left behind a liberated people which, from a loose grouping of slave clans, became an unified nation, with an entrancing vision of the one true God, a legal system and self-identity that would last for millennia. Michelangelo, on the other hand, left behind exquisite pieces of artistry, to inspire, instruct and influence future generations. What would Freud leave behind? He was already a leading proponent of psychoanalysis, and was forging a new school of thought, but the question must have cross Freud’s mind: what would his final legacy be? Would it last like’s Moses’ people or Michelangelo’s art?

I guess no matter which talents move our hands, no matter which dreams transport our imaginations, the trio Moses-Michelangelo-Freud leaves us an eloquent joint legacy: ideas have consequences. What we believe matters. Moses is only remembered, and was only depicted by Michelangelo, and influential upon so many and upon Freud, because he holds stone tablets in his right hand, and looks with indignation to his left: because Moses believed in an omnipotent God, invisible but truer than a calf of gold. Moses’ convictions were fundamental for his vocation and the cornerstone of his legacy, as it is for everyone else. The durability of our legacy is sculpted with the concreteness of our beliefs.

René Breuel


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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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Why Jesus Won’t Heal ‘Disabilities’

19 10 2011

“Dude, you severed my finger.” Sadly it was true. Anthony and I were moving heavy logs, in preparation for a youth camp—kumbuyah round the camp-fire. “1-2-and … STOP!”—and like that his arm locked, I dropped, and the finger lopped. Doh. First came the shock. Then came the accusations: “What about my music career?” Anthony was a talented saxophonist, headed for the music conservatorium. I’m not into brass, but I gather missing a digit makes it difficult to dance over the spatula keys reciting John Coltrane’s ‘Round Midnight’. Anthony was now ‘disabled’.

Jesus’ promises came to mind: “Believe and you’ll receive; ask and it will be given; nothing is impossible.”[1] So like faithful disciples, we drew close, joined hands, and squeezed our eyes shut like Dorothy hoping for Kansas. We prayed, and … well, suffice to say, minutes later we were groping around the dirt for the missing member, carting Anthony and his detached bit off to hospital.

Marshall Brain, the author of whywontgodhealamputees.com, wouldn’t be surprised. His argument is simple. God’s powerful, right? And we know God through Jesus, the guy who supposedly cared for the hurting and went around healing the sick. Jesus then promises us these same powers, in response to prayer. And yet … form a prayer chain of millions and the disability remains. This loving God never regenerates lost limbs—the one non-ambiguous, empirical case of healing which couldn’t be psycho-somatic or coincidental. Two binary conclusions are offered: 1) God has a grudge against amputees; or 2) God is imaginary and therefore doesn’t heal anyone: amputees are no different.

For all his brains, I’m confused how Michael moved from “Jesus healed everyone except amputees” to “Jesus never healed anyone—past or present—as God doesn’t exist.” And a skim of the Scriptures highlights that Jesus did heal amputees, i.e., lepers and the ‘maimed’. Scour the web and you’ll find countless responses to his second contention.[2] But what of the first contention? What of Anthony?

Healing amputees is a subset of any regeneration, so let’s broaden the accusation to God’s grudge against anyone with a physical disability. As Brain notes, “if someone is born with a congenital defect … no amount of prayer is going to fix the problem.” Yet ‘disability’ is a knotty and complex issue. Do all ‘disabilities’ need to be healed? Perhaps Jesus had good reasons for not healing Anthony?

Humour me. Take a few minutes and read John 9. Granted, Jesus heals this guy. But perhaps you’ll see here a subtext for why Jesus won’t heal disabilities.

You may know this story well. It’s the one about the man blind from birth—let’s call him Ben—who Jesus unconventionally heals by rubbing spit and clay into his eyes! And then there’s a saga before the empirical doubters—in this case religious rulers—who refuse to believe Ben was really healed. They interrogate this man, his parents, and then the man again before excommunicating him from their club. It’s worth a fresh look if our spiritual eyes are to regenerate and see the deepest disability of all.

A few quick observations: First, Jesus ‘saw’ the man who was blind, not for his disability, but for his personhood (v1). Ben wasn’t a data point in a sceptic’s set, nor was he a theological conundrum for religious apologists. Jesus truly saw Ben, and loved Him. The imago Dei isn’t an ability or function, but an identity as a child of God, created and loved by the Father, thus worthy of respect. Contra-Descartes, “I love (and am loved) therefore I am.”

Second, Ben’s blindness definitely was a disability, as he lacked the love of community to offer friendship and meaningful activity that might otherwise make his life ‘normal’. As theologian Amos Yong points out, “disability is … the experience of discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion from the social, cultural, political, and economic domains of human life.”[3] Not surprisingly, then, Jesus embraces Ben after he is excluded from the Temple, and draws him into community (vv34-38).

Third, Jesus redefines ‘disability’ at a deeper level. In verses 39-41, he exposes the pride of the empiricists: “I came to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.” What is ‘blindness’ or ‘disability’? Perhaps what we call ‘ability’ is actually our pride magnifying “some able-bodied ideal of perfection”?[4] Perhaps what we call ‘disability’ is actually the glory of God in veiled form.[5] Do we have eyes to see that every ‘disability’—whether congenital blindness or an amputated limb—is less a challenge to our faith and God’s existence, and more an opportunity allowed by God in this fallen world for us to become family, where each member loves and is loved?

Isn’t this God’s way? Jesus Christ is the ‘disabled God’. It was through the deformities of his body, paralysed on the cross, that he brought peace and salvation for the whole world. And even in his ‘resurrection body’, sceptical Thomas can still probe Jesus’ scars. In the mystery of God, the non-disabled are dependent on the disabled, whom God has chosen to be a means of saving grace. In this light I see why, many times, Jesus won’t heal disabilities. God made us to be one. And many times ‘disability’ dissolves when we recognise “their central roles both in the communion of saints and in the divine scheme of things.”[6]

So, while Jesus regenerated Ben’s eyes, my mate’s finger went begging. Granted, I wanted him to recreate Anthony’s pointer like Malchus’s severed ear.[7] But Jesus has good reasons why he won’t heal disability, and it’s not because God doesn’t exist. Ultimately, God will set everything right, and this new creation rushes forward to greet us when least expected. But right now, in the miracle of loving community, together we’ve discovered that “God’s grace is all we need; His power works best in weakness.”[8] And for all of us, including Anthony, that is the most soul-full song there is.

Dave Benson

[1] Matthew 7:7; 17:20; 18:19; 21:21; Mark 11:24; John 14:14.

[2] See here for further responses. Concerning ‘miracles’ see here.

[3] Theology and Down Syndrome (Baylor, 2007), 162.

[4] Ibid., 282.

[5] 2 Corinthians 4:3-12.

[6] Yong, 188, 282.

[7] Luke 22:50-51.

[8] 2 Corinthians 12:5-10.


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Categories : Making a Difference, On Anything and Everything, Spirituality for the Rest of Us, The Heart of Faith, Tough Questions

Will there be Macs in heaven?

7 10 2011

Steve Jobs’ death on Wednesday “provoked the largest online response of any event in recent history” according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Even the briefest survey of news outlets, Twitter, and Google seems to support this claim. I became a Mac user in the late 90s through a friend and bought my first teal-blue iBook in 2000. When my husband and I married in 2003, I brought him into the fold and we became an Apple household. Since then, we have converted family and friends and, at this point in time, everything we do in the world that isn’t through flesh and blood interaction seems to be done through an Apple product. The internet is full of eulogies to Jobs and paeans to Apple at the moment, so I won’t rehearse the beauty of their design, their pioneering of user-friendly lifestyle programs, or their revolutionizing of how we experience music, travel, talking on the phone….

A theology professor I know once commented―in all seriousness―that there would be Macs in heaven. While this may sound like a strange comment for a theology professor to make, it gets at something inherent in the Apple ethos and Steve Jobs’ creative genius that is deeply instructive about what it means to be human.

Apple’s creations are revered for being not only good products but beautiful products: they speak to us aesthetically even as they enable luddites like me fully engage the digital world. The sleek silver curves of an iMac or MacBook, the brilliant images that iPads put into our hands, the excitement generated by Jobs “one more thing…” are testaments to good work done well, to human creativity bringing about products that are more than instrumental and utilitarian tools, even as they fill instrumental roles. It is for this reason that this theology professor commented on the eternal standing of Apple products. As Miroslav Volf writes about those who make such products, “their noble efforts are not lost…everything good, true, and beautiful they create is valued by God and will be appreciated by human beings in the new creation.” [1]

Whether or not Macs will be in the New Creation, this sense of good, true and beautiful work is largely, I believe, what has driven the mass of international reflection on Steve Jobs in the wake of his death. Being virtually synonymous with Apple Computers, Steve Jobs’ life is an example of a life dedicated to good work―work that serves its purpose well, work that makes people’s lives easier, work that connects people, and that does all of this with beautiful style. He told the class of 2005 at Stanford University, “You’ve got to find what you love…Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” When we reflect back at Steve Jobs’ life, his demanding perfectionism and obsession with detail are excused because of this dedication to good work. What is more, we see in him a man whose dedication to doing good work speaks to us about what it means to be human.

While Jobs was not a Christian, his commitment to doing good work well resonates strongly with the biblical tradition. According to that tradition, humanity was created to work creatively in the world, epitomized in Adam’s charge to tend the garden of Eden and his work of naming, of creatively identifying and fostering identities and communities within creation (Genesis 2:15, 20). Later in the story, God honors the artists of Israel with a special wisdom for creating the tabernacle that was to be his dwelling place (Exodus 35:31). According to church tradition, the tables that Jesus made were of exceptional quality and craftsmanship. But the really intriguing bit is the end of the story. In St. John’s vision of the New Creation, he writes that “the glory and honor of the nations” will be brought into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:26). What is the glory and honor of the nations? Many biblical scholars think that it is our good work―the things we create here and now that are good, true and beautiful. In other words, God builds his new creation not ex nihilo like the original creation but, at least in part, out of the materials that we bring through our work in life: Shakespeare’s plays, sanitation systems…maybe even iThings.

Jessica Hughes

[1] Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit, 92.


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Categories : Making a Difference

Rules of Life

23 09 2011

Usain Bolt was recently disqualified from the Men’s 100m final at the World Athletics Championships in South Korea. His crime? One false start. Previously, athletes had been allowed a single false start, with disqualification following a second, but a recent change in the rules denied the world’s fastest man a second attempt.

Was that right? Was it fair? I’m sure athletics committees round the world are puzzling over these questions. But it’s useful for us to puzzle this over too: what is the point of having rules and what is the point of playing by them?

I’ve often heard it said of the Bible, “It’s just a book of rules,” and indeed the Bible does contain rules. A cursory glance at the Pentateuch—the first five books in the Bible—reveals all kinds of rules and regulations ranging from the obvious (e.g. “You shall not murder,” Deut. 5:17) to the obscure (e.g. “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk,” Deut. 14:21b). What are they there for?

Many of these rules are spiritual disciplines and ethical instructions which, if observed, would mark Israel out as God’s people among neighbouring nations, some of whom engaged in profoundly malevolent religious practices. But there’s another purpose to biblical rules and regulations, expounded more fully in the New Testament: the rules promote life.

Even athletics rules exist not to constrain the athletes or make life tough for them, but to help them race well and to the best of their ability.

That said, rules can be used and abused in a different way. At secondary school I learned to play the clarinet and classical guitar. Year in, year out, I practised scales, arpeggios, learned pieces for music exams, and performed in school concerts. Yet in fourteen years (gulp) since leaving high school, I’ve barely touched either instrument. The reason? Simple: year in, year out, I practised scales, arpeggios, and learned music for exams but never learned to love the music for the music itself. It was all about ‘getting it right,’ playing by the rules and playing perfectly. Surely music is about more than that?

Lots of people in Jesus’ day got into confusion about rules. They either broke them in rebellion against a God they perceived to be a harsh taskmaster, or gave up trying to keep them, perceiving that they were too far gone for God to care, or they lived by the rules to the letter but without love in their hearts. Jesus encounters people from each of these camps, breaks a number of ‘rules,’ and teaches us all a valuable lesson: that God’s rules are made for the flourishing of people, not people for the upkeep of God’s rules (cf. Mark 2:27).

Some years after I left secondary school, I picked up my guitar and started to play a piece that I’d struggled to play at school. I had found it technically difficult and my palms used to sweat when playing under pressure (which felt like most of the time), making it all but impossible. Yet with no ‘taskmaster’ present to rebuke me, no examiner to tell me my playing was substandard, and with no other motive to play than to enjoy the music, my fingers got round the notes with ease. I found I could play by the rules but not for the rules and it felt marvellous.

Madi Simpson


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