Making a Difference « Wondering Fair

“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

[1] Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/special/mlk/king/words/blueprint.html .

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: calling, faith, God, identity, Job, Martin Luther King, occupation, profession, vocation, work
Categories : Making a Difference

Making Our Mark

7 05 2012

“If our life were without end and free from pain, it would possibly not occur to anyone to ask why the world exists.” So said German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer around a century and a half ago in The World as Will and Representation, and it is a sentiment that would be echoed by many today, no doubt. The reality and inevitability of death haunts our steps as human beings, regardless of whether we claim to be religious or not. Every worldview must somehow come to terms with death.

One such attempt is seen in an article by Richard Handler that deals with the subject of death from an atheistic perspective. The article is focused on atheist author and psychiatrist Irvin Yalom who, while acknowledging the fear and despair that accompany our peculiar ability as a species to foresee our own deaths, argues that the concept of “rippling” is a way of ameliorating these fears:

Rippling refers to the fact that each us creates—often without conscious intent or knowledge—concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even for generations…. [Y]ou can leave behind “something from your life experience, some trait; some piece of wisdom, guidance, virtue, comfort that passes onto others, known or unknown.” The key here is human connection, which touches other lives in secret and untold ways.

There is obviously a measure of truth to this. The kinds of people we are have lasting influences on those around us. We leave a mark. The problem is, that while we might prefer that those elements of who we are that “ripple” out would be positive, life-affirming things, often the marks we leave can be rather ugly ones. Even the most morally upright among us will leave, at best, a mixed legacy. The ripples that go out from our lives have the ability to affect both for good and for ill.

Handler comes close to noticing the problem:

What about those whose lives don’t noticeably ripple into a loving community? People do die without friends, alone and miserable, in prisons and cyclones. I have known people who will be missed by absolutely nobody. What rippling effect do they have?

His answer? While acknowledging that “the idea of rippling can be abstract,” in the end the best it seems we can hope for is that we “can gain comfort in thinking that one’s atoms can ripple and dissolve into the universe… All of us ripple in ways we are not even aware of.”

Far from addressing the question, this seems to simply be a restatement of the issue. Yes, all of us do “ripple” in ways we are not even aware of. That’s the problem! Human history is the story of both tremendous good and radical evil “rippling” down throughout history, one leaving inspiring traces of what we think we are here for, the other poisoning the lives of individuals and communities indefinitely. The problem isn’t just that some individuals and communities don’t leave much of a “ripple” or don’t “ripple” well; the problem is that some “rippling” is downright toxic.

What we need is not some vague sentiment that the best of who we are will somehow trickle down and have some marginal impact on a few people for a brief flicker of cosmic time. What we need is a vision of the future and of what it means to be a human being that can transcend and is not tied to our own inconsistent, fragile, conflicted, and transient identities and moral performances.

The beginnings of one such vision is articulated by Yale theologian Miroslav Volf who, in The End of Memory, eloquently identifies both the problem with “rippling” as a response to death and the Christian alternative:

We are neither made nor unmade by what we do or by what others do to us. The heart of our identity lies not in our hands, but in God’s hands. We are most properly ourselves because God is in us and we are in God. No doubt, what we or others have inscribed onto our souls and bodies marks us and helps shape who we are. Yet it has no power to define us. God’s love for us, indeed God’s presence in us and our being “caught up beyond” ourselves and being placed “into God” most fundamentally defines us as human beings and as individuals.

The Christian hope is that what is good, and worth preserving from human history will be validated, and rendered permanent in God’s new creation. Correspondingly, that which was false and evil, that which “rippled” down through the millennia damaging and defacing God’s good world, destroying relationships, fostering fear and enmity, and barring the way for people to experience the shalom God intended for them will be judged, healed, and forgotten. It will “ripple” no longer.

Ryan Dueck

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: anxiety, Arthur Schopenhauer, death, faith, God, influence, life, Miroslav Volf, New Testament, redemption, religion
Categories : Making a Difference, The Heart of Faith

Power Reveals

23 04 2012

In February 1st, 1933, two days after Hitler’s election as chancellor of Germany, a young theologian gave a radio address on the theme of leadership in Berlin. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was only 26, and the address had been scheduled to go to the air for some weeks, but it couldn’t be more timely. Bonhoeffer denounced the Führer concept of leadership Hitler would come to embody, but couldn’t quite finish: his speech was cut off.

The full horrors of Hitler’s leadership were still far in the future, but Bonhoeffer’s address had a prophetic ring to it. It seemed to picture the consequences of the dominating and self-referential type of Führer leadership which loomed on the horizon, and to call people to a different vision. Hitler’s understanding of leadership, according to social historian James MacGregor Burns, was engulfed in his own suffocating sense of self. “While he claimed to seek power for the sake of the salvation of his country and for the purification of the Nordic race, this was self-deception. He identified his goal wholly with his own dominance and was willing to destroy his people for the sake of his own power.” As Hitler laid prostrated at an army hospital in the end of World War I, depressed and anguished over how he and his motherland had ended in defeat, the two fates seemed fused and confused in his mind.

The fate of vanquished Germany and his sense of defeat seemed to merge – as the hope of victory and his own power merged later – and perhaps too, as Walter Langer suggests, he was reacting to the defeat of Germany as if it were a rape of himself as well as his real and simulated mother (in Mein Kampf he was still referring to Germany as ‘she’).[1]

Bonhoeffer’s address, on the other hand, envisioned leadership differently: self-effacing, lucid, and, according to his theological frame, recognising of higher authority and above all of God’s authority. “The true Leader must always be able to disillusion… He must lead his following away from the authority of his person to the recognition of the real authority of orders and offices.” In other words, true leadership for Bonhoeffer meant a pointing away from oneself, it meant leading people to maturity and responsibility similar to how parents raise children to independence. “[H]e has to lead the individual to his own maturity… He must radically refuse to become the appeal, the idol, i.e. the ultimate authority of those whom he leads.”[2]

This was just the beginning. These two visions of leadership would clash in the coming years – the self-aggrandizing versus the self-giving, the powerful versus the powerless – and Bonhoeffer would be hanged for his opposition to the Nazi regime in 1945. Yet the crucial difference among them, if you look closely, is not how much power Hitler and Bonhoeffer got, but the central piece of each’s worldview: how they understood who God is. Bonhoeffer had quite a clear understanding of God as a transcendent, benevolent Person, and this informed his life and vision profoundly. In regards to leadership, he declares in his 1933 address, “Only when a man sees that office is a penultimate authority in the face of an ultimate, indescribable authority, in the face of the authority of God, has the real situation been reached… Alone before God, man becomes what he is, free and committed in responsibility at the same time.”

Hitler’s understanding of God, however, is difficult to precise, especially since he camouflaged his views to manipulate churches to his side, but certainly it was not the God of Bonhoeffer. It seemed to be instead an amalgam of self, the German nation and the Aryan race, fused by his hatred of betrayers and Jews, and the consequences are obvious: intoxicated by power, unchecked by any transcendent notion of goodness or responsibility, Hitler spilled over ever greater levels of his toxic self.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity,” said Abraham Lincoln, “but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”[3] That is so true. Power reveals who we are, and reveals even more the fundamentals of our worldview. If our God is self, or our happiness or success, power will burn in self-worship, and we will manipulate and hurt people around us. If our God is God, however, like it was for Bonhoeffer, a good dose of power may be tempting, but we have an allegiance higher than self, goodness beyond our ego, and will point people away from ourselves and toward maturity. And even if political power never comes our way, we will still live generously, and give of ourselves to others, and have the courage like Bonhoeffer to oppose and even foresee the havoc of someone who becomes his own god.

René Breuel

[1] James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 108.

[2][2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as quoted in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 141.

[3] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/give.html#oEYkcEHDrvMVDjwr.99

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, faith, God, Hitler, identity, idolatry, leadership, power, worship
Categories : Making a Difference

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.

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: faith, losing, poor, power, The Hunger Games, underdog, winning
Categories : Making a Difference

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

Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: faith, God, hunger, justice, mercy, poverty, social justice
Categories : Making a Difference

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

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: Elijah, friendship, grace, insulting, Jesus
Categories : Making a Difference

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

Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: Christ, Christianity, ethics, faith, following, freedom, Jesus, morality, religion, rules, theology
Categories : Making a Difference

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

Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: creation, creativity, Earth, faith, humanity, Jesus, newness
Categories : Making a Difference

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

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: Africa, home, Jesus, lifestyle, living, London, mission, poverty, suburb, wealth
Categories : Making a Difference

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.