How come he got Napa?

I'm still not fully back from my summer break ....body is present in Reedley but my mind is still in limbo ...so no major blog article until after Labor Wk'd .....the official end of summer!

However, in the meantime....during the summer some good friends from Napa joined our team in Kenya and are now partnering with us the Furaha Community Center in the Huruma slum - its incredible work that is happening there and to have more join us - the Kingdom of God is advancing.

Pete wrote an excellent blog article about that partnership - here's the link enjoy reading it:

http://www.peterrshaw.blogspot.com/

Why do people believe in human rights?

Some times I'm reading, and what I'm reading is just brilliant. Just now I'm really enjoying Tim Keller's book "The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism". [I've referred to his book before on this blog - Christianity Can Save The World, April 27, 2008].
Well early this morning before heading out for a Church Management Team breakfast meeting I'm reading another chapter from it - and boom ...brilliant.
So I decided I wanted to stick it on my blog for others to appreciate his insight and wisdom. So enjoy reading this small section for his book ....Chapter 9 "The Knowledge of God":

Conservative writers and speakers are constantly complaining that the young people of our culture are relativistic and amoral. As a pastor in Manhattan I have been neck-deep in sophisticated twentysomethings for almost two decades, and I have not found this to be the case. The secular, young adults I have known have a very finely honed sense of right and wrong. There are many things happening in the world that evoke their moral outrage.
There is a problem with their moral outlook, however.

In many cases I have to put on my philosophy-professor hat in order to be a good pastor to people. A young couple once came to me for some spiritual direction. They "didn't believe in much of anything" they said. How could they begin to figure out if there even was a God?
I asked them to tell me about something they felt was really, really wrong. The woman immediately spoke out against practices that marginalized woman. I said I agreed with her fully since I was a Christian who believed God made all human being, but I was curious why she thought it was wrong.
She responded, 'Women are human beings and human being have rights. It is wrong to trample on someone's rights."
I asked her how she knew that.
Puzzled, she said, "Everyone knows it is wrong to violate the rights of someone."
I said, "Most people in the world don't 'know' that. They don't have a Western view of human rights. Imagine if someone said to you 'everyone knows that women are inferior.' You'd say, 'That's not an argument, it's an assertion.' And you'd be right.
So let's start again. If there is no God as you believe and everyone has just evolved from animals, why would it be wrong to trample on someone's rights?"
Her husband responded: "Yes, it is true we are just bigger-brained animals, but I'd say animals have rights too. You shouldn't trample on their rights, either."
I asked whether he held animals guilty for violating the rights of other animals if the stronger ones ate the weaker ones.
'No, I couldn't do that."
So he only held human beings guilty if they trampled on the weak.
"Yes."
Why this double standard, I asked. Why did the couple insist that human being had to be different from animals, so that they were not allowed to act as was natural to the rest of the animal world. Why did the couple keep insisting that humans had this great, unique individual dignity and worth? Why did they believe in human rights?
"I don't know," the woman said, 'I guess they are just there, that's all."

......this conversation reveals how our culture differs from all the others that have gone before. People still have strong moral convictions, but unlike people in other times and places, they don't have any visible basis for why they find some things to be evil and other things good. It's almost like their moral intuitions are free-floating in midair - far off the ground.

[Keller begins to end this chapter by writing] ......If you believe human rights are a reality, then it makes much more sense that God exists than that he does not. If you insist on a secular view of the world and yet you continue to pronounce some things right and some things wrong, then I hope you see the deep disharmony between the world your intellect has devised and the real world (and God) that your heart knows exists.
This leads us to a crucial question. If a premise ("there is no God") leads to a conclusion you know isn't true ...then why not change the premise?

I highly recommend the entire book .....Keller writes well, he breaks down difficult philosophy into understandable examples ...and he prods deep into our logic and reasoning to help us search out truth and God.
A great summer read. Enjoy.

Are you martyring or being a martyr?

So it’s a balmy early summer evening and we’re sitting around the barbeque enjoying a Saturday evening when one of the group pop the question ‘Gilbert, what do you think of California’s recent law allowing gay marriage?’

For those who read this blog across the pond and have no idea what this is all about let me explain. In May California Supreme Court past a ruling giving the right to marry to same-sex couples, making CA the second state, after Massachusetts to legalize marriage for same-sex couple.

In light of the Supreme Courts action some Christians have started talk of a renewed drive for a U./S. constitutional amendment. Other Christians have spoken of how ‘this decision puts marriage at risk all across the nation”, others suggest churches should ‘work to overturn it.’

The question hung over our barbeque waiting a response.

Now the front door of that question requires me to talk about homosexuality and marriage. Basic issue - definition of marriage and who defines it – the state or the church?
Or – both.
Is it wrong for the state to define marriage one way and the church define it another way?
Can marriage only be a religious institution or can it be a secular institution.
Who are the guardians of marriage – and what marriage?
Are we always talking about the same thing.

The single issue driven political culture of the US is a difficult place to engage in a balanced debate. Single issues tend to lead to singular answers …and singular answers though maybe right are not always the only answers.

So take the common response of Christians – gay marriage is wrong. Of course it is in the eyes of God and the eyes of His followers. God’s sacrament of marriage is between one man and a one woman. As a Christian that’s how the Bible says it and that’s how the Christian should see it.
But what about marriage as seen through the eyes of humanists or secularists or even plain deists – what definition of marriage do they need to hold – the Christian definition or the state definition. Or to ask this another way – what definition of marriage does the state need to hold – only the Christian definition, or could it hold multiple definitions due to the pluralistic and multiplicity of our culture.

Should the church, should Christians, expect their view to be the only view.

So the front door question maybe isn’t the front door question. Maybe the real front door question is – what is the relationship of Christians in America to America?

Enter the theology of the Kingdom of God.
You do not define Christianity through American history or American policy – you define Christianity through the scripture and scripture majors on a ‘kingdom theology’.
Is this not all about why Jesus came …. “Repent for the Kingdom of God has come.”
It’s the template theology of Christianity.
The Christian prayer is a demand prayer “your Kingdom come!”
The Kingdom of God defines how Christians living in America relate to America.
The Bottom line …….the Kingdom of God is an alternative kingdom and Christians leave one kingdom (the Kingdom of this World – America) to enter the Kingdom of God – on earth but marching to the beat of another drummer. Jesus himself told Pilate (the representative of the Empire), “My Kingdom is not of this world”

Early Christians never tried to overthrow or even reform the empire, but they also weren’t going along with it. Never were the early Christians reformists offering the world a better Rome. They offered people another world altogether.

So ….bring this back to our gay marriage issue …….yes, the Christian holds to the biblical teaching on marriage –between one man and one woman - but, the Christian does not expect America to be Christian. Christians expect America to live out its own values and its own believes. And they are not Christian because America, or Britain, or anywhere is not the Kingdom of God …the Kingdom of God is always subversive, always counter cultural, always working within and away from the kingdom of the world……..the Christian holds to what the Bible says – but in holding to the same Bible the Christian does not expect the kingdom of this world to hold to such. The Christian is not trying to reform America to offer a better America – the Christian is offering something completely different, revolutionary, another kingdom – God’s.

Tony Campolo once wrote “we may live in the best Babylon in the world …but it is still Babylon, and we are called to come out of her.” This is the right outworking of a true Kingdom of God theology. This is John’s revelation being practiced, this is the Book of Revelation done today not waited for some future dispensation.

This guides how I handle the gay marriage debate.

Of course you might recognize this is another form, a cousin of this position – the separation of church of state.
Its funny how many church people strongly endorse this philosophy but on something like gay marriage that philosophy is thrown out! Wise Christians support separation of church and state for the church’s sake – not the country’s. Remember Constantine …the disaster that befell the church when it gained power in the State …never again – God forbid.
A strong kingdom theology upholds this essential separation.

But of course our barbeque engagement with this question didn’t stay at a kingdom theology level. It is my strongest argument to let the state be the State and the Church even stronger be the Church – the primary agent of the Kingdom of God.

But there are other paths to explore.

The cry of a moral argument is often used. Maybe rightly so. But watch how you outwork that cry.
Sometimes the loudest voices condemning gay marriage are Christian voices driven by a Christian morality. But where are those voices condemning the bombing of innocent lives in the multiple wars we are engaged in. Where are those voices condemning the inequality in our own nation’s health care provisions – the rich enjoy it the poor can’t get it, or our own nations education divisions. Where are those moral voices engaging with the our immigration crisis …the moral voices that see all men as created equal and equally valued. So the list could go on.

If people, Christian people want to engage with the gay marriage debate from a Christian moral position at least make sure that your moral position is not one-sided based upon some condemnatory preaching you’ve sat under. Make sure the morality is a godly morality …..a godly morality that is enraged with the injustice, the inequality, the oppression of innocents, the rejection of basic human dignity and value on the poorest, the innocents, the most vulnerable.

We could take this one a lot further – but I’m guessing you’re catching my drift.

It appears that too often our view of truth is biased.
Biased to our subjective experiences and conditioning.
That’s our reality.
Not wrong, but not always good.
We are subjective people.
We read and view life through the lens of our lives conditioning.

Today, as at all times in the advancement of the church and the Kingdom of God, Christians need to strive to surrender their conditioning to the text rather then submit the text to their conditioning. That surrendering will see Christians move from a moralist stance to a revolutionarist stance. It’s not that our morals are wrong – far from it - but it does mean our morals are not the whole story.
There is something bigger.

So the barbeque evening rolled on, the kids got restless, all the food was gone and the cool breeze guided us towards home and rest.
As for the question ……you can tell it moved. It moved from being a question on “gay marriage”, to a question on truth…and how Christians live it, preach it, share it.
One word from the early church begins to surface – μαρτυρε – martyr. It means witness. Literally, ‘one who bears witness by their death’. In the early church Christians didn’t only want to live like Christ, they wanted to die like Christ. That living and that dying didn’t revolve around reforming Rome or defending morality – it revolved around the bigger thing ….the witnessing and confessing of allegiance to a new kingdom – God’s Kingdom.
For that they didn’t gain political office nor seek to get their issues on the ballot – for that they got burned alive, eaten by the beasts, crucified upside down ….martyred.
So let’s return to the question ……….. are you martyring or willing to be a martyr?

Christianity can save the world.

I can’t help it. I’m an outsider in this country and though I try not to, in the end I have this critiquing bias to how I engage with our culture. You would be like this if you left the US to live in my country. I hope it is an objective critiquing and not some shallow subjective opinioning.
I’m not the only one like this. In reality – every time we step out of our known culture into an unknown, foreign culture our critiquing antennas start rapidly signaling. This is the way we are made.

Add to this that I am a Christ follower – and you have a double whammy …..I not only critique our culture from my birth culture, but I critique our culture from my new birth culture.

I am a Scottish pastor with a huge interest in people’s “worldviews”.
If unfamiliar with that term, you could say a world view is somebody's beliefs; their understanding of life; their philosophy; their narrative identity; or (to quote Wendell Berry) “what works”.

Recently I’ve been reading about the clash some people feel between religious people bringing their ‘worldview’ into the marketplace, and especially into the public square.
This is not a new clash. In some senses it is a core value of America’s public policy – the separation of church and state.
[That topic is another blog some time but for the sake of the church I am an ardent supporter of such a separation.]

Here’s what I’m finding fascinating. Out of all world views – the Christian world view truly can save the world.

If the main argument against such views being brought into the public square is that they are sectarian and therefore divisive and controversial – Christianity stands distinct.

Think about it.

Let me share this stirring quote from Timothy Keller:

“Christianity not only leads its members to believe people of other faiths have goodness and wisdom to offer, it also leads them to expect that many will live lives morally superior to their own.”
[The Reason For God @ Timothy Keller]

Keller is insightful.
A Christian’s dual belief in both the doctrine of the universal image of God and the doctrine of universal sinfulness provides the Christian world view the best foundation for mutual cooperation. We believe everybody is capable of goodness and wisdom and at the same time expect ourselves only to sin!
As Keller writes - we should expect to find nonbelievers who are much nicer, kinder, wiser and better than us …because Christians are not accepted by God because of our moral perfection but because of Christ’s work on our behalf.

He continues, of all world views, Christianity most holds the ability “to explain and expunge the divisive tendencies within the human heart.”

This was most seen in the early church. Think how radically different a world view they practiced. In a culture were people were excluded and that was highly divisive based upon race, class or sex, Christians welcomed all irrespective of race, class or sex. At every layer of society outside the church there was division, superiority, exclusivity …but the world view of the early church, the ‘way that works’ ……was completely inclusive, so open to others.

This kind of world view soaked in forgiveness, mercy, grace, generosity, selfless giving, sacrificial giving – true love ……can save the world.

So returning to my critiquing bias. What gets me the most. Why is the church in our country (and in my birth country) so known for espousing an exclusive, divisive world view!!!!

Christianity can save the world …but maybe first Christianity needs to relearn its true worldview.

Spiritual Formation and a Diet Pepsi!

This year for Lent I decided to give up soda. The spiritual activity that prepares us to truly celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the excruciating sacrificial death of being crucified ….and I am giving up soda! WOW!

You don’t need to tell me, I myself, feel such a wimp!
Even worse, I’m really struggling. I’ve lost count of how many lunch times I’ve craved a cold Diet Pepsi. We’re only just past half way and if I didn’t think God could see me – I’d quit.

Today I was reading of an older Christian guy from the US who moved to Kenya. He went there not as a pastor or as a church leader but simply as a helper. He and his wife gave up everything they had here and moved to Kenya just to help, to do whatever is needed. Due to what’s happened in Kenya over the past few weeks they are living as displaced persons in a foreign country with nothing. Although they could have come back to the US they have chosen to stay and stay because of Jesus. And I’m struggling to not have a Diet Pepsi!
[Check out this blog-site to keep you involved with an amazing Msafara by Kenyan pastors http://msafara.wordpress.com/ as they lead the healing and reconciliation in Kenya.]

This kind of story to highlight my wimpiness could be retold a thousand times and more by huge heroes of the faith.

So here’s the odd thing. I feel a wimp for just giving up soda. I feel a total wimp for struggling to give it up. Yet, every lunch time when I deny the urge and drink water with my Subway I receive this incredible spiritual high! (I hope it’s not because at my core I’m Scottish, and an ex-Scottish banker and the buck I’ve saved at lunch time is really my reason for this spiritual high.)

How strange is spiritual formation?!
How strange is the discipline of denial? It seems too relative!
Compared to what my friends displaced in Kenya are doing and giving, my wimpish Lent denial seems utterly nothing.
Yet, for us both at nearly the opposite ends of the denial spectrum …we meet the same God, we receive the same spiritual strengthening.

I know this to be true because I know of extreme times in our lives when Carolyn and I have given up huge things – family, country, and career. And the amazing thing – in giving up my Diet Pepsi the victory I sense from that gives me a similar spiritual experience as when we gave up our jobs to follow Christ.

Weird!
Or is it more - wonderful!!!

How neat is our God?
He views the ordinary and the extraordinary as both means of grace to reveal himself to us.
God meets us equally in the small as well as the big!

This is the theology of grace.
Jesus once told a parable that astounds everybody. Some guys are hanging out waiting for work and early in the morning they’re hired. Later in the day some other guys get hired – like the middle of the afternoon. At the end of the day – those who worked from early morning to sundown and the guys who work only a few hours – all get the same pay!
[Check out Matthew 20]

Grace is not only how we receive God’s salvation, it’s also how we live in His salvation.

It’s the theology of the body …..the hidden or small parts are of equal value to the prominent big parts!

This is God.
I love this about God.
You can experience God washing your pots and pans at the kitchen sink …as much as having done a 40 day prayer and fasting exercise.
You can experience God in the high of an intense worship service …but also singing in the shower.
You can experience God in giving up everything to go and serve him in some foreign country …..and also by struggling to give up soda for Lent.

It’s as if God is inviting all to experience him – at all times, everywhere, in everyway!

What matters most IS the secret.

So I’m sitting today in my usual chair at my usual Subway.
As usual I’m reading one my theological periodicals ……quick fix for us wannabe theologians. But today I can’t help but overhear the conversations going on around me. One guy is asking the owner who he‘s going to vote for, making the comment that “if Hillary gets in maybe the terrorists will shoot her …so I might vote for her”; another guy is leaving his business card saying “if I can be of any help to you give me call” – for ‘help’ read ‘profit’. In the corner two guys are arguing over their sandwich selection – not that the sandwiches aren’t good (thanks again Amando for a sandwich par excellence), one wants the other ones sandwich …hello, ever heard of sharing!! A girl has just sat down and is feeding her baby and as usual over in the corner is two High School sweet hearts staring into each others eyes over a meatball sandwich and a Coke …puppy love …..don’t mock it ‘cos it’s real for these two puppies – at least today.

As I read, I’m reflecting on words I read earlier in the day – “what matters most is secret, not said. This begins to be the most real and the most certain dimension”. This is the kind of insight by Thomas Merton that keeps me hunting through his writings for more theological/philosophical nuggets.

I see all this happening, I see the people, I hear some of their comments - but what isn’t being said? What has never been said by them?

Is the most secret – the most real and the most certain dimension?

Another way to think about this is to think about the ‘world within’.

Dallas Willard writes that “thoughtful people through the ages have tried to answer the question of what makes our lives go as they do, and they have with one accord found, that what matters most for how life goes and ought to go is what we are on the inside.”

The most obvious of the world within are our thoughts, feelings and intentions. They reveal themselves in actions, words and priorities but each time they surface they either compromise or adapt to the surfaces forces – others, norms etc. In this way are actions are not truly our real selves …the most real is the secret thoughts, feelings, intentions that was then outworked in a diluted action.

But maybe our thoughts, feelings and intentions are not the most real. Maybe there is something deeper – the deeper source behind our thoughts, feelings and intentions?

If there is something deeper, then that deeper thing would be the most real, because it is the most secret. As these inner, deeper things are outworked – first as thoughts/feelings and then as actions /words - maybe at each stage they compromise and adapt each time denying a little bit of the trueness of the original thing.

If there is a deeper thing …and if it is the most real ….what is it??

Some might call it the heart, others might term it the soul, or spirit ….but irrespective of what its called, down through the ages writers, theologians, philosophers, anthropologists, poets have agreed that we have a hidden depth, a deeper source and that unconscious depth and dimension is the most real - and that most real is designed and created in the image of the most true reality, the greatest reality – GOD.

It is into this hidden depth that one writer in the Bible invites God to enter and search him out.

Our forms of Christianity always seem to focus on God sitting on the surface issues. It involves God condoning our actions or our actions being God’s actions. Our faith seems to be about praying and asking God to guide our thoughts, help us cope with feelings. But maybe we’re doing to God what we are doing to ourselves. Maybe we are forcing him to dilute what he can do, restrict what he’s about – because he is only ever allow one step away from the real me. We allow God into the actions we take or we even allow God into our thoughts - but we never allow him into the core, the hidden depth of our true seceret world - our most real dimension.

Maybe a truly spiritual man or women is a man or woman who is living out from the most real depths of their most inside world.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul wrote about this in the New Testament:

Since Christ lives within you, even though your body will die because of sin, your spirit is alive because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as he raised Christ from the dead, he will give life to your mortal body by this same Spirit living within you.

Dig deep into your secret world to live the most real - let God meet the real you, not its watered down version!

Is God a pessimist or an optimist?

So, is God a pessimist or an optimist?
How’s that for a Monday morning staff discussion!
Somehow as Deborah, our church’s Media Arts Director, walked into my office to tell me of some changes to our lighting for our new Christmas 07 stage design we ended up with this question in the air. I guess when you take a Berkeley educated engineer turned ‘post Sunday services philosopher’ trying to be marathon runner and sit her across the desk from a ‘thinks he’s a theologian’ who can’t figure out how to wire a plug let alone be bothered listening to how the new lighting might better show off his bald head ….but is a proven marathon runner – sparks might fly.
And they did …..but it was theological sparks - is God a pessimist or an optimist?

The question arose as we talked about Carolyn (my amazing wife) who always sees the positive and the good in all people. For Carolyn, its right at her core. Carolyn has a hugely optimistic outlook with regards to her fellow humanity. Deborah seemed to share this optimism. I’m not saying I don’t try to always see the good in people – but I guess I’m more pessimistic – I don’t always expect people to follow through on what they say, or deliver on their promises.

Here’s the weird thing – whether you are like Carolyn or like me – the issue isn’t whether or not people always deliver. Carolyn knows they don’t. The issue is – what’s our default position regarding our fellow humans?
What’s God’s default when he thinks about us?

Martin Lloyd Jones (a 20th century English preacher) once wrote “God only expects us to fail”. How’s that for pessimism. His premise revolved around the sinful nature we all have and either that theory or his own experiences told him that even our best placed intentions more often than not fail to match our actions ….and one out of one of us end up falling short of what we really want to be or do.

But is Dr Jones right? Does God only expect us to fail ….or is this a transferal of our own negative view of humanity, (or our highly Calvinistic understanding of human nature) onto God?
If we are made in God’s image – is God therefore not fully aware of what we truly could be …and every day he wakes up rooting for us to become it.

For this blog a theological answer is needed on this question. The theology revolves around the questions of ‘what has sin done to our souls?’ What is sometimes termed 'original sin' or 'inherited corruption' the blunt bible truth is that we all have inherited sinful natures because of Adams sin. Both Catholics and Protestants hold to this truth [Check out our Google It, Part 3 podcast 'What's the difference between Catholics and Protestants'.] Have our natures that were created in God’s image been completed marred by sin? Some theologians call this ‘total depravity’. Due to The Fall and our sin everything within us is biased to head south ...and God knows it and remains the pessimist.
But there is another way to look at this. Does part of God’s image that we were created in remain unmarred. Could God be an optimist. Our human natures are sinful - the Fall has corrupted us all ....but has the image of God gone or has it been vandalised, graffiti'd over ...but underneath it still remains and God, the optimist, is waiting, hoping that people will rise to be what they could be through his redemption and salvation.

There's more we could write on this .....but you might tell that I'm edging towards the optimist rather then pessimist.

But there's one more theology worth considering - the very nature of God. In essence God is love. This is not an aspect of his character - this IS his very essence. So here's the new question- "Can love ever be pessimistic?" "Are lovers always optimists?"
I think the latter. That's both the thrill and the danger of loving. You give your heart away risking it might be hurt - but you still give it away - the action of an eternal optimist. Is that not what the cross is all about? Would a pessimistic God die for us? Now you might argue - well that's why he died for us because he is a pessimist and he knows all we do is botch up. But go too far down that road and you make the cross an act of burdened good will - not an act of selfless love.

If you go further down this path the theology again points you towards seeing God as an optimist not a pessimist.

So is Carolyn more like Jesus than her pastor husband?
Is the wannabe marathoner more revealing the image of God than the marathoner?
Is it more godly to be an optimist than a pessimist?

You could argue, from what we've written - on both counts - yes.
Or the pessimist might suggest ....... maybe God remains optimistically pessimistic (or is that pessimistically optimistic?)
Either way .....he remains a 'lover of the fallen' - which hits both the optimist and the pessimist.