About Me 
LIAM BANTOCK
A guy living out his life of discipleship in Footscray while following the Melbourne Victory.
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Today I have been reflecting on the interface between ‘the church’ and the state. What got me on this was I read Doug Hendrie’s piece, ‘community is dead, now we can get on living’. That got me thinking about community and how I disagreed with him. Then I read Margaret Court’s poorly argued opinion piece and had to stop myself from shouting at the computer. It wasn’t so much that I disagree with her on marriage equality but rather it was the cultural imperialism that she was expounding based on completely unfounded assumptions that really irked me. Then thankfully I came across some common sense, or at least a well argued point, in the form of Russell Blackford’s piece, why the secular state has no moral mandate.
In Hendrie and Court we have the two extreme positions on the interface of church and state. Hendrie believes that in the face of mass urbanisation communities are dead. With the death of communities comes the death of the ability for communities, and by stated extension religions, to dictate individual’s behaviours. Court takes the other extreme. She states that because Australia’s constitution is based on “Biblical principles” the Christian majority should dictate the laws of the land rather than being forced into “political correctness” by minority groups. (Perhaps Court needs to look at the many polling results that show a majority of Australians support marriage equality, but I digress.)
Surely there has to be another option. I can’t stand by and let the church be silent in matters of the state. It would be a denial of the Biblical faith that we hold to retreat into an individualistic or faith community ‘life boat mentality’. But I also can’t stand by and let sections of the church, like Court and others, demand that the secular state become a Christian theocracy.
When I look at Paul’s writings I see a strong ethical framework being laid down. I think that Paul, writing in a time before understandings of nation-states, secular governance and liberal democracy, has a good way of understanding these ethics. His argument seems to be, to me anyway, that these ethics are for those inside the church. We are to have a strong ethical and strict moral framework for Christian community. These strict demands are not to be imposed outside the faith community. That is not to say that Paul thinks we should create a ‘life boat mentality’ Strong internal ethics were required for the community to maintain individual and communal integrity in a society far more promiscuous and immoral than what Christians would wish to label our society today.
Blackford’s piece explores the political philosophy groundwork laid by Hobbes and Locke in the 1600s. Locke’s most famous contribution to political philosophy is perhaps the idea of the social contract. The social contract is the idea that individuals give over some of their rights and freedoms to the state in exchange for the protection of the state. For example citizens give up the right to carry a gun around (unless of course they are Americans) in exchange for the state providing a police force to keep us all safe. Another example is individuals give up some of their income through taxation in return for services like hospitals and education.
I think that it is here that the church has a role to play in society. States exist for the benefit of the citizens of that state. By their very nature they are communally self interested entities. The church needs to engage in dialogue, as one of many equal actors, as to what constitutes the state’s, and by extensions its citizens, best interest. The church can not demand that the state follows its moral and ethical code. It can however dialogue with other actors in the state as to how its position on any one issue is in the best interest of the state and its citizens.
Mark 1:14-20 continues the idea that Jesus’ preaching ministry began at the conclusion of John the Baptist’s ministry. John had focussed his ministry in the Judean countryside, in the south of modern Israel, around the Jordan River. Jesus on the other hand heads north to the Galilee, the region around the Sea of Galilee. It is interesting to note the difference in the mission fields that the two men focussed on.
Judea, where John ministered, was the area surrounding Jerusalem. Jerusalem, and specifically the Jewish temple, dominated religious life. John took a prophetic stance, calling all to repentance. But the prophetic mantle which John assumed was not just one of calling for individual repentance. Like the great prophets of the Old Testament, John was prophecying against the Jewish temple cult. The Jewish religious system saw power rest in the hands of a small priestly elite who grew wealthy from charging the people to perform their priestly duties. The priests, as we see later in the Gospels, aligned themselves with Rome in an effort to maintain their power and privilege. John’s prophetic call to repentance suggested that God’s redemption could function outside of the Jewish religious system overseen by the priestly class. It was a direct challenge to those who profited off the religious needs of the people and who used that religion as a means of reinforcing the subjugation of the Empire. It is no wonder that John was arrested and beheaded.
Jesus learns from John’s misfortune that one must be wary when taking on the powerful. Jesus’ move to the Galilee is not just a return home, although he does base his ministry in Nazareth. Galilee is interesting because it was home to a number of large Roman cities. As a good colonising power Rome built little Romes across its occupied territories. The gospels never mention Jesus visiting one of these large Roman cities in Galilee. He instead chooses to stick to the countryside and the smaller outlying towns. A man with a message as subversive as Jesus’ must avoid direct confrontation until the time is right.
Mark 1:15 is the summation of Jesus’ message. “The time is fulfilled.” For the Jewish people, waiting for God’s redemptive story to play out, fulfillment was the hoped for reality. The time when God would come and set things right. “The kingdom of God has come near.” We lose the power of this statement in the translation. The Greek word for kingdom (of God) and for Empire (of Rome) are the same word. God’s kingdom is all encompassing, just as Rome’s empire is. Religious, political, economic, social and legal realities are all encompassed in an understanding of kingdom/empire. You have a choice. You either live your life under the Roman empire/kingdom or God’s kingdom/empire. Again and again in the gospels we see Jesus challenging the dominant understanding of how society is to be constructed. You either structure your society Rome’s way, or God’s way. “Repent” Jesus, like John before him, calls the people to repentance. Repentance is not merely saying sorry for doing the wrong thing. It is recognising that how you have gone about life is antithetical to how God wants your life and your role in society to be structured. “Believe in the good news.” It is one thing to be told good news. It is another to understand it as good news (“sell all you have and give it to the poor”). It is yet another thing to believe it as formative for your life.
As Jesus calls Simon and Andrew and then James and John he radically redefines how they are to interact with society and empire. It is no accident that they are engaging in economic activity. By calling these disciples from their jobs Jesus has made a miniscule dent on the Roman Empire’s taxation revenue. Jesus’ call is not just to something. It is also a call out of the empire in which they were living and which defined their lives until that point.
Is it any wonder that Jesus ended up suffering the same fate as John before him? Empires do not take kindly to challenges against their hegemony.
After my last post, my most viewed ever thanks to some popular tweeps retweeting it, I have been reflecting on my own experience of Christian Fundamentalism. I grew up in good sized country town and came to the Salvation Army as a 12 year old. I think back about how I was discipled and I reflect on time spent in Junior Soldiers, Corps Cadets, leading Sunday School, Youth Group and Sunday Church services. Of all the section leaders and Officers that I spent time with I can only identify one who I would assume would be happy to claim the title of a fundamentalist. Yet I would have to say that for a fair chunk of my teenage years, if I had have understood the tenets of Fundamentalism, I would have been happy to self identify with that label. How did I come to that?
Christian Fundamentalism at its core is based on a literal and inerrant view of the Bible and the associated beliefs that spring from that. I think that as a kid growing up in the country I came to see the Bible that way because no one ever overtly challenged that understanding of scripture. That isn’t to say it didn’t happen, just that it never happened in a way that connected with the teenage me.
So why now could I never be a Christan Fundamentalist? Why do I cringe when I see statements of faith that proclaim the inerrancy of scripture? Firstly it’s because I came to realise that the Bible doesn’t make that claim of itself. If the Bible was the inerrant WORD OF GOD then surely God would have inserted something in there to tell us it was. Otherwise it is a pretty big omission from the supposedly omniscient one upstairs. Secondly it’s because I came to understand the Bible as written within a social and historical context. Jesus was a Jew and his first followers were Jews. They used Jewish imagery and symbols to understand the reality of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. His later followers, including Paul, sought to explain the reality of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in non-Jewish imagery and symbols. They began to use the imagery and symbols of the Roman Empire. These images and symbols do not directly translate to our 21st Century context so some interpretation is required.
Then I came to understand that how we read the Bible, even if we want to read it literally, is shaped by our context. A white middle class university educated male is going to understand a Bible passage differently to a poor Indian uneducated textile worker. Then I began to see how a literalist reading of Scripture wasn’t really literal at all. It ignores large chunks of Jesus’ teaching and focuses on a ‘Spiritualised’ reading of Paul. There aren’t many one eyed, one handed Fundamentalists who have given all they own to the poor wandering around now are there?
Taking that realisation one step further I began to see how a Fundamentalist reading of scripture privileged certain people over others. Men seem to get a good deal while relegating women to a subservient role. The rich get to justify their riches and blame the poor for their poverty. The loud shouty voices demand to be listened to and anyone who disagrees is a heretic who refuses to listen to what the Bible says. However a very limited number of very specific verses and passages are used to justify these positions and the more of the Bible I read the less those positions resonated with what I was reading.
I suppose for me the most important reason I could never again be a Fundamentalist is that I think a ‘literal’ reading of scripture denies the power of scripture. To suggest that the Bible is a science text book that outlines a literal 6 day creation is to miss the beatiful imagery of the two seperate creation stories in Genesis 1 & 2, plus the others scattered throughout the Old Testament. Two different Jewish communities, writing at different stages of their nations history, reflect on what it means to understand that God created the world. Genesis 1 suggest that God created the world with an order and purpose. Genesis 2 highlights the role that humanity has in working with God to care for creation.
To suggest that the ‘virgin birth’ is purely an act of God that is to be believed is to miss the direct challenge that both Matthew and Luke are making, albeit in slightly different ways, to the political power of Rome. Matthew, a good Jew, puts Jesus in the line of the other great leaders of Israel, all the way back to Isaac, who had supernatural involvement in their conception. However Matthew wants to point out that Jesus is even more special than they are so he goes for the big bang. His ‘Christmas story’ then goes on to cast Jesus as the new Moses. We all know how well the ‘old’ Moses story worked out for the Egyptian Empire and we are drawn to see Jesus, the ‘new’ Moses, doing the same to the Roman Empire. Luke on the other hand seeks to parallel his ‘Christmas story’ with the story of Caesar Augustus’ birth. Augustus was proclaimed the ‘Son of God’ and Luke proclaim’s Jesus as the ‘Son of God’. His point is clear. It isn’t believe that God was able to make Mary have a child while being a virgin. It is which ‘Son of God’ are you going to follow. You tell me which reading is more powerful?
I could go on, but how does one summarise their nearly 20 year long faith journey in a thousand words? What about you, why could you not be a fundamentalist? Or perhaps I’m just a heretic and you think you should tell me so, however please do it politely.
I always wonder what would have happened if during Junior Soldiers my Junior Soldier Sergeant had sat us down and said “your not meant to take this Bible literally, it’s much too important for that.”
I don’t know about you but I have noticed an increase in people labelling other people a ‘fundamentalist’ and it has got me to thinking. Is it possible to label someone else a fundamentalist? I’m not so sure.
Most of us have heard the old adage ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’ The point behind the adage is that terrorist is a subjective term. It is used by those in power to negatively label someone or some group that opposes them. Obviously post-9/11 the term terrorist has been coopted for a somewhat different purpose. But looking into recent history we can see the terrorist label used pejoratively of legitimate opposition groups. The Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and Fretilin, the East Timorese independence fighters, are examples of groups representing the majority political will but labelled terrorist groups by those in political power. Both GAM and Fretilin have been able to gain legitimacy through gaining the outcome that they sought from, in both cases, the Indonesian government. In the case of East Timor this was assisted through the process of intervention by the United Nations.
But back to labelling others a fundamentalist. The danger, in a post-9/11 and post-Dawkins world, is that the term fundamentalist is used to discredit the position of another person without actually having to consider their views. In the popular mind fundamentalism carrys the connotation of an extremist. We have Islamic fundamentalists (you know, the ones who blow themselves and others up), we have Christian fundamentalists (you know, the ones who bomb abortion clinics or protest at military funerals) and we have fundamentalists in any religion that we wish to label as extremists.
With a little bit of historical background we can see that Fundamentalism was a theological position born out of early 20th Century American conservative Evangelicalism. It was a reaction to the rise of liberal theology and the growing influence of modernism. Fundamentalism called its proponents to commit to a list of fundamental beliefs. To call yourself a Fundamentalist was to subscribe to those beliefs and was seen as holding on to the true fundamentals of Christianity which liberal theology and modernism were seeking to undermine. The fundamental beliefs revolved around the literality and inerrancy of the Bible, and theological positions drawn from that belief (6 day creation, virgin birth, bodily resurrection, etc.) A by product of this theological position was the fact that having God on your side meant that you were right and everyone else was wrong.
Skip forward to 2012 and how many people throwing the label Fundamentalist around could outline to you the historical roots of Fundamentalism? How many could identify if the person they are labelling a Fundamentalist actually held to the fundamentals of faith as outlined by the Fundamentalist movement? Sadly it is easier to label someone a Fundamentalist, thereby negating their argument in the labeller’s eye, rather than actually exploring both their view point on the subject and the world view they bring to forming an opinion on the subject.
This is in no way a defence of Fundamentalism. Far from it. It is rather a call for people to move beyond labelling others as a way of ignoring dialogue with them. The more we withdraw to our corner, throw up our barricades and shout “We’re right and you’re wrong” the less we will actually get done.
When I looked at today’s lectionary reading I faced a decision, stay true to my word that Sundays are a reflection on the day’s gospel reading, or explore what Paul is talking about in the other New Testament reading. I decided to skip the decision and look at both. Funnily enough they have something in common (the point of the lectionary).
The gospel reading is John 1:43-51, Jesus’ calling Philip to be a disciple and Nathanael coming along for the ride too. Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about the call of Jesus and suggests that the background to the call is irrelevant, all that matters is our response. John would tend to agree as he gives us no background to Philip’s encounter with Jesus. All that matters is the call of Jesus. But Philip understood this call within his religious and cultural context. He goes off and finds Nathanael and shares his call with Nathanael. This is the essence of discipleship. But Philip explains his call within the cultural and religious context that he shares with Nathanael. He says, “your a sinner, believe Jesus died for your sins, repent of them and follow him.”
Wait, what? Of course Philip didn’t say that because it would have been meaningless to Nathanael. Rather Philip, the Jew, explains to Nathanael, the Jew, who it is that called him. The one about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote. For Philip he received the call from Jesus and what mattered was his response. Then Philip shared his call and what mattered was that he shared it in a way that it would be understood by Nathanael.
Nathanael’s response highlights one of the historical oddities of the Jesus story. The Messiah wasn’t meant to come from a backwater town in Galilee. If Scotty beamed Jesus to Earth then he got the coordinates wrong (I hope you follow my cultural reference). The King of the Jews wasn’t to come from a town that is even mentioned in the Old Testament. John deals with this problem differently to Matthew and Luke, who have Jesus born in Bethlehem. For those Jews who would ask the same question of Jesus and his disciples, John says, through the lips of Philip, “Come and see.”
Moving to Paul and 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, we have Paul addressing the Corinthian Christians. But before we take these verses and run with them we have to explore how they fit into the whole of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. For the first hearers of the letter, and those of us today who bother to read the whole thing, they see a number of the reoccuring themes of the letter in these 8 verses. In verse 12 Paul, as he regularly does, quotes the Corinthians and then responds. The recurrent theme in verse 12 is the idea some of the Corinthian Christians had that because they were spiritual ‘saved’ what they did with their physical bodies didn’t matter. Because their spirit was going to heaven their body could do what it liked. This theme is continued in verse 13 but added to another two themes, the eating of idol meat and sexual sins. Paul continues the sexual sin theme, which if we take the passage out of context appears to be the main point, and then introduces unity in verse 17. In verse 20 Paul hammers home one of his key ongoing themes in 1 Corinthians, that ‘matter matters’, ie. God cares about our physical bodily existence and the ethics that go with it.
Taken in the context of the whole letter we see that this passage exhorts the Corinthians to two things, community unity and bodily, physical ethics. Some Corinthians were claiming, because of their spiritual understanding, that they could do anything in the physical realm. They were eating idol meat, sleeping with prostitutes and basically living a hedonistic lifestyle. This was leading to disunity with other members of the community who had a different understanding.
Verse 19, “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?”, is one of the most misunderstood verses in our churches today. This verse is used to justify everything from forbidding Christians from smoking to encouraging them to go to the gym. The problem is the ‘your’ in there isn’t singular. It is not your individual body that is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Throughout 1 Corinthians Paul swaps between talking about your individual body and the communal body, sometimes jumping back and forth within the same argument. Here Paul, using the plural ‘your’ tells the Corinthians that the communal body, the community or the ekklesia, is the temple of the Holy Spirit. What individuals do with their body effects the whole body, ie the community.
So what do our two readings have in common? I’m glad you ask. John tells us that the call of Jesus requires a response. We can either follow or not. To follow is to share our call with others, in the cultural and religious language (and symbols) that they will understand, so that they too can respond. But Paul reminds us that the call of Jesus is not purely a spiritual one. Matter matters. It is not a case of believe in Jesus and then “eat and drink for tomorrow we die” (which is quoted in 1 Corinthians). Responding to the call of Jesus takes seriously our bodily life. Responding to the call requires both individual and community ethics.
Respond to the call and Jesus promises, “you will see greater things than these.”
Sunday 8 January marked 100 years since Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antartic expedition, stepped foot on the frozen continent. I have been captivated by Mawson’s story ever since I read of his feats in high school.
Mawson explored Antartica during the Heroic Age of Antartic exploration. Whilst Amundsen and Scott were racing to be the first to the South Pole, Mawson was preparing for his own expedition. He turned down the opportunity to join Scott’s ill-fated attempt. Rather he chose to lead Australia’s first ever expedition to Antartica and rather than race for glory he sought to explore for science. Mawson was a geologist and the scientific value of the uncharted Antarctic coast line meant more to him than the glory to be achieved by winnin the race to the pole.
For those unfamiliar with his story he set out with two colleagues, Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis, on a sledging journey of scientific exploration. Ninnis fell into a crevice (a giant hole in the ice) taking with him the team’s largest sledge containing most of the food and their tent. Mawson and Mertz then faced a 480 kilometre journey across the frozen continent to return to the safety of their base camp. They were forced to ration their meagre food and supplement it with their sledging dogs which they had to kill as they became too weak to haul the sledge. The livers of the dogs contained high doses of Vitamin A which in turn poisoned both Mertz and Mawson. Mert died on the return journey and Mawson was left to journey alone for a month over 160 kilometres whilst starving and poisoned. His feat of endurance is made all the more extraordinary by his refusal to jetison the precious, and heavy rock samples, that he had collected. Those rock samples are still used to this day for scientific study and I have seen a number of them at the Australian Antartic Headquarters.
I look up to heroes like Mawson and others like Edmund Hillary. Heroes from another age who not only lived adventure but went about the task with humility. Hillary forever refused to confirm who reached the top of Mount Everest first, himself or Tenzing Norgay. His point was that it didn’t matter, they were a team. Mawson refused the glory hunting of the race to the South Pole, instead enduring intense suffering and personal hardship for scientific gain.
100 years after Douglas Mawson we have not only conquered both poles, Mount Everest and some of the deepest ocean depths, we have also explored beyond our planet and even put humans on the moon. Sadly I think we have lost some of that heroic, adventurous spirit.
Today we worry about our kids falling off the playground and hurting themselves or like sitting in the comfort of our living rooms watching the highly sanitised and risk managed exploits of Bear Grylls on our TV screen. We have lost the adventurous spirit that drove men like Mawson, Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton, Hillary and others.
We have also lost the humility of those great heroes. Mawson’s experience was overshadowed by the outpouring of grief across the British Empire for the tragedy of Scott’s failed polar attempt. Then, as now, tragedy sold more newspapers than good news stories. However somehow I think Mawson would have wanted it that way.
Mawson’s story reminds me that we will only ever truely know what we are capable of, physically, mentally and spiritually, when we have reached the absolute limits of physical endurance and pushed passed it.
If your interested in following some of Mawson’s story you can follow him and Xavier Mertz on twitter. There are also going to be commemoration activities for the 100th Anniversary, albeit delayed by a few days due to the wonders of Antarctic weather. You can follow the ABC’s coverage here.
I have decided that my Sunday #pomodorojerk task will be to reflect on the Gospel reading from the lectionary for the week, so here we go.
Mark 1:4-11
Whenever I read Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism I always think of two aspects of the story. The first is how clearly Mark sets the scene for his gospel by telling us that Jesus’ ministry was the continuation of the ministry begun by John the Baptist. The second is Mark’s use of this story to introduce Jesus as God’s son.
In first century groups leadership succession followed a fairly standard procedure. When a group’s leader died, or for revolutionary groups arrested and killed, someone close to the leader would take over the leadership of the group. It was quite common for the brother or other close relative to assume leadership, sometimes if they looked enough alike they would assume the identity of the original leader.
Contrast Mark’s presentation of the relationship of John and Jesus with Luke’s. Luke goes to great lengths to present Jesus as John’s cousin and that even in their respective wombs John was aware of Jesus’ preeminence. Mark on the other hand has John appearing in the wilderness, the place outside the order of the city, dressed in the garb of a wild prophet. John’s ministry is so popular that the whole Judean countryside is going out to see what he has to say. No wonder the Romans got a bit edgy. Here was a man able to draw a huge crowd and spoke with the conviction of the Old Testament prophets.
But John recognised that someone greater than he was coming. Mark very carefully sets this story by placing John’s prophetic identification of his successor immediately before the sign of his successor’s arrival. The one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit receives the spirit in the act of being bapitised by his mentor John.
Mark’s gospel was the first of the four canonical gospels written. In fact it was the first gospel ever written and so invented the gospel genre. It is extremely interesting to note that Mark does not feel the need to give us a birth story for Jesus, like Matthew and Luke, or a theological treatise on Jesus’ incarnation, like John. While discussing Mark’s understanding of Jesus as God’s son is beyond this little reflection it is important to note that this is the key evidence that Mark provides.
For Mark Jesus is God’s son because God says so. This is unlike Matthew and Luke who tells us that the Holy Spirit was involved in Jesus conception (but in two different ways). It is also interesting because God’s declaration is to Jesus only. Matthew and Luke’s retelling of the Baptism story have everyone hearing the exchange.
Mark presents the Spirit as the driving force of Jesus’ ministry. Mark 1 is a faced paced tour of Spirit led mission throughout the countryside. Our English translations clean up Mark’s rough Greek which is characterised here by the conjuction ‘and then’ or immediately.
For Mark Jesus is God’s son not only because God says so but more importantly because Jesus has God’s spirit.
I have just finished reading the papers from the 2007 Salvation Army Tri-Territorial Theological Conference on the theme “Ecclesiology: Part of the Universal Church”. The papers raised some interesting questions on how the Salvation Army is to understand its Ecclesiology and its place within the Universal church.
It was a highly topical read because last night I was reflecting on my own community’s ecclesiology and place within the Universial church. From time to time we get referrals from other Salvationists and Christians of people who live in Footscray and are “looking for a church.” My initial reaction to all such requests, which usually stays within my head, is “send them to one of the real churches in Footscray.” That isn’t to say that I don’t think we are a church but rather ‘church’ is a code word for something that I don’t think my community is.
Linguistic theorists would tell us that language is merely symbols. Words exists as culturally and communally agreed upon stand ins for somewhat intangible concepts. Take for example the world ‘cool’. The word means something different to a meteorologist than it does to a teenager. Its meaning is agreed upon within the context within which it is used. So it is with the word ‘church’.
So when I talk about my community and someone asks me if we are a ‘church’ my first reaction is “not really” it really should be “tell me what you mean by ‘church’?”
If by church you mean a building owned by a denomination used as a place of worship, then no we don’t really have a ‘church’ either. Our building is first and foremost a house that has some spaces that make it useable for community gatherings.
If by church you mean a group of Christians who meet together on Sundays to sit in pews, sing some songs, pray together, give to the offering (or sheepishly look the other way as the plate goes around) and listen to (or ignore) a sermon, then no we are not a ‘church’.
If by church you mean something along the lines of the New Testament word ekklesia, which in Greek means any community gathering which was then coopted by Paul to distinguish Christian gatherings from Jewish synagogue gatherings, then yes we might be getting close to being a ‘church’.
Paul’s use of the term ekklesia, I would argue, was an intentional ploy to define the Christian gatherings that he started. Firstly, to define them over and against the Jewish synagogue. Paul needed to do this as from the outside there were probably many similarities between the Jewish synagogues, made up of Jews and Gentile ‘god fearers’, and the Christian ekklesia, made up of Jewish ‘Christians’ and Gentile ‘Christians’. Secondly Paul was also seeking to use a well known contemporary model, the town meeting or voluntary association meeting, for his gatherings. A bit like how many churches today use a corporation model with a pastor-CEO.
So perhaps it is a very biblical concept for me to not want to refer to my community as a ‘church’. But it is also probably a bit slack. Paul at least had the integrity to do some thinking and come up with an alternative term which resonated with people and they immediately understood the symbol which he was using.
I tend to refer to us as a community and then add a modifier on the front depending on the context in which I am using it. We are a missional community, or an incarnational community, or an intentional community. But these still fail to work. I remember being in a workshop on sustainability at a community development conference and saying that I lived in an intentional community. It wasn’t till 5 minutes later that I realised all the hippies in the room had a completely different idea about what we did than what I was trying to communicate.
So, I don’t think we are a church but as of yet I don’t have a good enough term to symbolise contextually what we are.
I have been thinking for a little while that I need to get back into the habit of writing. As I have just completed my Graduate Diploma in Biblical Studies and am contemplating a break in my studies before commencing a Masters, I need something to keep my mind active. The discipline of writing is good for this as it forces me to focus on a single thought and reflect on it.
I was planning on setting a goal of writing three blog posts a week in 2012. But then I came across the #Pomodorojerk writing group and decided to give it a go. The #pomodorojerk writing group is based on the pomodoro technique, spend 25 uninterrupted minutes focused on one task. The idea is to write new content without worrying about editing or researching (which are to happen outside of the 25 minutes). My biggest issue is going to be finding 25 uninterrupted minutes in my day. As it is the first day of the challenge for me I haven’t decided where I am going to head. I can’t decide between focussing on short blog post type tasks, longer article (1-2,000 word) type tasks, trying to put together some sort of longer piece of writing, or a combination of all three.
One of the motivations for me to commence writing/blogging again was during out team retreat last November. We were discussing how we as a team need to better communicate what we do and why we do it to the outside world. One of the team members said “perhaps we should start a blog.” The irony of the comment was that this person would be one of the least likely people ever to have or write for a blog.
So my intention for writing, either blogging or a daily writing task ala #pomodorojerk, would be two fold. Firstly to provide a space for me to reflect and keep my mind ticking over, especially on a theological level. Secondly it would be to communicate better what I am on about (and by extension perhaps, unofficially, what my community is on about) as a way of engaging others in what I do and dialoguing with people.
Sometimes I wonder if writing is too selfish an exercise, especially when one plans on sharing it with the world. Many books and blogs are just trumpets that people use to broadcast their own ideas. I have appreciated reading Adam Couchman’s blog over the last couple of months as I have found his style to be dialogue creating. Perhaps my novella-esque comments on his blog are a symptom of my need to get back into blogging. So I would really appreciate your thoughts and comments on my blog posts to ensure that I am not just using it as a selfish trumpet.
So the writing projects that I would like to work on this year are as follows:
1) Blogging 3 times a week
2) Writing an article for On Fire (a Salvation Army magazine) about a theological aspect of what our community does
3) Write a paper to submit for presentation at the Thought Matters Tri-Territorial Theological Forum
I suppose if I can achieve that level of productivity I will be happy.
If you want to follow along you can subscribe to my blog updates on the right hand side of the page.
This morning I sat down on our deck in the sunshine and read a chapter of a book called Struggling with Scripture. The chapter, titled “Biblical Authority: A personal reflection” was penned by Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar. In the chapter Brueggemann unpacks his understanding of the authority of the Bible. As a liberal Biblical scholar it is interesting that his first point is on the inherency of the Bible. He states, “The Bible is inherently the live Word of God that addresses us concerning the character and will of the gospel-giving God, empowering us to an alternative life in the world.” What Brueggemann is saying, he goes on to explain, is not that the text is inherent. Rather the primary claim of the Bible, “that the God who creates the world in love redeems the world in suffering and will consummate the world in joyous well-being” is the inherency of the Bible.
Brueggemann goes on to talk about the Bible through the headings of:
Interpretation – Just as we interpret the Bible (it is not ‘self evident’) so the Biblical text itself is an interpretation of God at work in the world in the context of each specific book and passage.
Imagination - Brueggemann understands this to be “the capacity to entertain images of meanings and reality that are out beyond the evident givens of observable experience.” This imagination is required for a proper interpretation (in the context above) of the Biblical texts.
Ideology – Brueggemann states, “there is no interpretation of Scripture that is unaffected by the passions, convictions, and perceptions of the interpreter.” Just as we bring our ideology to the text, so do a range of competing ideologies exist within the text. Because we can not avoid reading our ideology into the text we must submit our reading of the text to those whose history of ideological distortion is different from our own.
Inspiration – Brueggemann here wishes to move past traditional formations of ‘inspiration’ and instead suggest that – on occasion – the Bible, through the Spirit, can inspire us beyond and despite our ideology and interpretation.
Important (wanting to say urgent, but keeping with the symmetry of the I) – The importance of biblical interpretation, Brueggemann suggests is that the world may have access to the good truth of the God who creates, redeems and consummates.
Brueggemann’s chapter resonated with me this morning because of a number of conversations I have had with people recently over the role of the Bible in their lives.
If Christianity is about belief, mental ascent to specific doctrine, then the Bible is a text book with the answers. It is a monologue and a static and dead document.
I stand with Brueggemann and believe that the Bible is the living Word of God. It is not a dead text book but rather a living truth that I engage with. It is a divine discussion that I am drawn into.
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