MiniEarth

Watch this video and then think about these questions:

How would “MiniEarth” be different if there were 0 Christians or 18 Christians or 66 Christians?

With 33 Christians in “MiniEarth”, why are there 13 hungry people and 14 people who can’t read?

Would one of the 33 Christians also be the 1 with HIV? Would that 1 be able to tell the other 32 without being afraid?

How many churches/denominations would there be in “MiniEarth”? Does that idea bother you for some reason?

If the 6 people with 59% of the wealth were all Christians, would any of the numbers related to poverty, military spending or aid change? In what way?

I’m just thinking…

 

Justice or Mercy?

What do you do with a student who is .6 points away from passing the course? If you’re a teacher, your mind is already filling with additional questions, withholding your answer until you’ve gotten a fuller picture. “Why is she only .6 points from passing?”, “Were there any outside factors like illness?”, “Was she absent a lot?”, “Were the assessments fair/valid?” and so forth. All valid questions and whatever the answers to them are, there comes a moment of decision, a moment when you will either choose to act justly or mercifully. How do you decide? How do you know when to be just and when to be merciful?

A student from my class finished the year just .6 points away from a passing mark. As is customary in the host culture, other students approached me to intercede on her behalf. One day, Student .6 waited outside my office door with a group of about eight supporters to speak with me about her situation. The next day, I got a visit from the Program Director who wanted to know “what we could do” for Student .6. At the end of that day, as I sat on the bus headed home I began to think about the question of justice versus mercy. As a Christian, I’m supposed to be transformed in my thinking and conformed to the likeness of Jesus who always knew when to be just and when to be merciful. Should I have been just with Student .6 and let the failing grade stand or should I have been merciful and rounded her mark up to passing?

No answer came to me until I got home and was changing out of my work clothes. It was a light bulb moment and I’m not sure of the reasoning that brought me to my answer but here it is: give people what they ask for. Student .6 came to me complaining that it wasn’t fair for her to fail the course when she was so close to passing. She reasoned that it would be a waste of her time to repeat the course for want of 6/10 of a point. She asked me for justice, not mercy, which lead me to another realization: mercy is only possible where there is confession.

Had Student .6 come to me and confessed that she had not taken the course seriously, the situation would have been different. Had she confessed that she spent more time talking to her friend and daydreaming during class, that she chose to do other things instead of studying for the tests, that she had memorized bits of texts to use in her assignments instead of producing original work, then there would have been an opportunity for mercy. She would have seen herself rightly and understood that the passing mark was not the product of her clever argumentation, her meritorious work or even my weakness of character.

Maybe I’m wrong, but perhaps this is why confession is so important when it comes to receiving mercy from God. (Don’t get confused. I’m not using mercy as another word for grace. I see that as something significantly, though not altogether, different.) We are not ready to receive mercy from God until we rightly understand that we are justly condemned. Confessing our sin, our failure, our mark-missing is the sign of our understanding of our situation. Sure, Student . 6 could have “confessed” while thinking to herself, “I’ll say what he wants to hear if it means that I get what I want”, but that only works with humans. God, knowing the heart, knows when a confession is an attempt to manipulate and when it’s sincere. Without a confession, it’s impossible to receive mercy. Mercy may be shown, but it may not be perceived as mercy. Should mercy be shown even when it will not be perceived as mercy? I think only God really knows and we just have to do the best we can.

As for Student .6, she came to me looking for justice and I think that is what I gave her. Sadly, decisions may be made higher up which will subvert justice. Happily, one day God’s justice will prevail…which is why I’m asking for mercy today.

Convincing, Converting, Manipulating Authentically

“…and convincing is all about manipulating…our job was not to convince, not to convert. It was to live authentic lives and to help people who want to know the Jesus I know.” http://www.thegodjourney.com/audio/2008/0328h.mp3

I’ve been giving “The God Journey” podcast a listen and this is a quote from one of the hosts. (I don’t know which one said it as I have not placed the names with the voices yet.) It’s neither my desire nor my intent to take issue with either of these two former pastors. I just want to interact with this statement.

“…convincing is all about manipulating…” This is certainly true of some folks. There are religious people who NEED to convince us so that they might control us. Sounds sinister doesn’t it? If you knew what hackles were, you would get them up about now wouldn’t you? However, I think that there is a class of religious people whose motivation to manipulate isn’t so much sinister as it pathetic. They need to shore up their own doubts and insecurities by creating numbers (of people) in which to find their strength. They’re not interested in having power over others so much as creating security for themselves. It’s still wrong, but it’s pathetically wrong and not aggressively evil, don’t you think?

“…our job was not to convince, not to convert.” I think that there is a sense in which the job of those who follow Jesus is to convince which leads to conversion. The problem is motive and method. Do I try to convince others because I am insecure and need their conversion to make me feel secure? That’s a bad motive. Do I try to convince others because I love them and want them to “know the Jesus that I know”? That’s a good motive. Biblically, we see God invited his people to reason with Him; we see Moses giving signs to the elders convince them that YHWH had sent him; we see Elijah having a showdown with the priests of Baal in order to convince the people who was really God; we see Philip explaining from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah to an Ethiopian; we see Paul in debate/dialogue with Jews and Greeks in order to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah/Christ. I think our job is to live and interact with folks convincingly so that they might come to see Jesus as King, just as we do. Of course, we first have to see Jesus as King ourselves.

“…to live authentic lives and to help people know the Jesus I know.” Authenticity is highly valued in our culture. We immediately understand what it means when applied to works of art and collector’s plates but do we instantly grasp what an “authentic life” is? Do you live an authentic life? Do I? I think that the term authentic means genuine or even transparent when it appears along side the word life. People who live authentic lives are more than earnest or sincere. They are transparent. What we see is all there is. In matters of religion, people living authentic lives openly express doubt, frustration, anger and other “negative” emotions about God and / or His people. What I wonder is this: when we think of authentic lives, do we also think of people openly expressing faith, contentment, joy and other “positive” emotions about God and / or His people. I’m afraid that this idea of authenticity is only applied whenever someone is in the negative category and not in the positive. It’s the same trap that we fall into whenever something bad happens and we say that “real life is like that” or “Welcome to the real world!” as if only the negative is real or authentic. Is there room for something good to happen in an authentic life?

Again, I just want to interact with the statement. I mean no criticism of the one who made it. I have no agenda against anyone associated with The God Journey podcast. I just wanted to express some thoughts that burst into my mind when I heard these words.

Graven Literature?

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a chance to read The Shack while I’m home this summer. I first heard about this book in a sermon by Mark Driscoll. Mark, within the larger context of a sermon about God, was discouraging his audience from reading the book because it contains …let’s say erroneous doctrine. One particular fault that Mark brought up as an example was the way in which the author, William Young, represents God the Father in the book.

From what I can gather over at Amazon.com, the main character of the book has a conversation with the Trinity in a shack somewhere in Oregon. God the Father is represented as a black woman named Papa, Jesus appears in the form of a Middle Eastern man and the Spirit appears as an Asian woman. Mark’s issue with the representation of God the Father in this book is the way, from his perspective, it violates the commandment against creating a “graven image”. I think that Mark’s objection doesn’t hold water.

I’m going to trust the scholars behind a couple of different translations and not get bogged down with the original Hebrew. So, here’s Exodus 20:4, the commandment Mark referred to, in 4 separate versions:

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (King James)

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (English Standard-the one Mars Hill Church prefers)

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” (New International)

“No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. Don’t bow down to them and don’t serve them because I am God, your God, and I’m a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. But I’m unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments.” (vss 4-6, The Message)

It sounds to me that the commandment is dealing broadly with worshipping other (and therefore false) gods and explicitly with the common practice of making an idol for the purpose of worship. In both contexts the idea that the people are not to worship these idol-gods is central.

Obviously, a literary representation is not a “carved” image or a cast “idol”. If that’s a bit too legalistic or literal of an approach, consider Deut. 4:15-19. Even looking at the fuller expression of the commandment from Deut. 4:15-19, I think that the heart of the issue here is worship. Without any evidence one way or the other, I’m going to assume that the author of The Shack is not inviting his readers to enter into the worship of a black woman called Papa and so I can’t see how Mark can apply this commandment to the character of God the Father from this book. But that doesn’t answer the wider question: is it a sin to represent God the Father as having a body in a piece of literature? As far as I can see today, the answer is no, so long as this literary representation isn’t presented as an object for worship. I suppose it could be argued that “Papa” is being offered an object of worship at which point the author would need to speak up about his intentions and I don’t think he’ll be reading my blog…so, it’s not really germane.

Maybe The Shack is chock-full of doctrinal error, bad theology and out-right heresy. Maybe not. Either way, I’m not discouraged from reading it by Mark’s example simply because I don’t agree with his position and his reasoning.

A Sermon Illustration

Come on! Can’t you just hear it? Maybe if you read the description…