"Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies". I have heard that many times over the course of my life. One of the problems in asking questions is that people don't always want to give the answers, others don't want to open the box for fear of what will fall out and others just know that they will nt be able to put the contents back afterwards. When I was a young boy I took my sisters watch and took it to pieces to see how it worked. She was not exactly pleased, even less so when I failed to put it back together again.
The purpose of de-contruction is to understand how things work: when theologians and philophers de-construct the scriptres the intention is to unsderstand both text and culture more completely. At a time when the institutional church is under such pressure and when attempts are being made to see how we can be more authentic and real in the contemporary world it is important to ask the right questions. Jesus tells us that "The truth will set you free" and the acceptance of light from any quarter has to be good but it is understandable that some will be afraid of damaging the tried and tested ways and others will gear that the baby will be lost along with the bath water. Yet we, surely, have nothing to fear from the truth.
I agree with those who want to loose the boxes and the definitions we have made over the years. Some of what we haver come to acept as true and b iblical have more to do with our evangelical or liberal or conservative or charismatic/pentecostal culture than they do with what the bible actually says. For that reason we must keep asking the questions.
In the continuing conversation in the emerging/emergent church movement we must talk with a sense of humility and provisionality: anythong ese smakes of arrogance. The Doctrinal systems which stem from systematic theology are like the curate's egg- good in parts. As a presbyterian I have learnt much from the Reformers like Luther and Calvin but there is much in the teaching of Wesley also. Some of the comments made on bloggs and on YouTube about the thoughts and thinking of the oppostion are really dreadful and lack any grace. I am constantly horrofied at some of the comments I read and hear about the contributions from people like Brian McLaren frpom what some would consider the emergent liberal wing of the emergening conversation. Rob Bell is another pastor who is frequently attacked for apparent error. Personally I find the contribution that these and other thinkers make very stimulating in helping me to think through what I believe.
The bible teaches me to love my brothers in Christ and to listen to all men. As one who lives in Norhtern Ireland, a place which is often considered to be a veery negative culture, I understand how difficult it is to be certain about what one considers to be the truth and to do so in a gracious way. Why do Christians have to so arrogant in our attitudes? Are we insecure? We seem to lack the capacity to be critical of ideas, without being critical of the peole themselves.
If we are going to recapture the missio dei in the contemporary church we will need to question everything that we become sure of what we believe and how we are to live.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Saturday, 2 January 2010
THe Fellowship of the brethern
Christmas and New Year have come and gone. This gives us all another opportunity to start again. but I doubt that nothing will really change. The lesson of history is that we seldom learn from history. So we continue to have the famines we were told must never happen agaon; children continue to be abused in Africa, in Ireland and in Romania, to name a few; the war on terrorism continues unabatted and young men and women contin ue to die on all sides of the war in Afghanistan.
As I write "The Wire" is on the TV: a gritty, realistic police drama set on the streets of Baltimore. For "gritty and realistic" read the use of the "F" word every other word. Trying to get passed the street language I find myself viewing what I see through what I know about Baltimore and what looks like a similiar situation at the doors of our church building.
Everyone thinks themselves to be unique and in some respects we are all special yet in other ways we are not. Baltimore in the richest country in the world is one of the poorest communities, West and North Belfast, in a very different way, is also in great poverty despite being part of a country that looks after all its citizens from cradle the grave. Unemployment, dependency, poor health, drug and alcohol abuse affects those who are the most vulnerable the most. That's not to say that thwre are no problems in the middle class homes for there are but the real edge is in the places least able to help themsleves. While all this is going on there is a parallel universe in the middle class areas of the country where the grit of The Wire is no mpore than a television drama which goes away when the TV is switched off. While the walls of division and protection go up and the economic life of the community shuts down and the Christians take flight the subburbs grow but while the people leave the problems behind the problems remain.
The New Testament warns us of the fierce spiritual battle that rages as we live our daily lives and tells us of the protection provided. To be effective we need everyone to be protected, we need the support of fresh soldiers but believers from outside the community want to get involved: such is the extent of fellowship more than a shared cup of tea and a few tray bakes. When will we see support from our brothers and sisters? Show All
As I write "The Wire" is on the TV: a gritty, realistic police drama set on the streets of Baltimore. For "gritty and realistic" read the use of the "F" word every other word. Trying to get passed the street language I find myself viewing what I see through what I know about Baltimore and what looks like a similiar situation at the doors of our church building.
Everyone thinks themselves to be unique and in some respects we are all special yet in other ways we are not. Baltimore in the richest country in the world is one of the poorest communities, West and North Belfast, in a very different way, is also in great poverty despite being part of a country that looks after all its citizens from cradle the grave. Unemployment, dependency, poor health, drug and alcohol abuse affects those who are the most vulnerable the most. That's not to say that thwre are no problems in the middle class homes for there are but the real edge is in the places least able to help themsleves. While all this is going on there is a parallel universe in the middle class areas of the country where the grit of The Wire is no mpore than a television drama which goes away when the TV is switched off. While the walls of division and protection go up and the economic life of the community shuts down and the Christians take flight the subburbs grow but while the people leave the problems behind the problems remain.
The New Testament warns us of the fierce spiritual battle that rages as we live our daily lives and tells us of the protection provided. To be effective we need everyone to be protected, we need the support of fresh soldiers but believers from outside the community want to get involved: such is the extent of fellowship more than a shared cup of tea and a few tray bakes. When will we see support from our brothers and sisters? Show All
Sunday, 29 November 2009
WAR, AGAIN?
This morning I arrived at the church for our prayer meeting prior to the Sunday morning service to find a police cordon round the church building; there had been a report from a member of the public to say that there was a suspicious car parked about 50 yards from the church. For about a hour it looked like church would have to be cancelled and we would have to try to get the word out to the congregation but then someone had the idea of setting up in the local school, which is just across the street. So a small group of people went to the school and started to set up some chairs so that, at least those who did turn up would have somewhere to go. To make matters worse we were having a few guests from L'arch, Belfast to talk to us about their ministry.
People in this part of Belfast are extremely resilient and don't tend to get too excited when these things happen. Even after 10 years of peace an action by the dissident IRA, if that is who did this, is not enough to surprise or frighten them. Since the foundation of the church in 1867 there have been many difficult times: the early years where years of expansion in Belfast with thousands of people coming up from the country to find jobs in the new Linen industry, but then there was the first world war and the rise in Irish Nationalism, this was followed by the years following the great depression and then the second world War. Then in the early 60s and 70s there was the industrial competition from the far east which led to the downfall of the linen industry followed by the heavy engineering and the ship building which once led the world [the fact that the Titanic was built in Belfast simply serves to remind us that it was ok when it left Belfast!!!]. Then we had the Troubles which lasted 30 years [we could call this the Thirty years war]and led to the break up of relationships and destroyed the industrial and social landscape of our beloved land.
You could say that this part of our city has known only heartache and trouble and it is certainly the part of the island that had witnessed more murders and violence than any other part and yet it is still standing: wounded, yes but still standing. It is truly amazing and certainly more than a little disturbing that we remain undisturbed by the threat of a bomb. And at this moment of writing I would even lay a wager, if I did such things, that it will hardly be reported at all.
What should our response be? What should the world be doing? What should the middle class parts of Northern Ireland be doing by way of response? In the past the government of the United Kingdom simply dug in the hells and sent in the troops to "keep the peace". while churches like ours have had windows blown in by bombs and had the congregation terrorised and while we have witnessed the destruction of a community little by way of positive and constructive action has been taken. Money has been spent in millions but what really needs to be done has remained undone because it is too costly. What needs to be done is that we need to send in a need breed of troops. We need seriously minded Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, to settle in the hard places like ours to help us to make our churches soft places. We need followers of Jesus Christ to take up opportunities to build "intentional communities" of peace and harmony but those who can do this have preferred to remain aloof and keep their distance.
We need to declare war on evil and on the one who lies behind that evil-we need to fight against evil with truth and peace. Not with the conventional weapons of deadly warfare but with ploughshares. Are there people "out there" who would take up the challenge to resist evil and to resist the evil one with the "full armour of God".
In the end we did get to worship together. At about 10.30am the police cordon was lifted and we were allowed to enter the building. we did hear from our friends at l'arch who told us stories of how the weak and the marginalised have defeated the strong and how those on the margins of society have been brought into the centre. My congregation is on the edge of life in Belfast; we have many social, economic and educational needs and now we sit on the inter-face between protestant and catholic communities but our dream is to see this place become an attractive place to live where there are no longer two separate communities divided by the walls of war but one community of people who have worked their way through our differences and have learnt how to live with them and how to disagree in an agreeable way. We want the God of heaven, the God of the bible to send in His troops to win the war and to liberate the community. Someone reading this blog could be among those troops.
People in this part of Belfast are extremely resilient and don't tend to get too excited when these things happen. Even after 10 years of peace an action by the dissident IRA, if that is who did this, is not enough to surprise or frighten them. Since the foundation of the church in 1867 there have been many difficult times: the early years where years of expansion in Belfast with thousands of people coming up from the country to find jobs in the new Linen industry, but then there was the first world war and the rise in Irish Nationalism, this was followed by the years following the great depression and then the second world War. Then in the early 60s and 70s there was the industrial competition from the far east which led to the downfall of the linen industry followed by the heavy engineering and the ship building which once led the world [the fact that the Titanic was built in Belfast simply serves to remind us that it was ok when it left Belfast!!!]. Then we had the Troubles which lasted 30 years [we could call this the Thirty years war]and led to the break up of relationships and destroyed the industrial and social landscape of our beloved land.
You could say that this part of our city has known only heartache and trouble and it is certainly the part of the island that had witnessed more murders and violence than any other part and yet it is still standing: wounded, yes but still standing. It is truly amazing and certainly more than a little disturbing that we remain undisturbed by the threat of a bomb. And at this moment of writing I would even lay a wager, if I did such things, that it will hardly be reported at all.
What should our response be? What should the world be doing? What should the middle class parts of Northern Ireland be doing by way of response? In the past the government of the United Kingdom simply dug in the hells and sent in the troops to "keep the peace". while churches like ours have had windows blown in by bombs and had the congregation terrorised and while we have witnessed the destruction of a community little by way of positive and constructive action has been taken. Money has been spent in millions but what really needs to be done has remained undone because it is too costly. What needs to be done is that we need to send in a need breed of troops. We need seriously minded Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, to settle in the hard places like ours to help us to make our churches soft places. We need followers of Jesus Christ to take up opportunities to build "intentional communities" of peace and harmony but those who can do this have preferred to remain aloof and keep their distance.
We need to declare war on evil and on the one who lies behind that evil-we need to fight against evil with truth and peace. Not with the conventional weapons of deadly warfare but with ploughshares. Are there people "out there" who would take up the challenge to resist evil and to resist the evil one with the "full armour of God".
In the end we did get to worship together. At about 10.30am the police cordon was lifted and we were allowed to enter the building. we did hear from our friends at l'arch who told us stories of how the weak and the marginalised have defeated the strong and how those on the margins of society have been brought into the centre. My congregation is on the edge of life in Belfast; we have many social, economic and educational needs and now we sit on the inter-face between protestant and catholic communities but our dream is to see this place become an attractive place to live where there are no longer two separate communities divided by the walls of war but one community of people who have worked their way through our differences and have learnt how to live with them and how to disagree in an agreeable way. We want the God of heaven, the God of the bible to send in His troops to win the war and to liberate the community. Someone reading this blog could be among those troops.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
An Ireland re-defined
In this new Ireland we will be a people with a whole new set of values. No longer will we judge people by their name or culture:they will not be defined according to their name or the school they attended. They will be judged only by the quality of their lives, by the contribution they bring to society, we will have a society liberated from the shackles of the past, a place where men and women have decided that they will be motivated and identified by the principles of God's Kingdom and none else.
Unfortunately the whole of Irish society is under the constant threat of secularism. The institutional church is in meltdown and thousands of people who leave our churches, of all the denominations, never return. Many of them go nowhere to worship the next Sunday but some go to one of the new churches.
While the churches are suffering the net effect is for the mass of people to loose their anchor on life and they slip into the "me" culture which makes it demands on life robing the whole of society of its cohesiveness and stability. Marriages are either serial or simply take place and anti-social behaviour has become common place. While all this happens we scamper around looking for scapegoats; the police or lack of appropriate numbers of police, politicians who can't even be trusted to make appropriate expense claims never mind work together with those they disagree with and then there is the church. Few people are asking the right questions about the kind of society we really want nor about the price we are prepared to pay to get it.
How are we going to get out of this quagmire? Tghe Old Testament says that "without a vision the people perish" and we have no vision for the future apart from the limited view of a political dispensation depending on what part of the community we come from. My vision is for a community of people who fear nothing but failing God, a community of people committed to God through Jesus Christ who will learn to live together: who can deal with differences of opinion in a mature way and who see all people throiugh the eyes of that same Christ who had compassion on the weak and the poor and the marginalised. A vision where the poor are blessed and not the rich, where the peacemakers are blessed and not the war mongers, where the meek and th gentle are the people who are honoured. An Ireland like this will be a place where we would all want to live. What do you think?
Unfortunately the whole of Irish society is under the constant threat of secularism. The institutional church is in meltdown and thousands of people who leave our churches, of all the denominations, never return. Many of them go nowhere to worship the next Sunday but some go to one of the new churches.
While the churches are suffering the net effect is for the mass of people to loose their anchor on life and they slip into the "me" culture which makes it demands on life robing the whole of society of its cohesiveness and stability. Marriages are either serial or simply take place and anti-social behaviour has become common place. While all this happens we scamper around looking for scapegoats; the police or lack of appropriate numbers of police, politicians who can't even be trusted to make appropriate expense claims never mind work together with those they disagree with and then there is the church. Few people are asking the right questions about the kind of society we really want nor about the price we are prepared to pay to get it.
How are we going to get out of this quagmire? Tghe Old Testament says that "without a vision the people perish" and we have no vision for the future apart from the limited view of a political dispensation depending on what part of the community we come from. My vision is for a community of people who fear nothing but failing God, a community of people committed to God through Jesus Christ who will learn to live together: who can deal with differences of opinion in a mature way and who see all people throiugh the eyes of that same Christ who had compassion on the weak and the poor and the marginalised. A vision where the poor are blessed and not the rich, where the peacemakers are blessed and not the war mongers, where the meek and th gentle are the people who are honoured. An Ireland like this will be a place where we would all want to live. What do you think?
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Send in the troops
Belfast is my city: I was born here and have lived most of my life here. For most of my 57 years we have experienced community strife. Sometimes that strife has broken out into outright bloodshed and all that time we have been divided into the two major opposing camps of Protestant and Catholic. Since 1999 we have told ourselves that the Good Friday Agreemenet really was good and in time it will deliver peace and harmony even when some have refused to call it good.
Last night at the switching on of the Christmas lights some young people from both sides decided to have some fun throwing stones at each other, reminding us of those days when the city centre was abandoned because the population was afraid. What are we going to do? What can we do? The truth is that we can do nothing, we are powerless. We fool ourselves if we really imagine that we are in sovereign control. Our city is as much fragmented as ever; we have walls to keep us apart and help us to feel safe. Yesterday I saw three police officers walking up our street. One of them had a machione gun strapped to his shoulder and I thought tomyself, "Is that supposed to make me feel safer?" At the moment approximatelyhalf the population wants to see more police on the streets to give the community confidence that the police are on the ball but the other half are not so sure. With the daily fight between the governing partners over the latest dispute everyone wonders how we can eveer see improvement and truly feel safer but there wedre worse days, blacker days when men and women were killed daily, much like in contemporary Afghanistan.
Yesterday I had an interview with the District Police Commander who was expressing his frustrations at the impossible task of being a community police service. He mused on the difficulty of an officer having a meaningful conversation while carrying a gun and wearing a flack jacket and a hat pulled down so that all that can be seen are his eyes. Daily "joe public" expresses frustration and growing cynicism by blaming the politicians and the PSNI rather than asking tehe obvious questions as to how we can build a better society.
In 1969 the British Prime Minister sent in the troops to establish peace in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry. That was the begining of the break up of the political system which came to an abrupt end when Edward Heath, prorogued the Northern Ireland Parliament and set up Direct Rule which lasted some 30 years until the Good Friday Agreemenbt became the basis for an agreed Ireland North and South.
What we need today is a whole new breed of Irishmen. People who are able to think about the whole community; people who have the ability to see beyond their own political and religious desires. The contemporarty world is very different to the society of 1969. Today we are much more secular,much more pluralist; much less inclined to listen to the views of the institutional church. We need a security system based upon a communal desire for real peace. We need a security system that rests on the dismantling of the walls and looks to troops of people on the streets dedicated to peace and harmony. This calls for a new heart in the community. We, who take the name of Christ in our hearts and on our lips, need to demonstrate an alternative way of living in a divided country. We must refuse to wrap the Christ we follow in either the Union flag or the flag of the Republic.Why could we not call for amoratorium on the national question for a while to allow maturity to set in? Has the time not come for us to answer the question: what do we really want for this place we call home? Do we desire peace so much that we will put the question of sovereignty on hold? We will never settle the question of union until we find peace.
What we need is a new movement of troops, a new wave of people power. Send in the troopps and send them in today to win the peace. Let a new security policy take charge, a plicybased upona new kingdom and a new power-let Christ reign in our lives and in our politics. Jesus has alrady dismantled the barriers between Jew and Gentile but we insist on rebuilding them: can we not stop? If we are unwilliong or unable to do this we have no rigt to blame the men and women who sit up in Stormont. After all they are carrying out our wishes.
Last night at the switching on of the Christmas lights some young people from both sides decided to have some fun throwing stones at each other, reminding us of those days when the city centre was abandoned because the population was afraid. What are we going to do? What can we do? The truth is that we can do nothing, we are powerless. We fool ourselves if we really imagine that we are in sovereign control. Our city is as much fragmented as ever; we have walls to keep us apart and help us to feel safe. Yesterday I saw three police officers walking up our street. One of them had a machione gun strapped to his shoulder and I thought tomyself, "Is that supposed to make me feel safer?" At the moment approximatelyhalf the population wants to see more police on the streets to give the community confidence that the police are on the ball but the other half are not so sure. With the daily fight between the governing partners over the latest dispute everyone wonders how we can eveer see improvement and truly feel safer but there wedre worse days, blacker days when men and women were killed daily, much like in contemporary Afghanistan.
Yesterday I had an interview with the District Police Commander who was expressing his frustrations at the impossible task of being a community police service. He mused on the difficulty of an officer having a meaningful conversation while carrying a gun and wearing a flack jacket and a hat pulled down so that all that can be seen are his eyes. Daily "joe public" expresses frustration and growing cynicism by blaming the politicians and the PSNI rather than asking tehe obvious questions as to how we can build a better society.
In 1969 the British Prime Minister sent in the troops to establish peace in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry. That was the begining of the break up of the political system which came to an abrupt end when Edward Heath, prorogued the Northern Ireland Parliament and set up Direct Rule which lasted some 30 years until the Good Friday Agreemenbt became the basis for an agreed Ireland North and South.
What we need today is a whole new breed of Irishmen. People who are able to think about the whole community; people who have the ability to see beyond their own political and religious desires. The contemporarty world is very different to the society of 1969. Today we are much more secular,much more pluralist; much less inclined to listen to the views of the institutional church. We need a security system based upon a communal desire for real peace. We need a security system that rests on the dismantling of the walls and looks to troops of people on the streets dedicated to peace and harmony. This calls for a new heart in the community. We, who take the name of Christ in our hearts and on our lips, need to demonstrate an alternative way of living in a divided country. We must refuse to wrap the Christ we follow in either the Union flag or the flag of the Republic.Why could we not call for amoratorium on the national question for a while to allow maturity to set in? Has the time not come for us to answer the question: what do we really want for this place we call home? Do we desire peace so much that we will put the question of sovereignty on hold? We will never settle the question of union until we find peace.
What we need is a new movement of troops, a new wave of people power. Send in the troopps and send them in today to win the peace. Let a new security policy take charge, a plicybased upona new kingdom and a new power-let Christ reign in our lives and in our politics. Jesus has alrady dismantled the barriers between Jew and Gentile but we insist on rebuilding them: can we not stop? If we are unwilliong or unable to do this we have no rigt to blame the men and women who sit up in Stormont. After all they are carrying out our wishes.
Friday, 27 June 2008
Some thoughts of a father
It's just a week now since we said goodbye to Mark, our second son and third child. This week we will be saying goodbye to his elder brother, Peter. Some times it seems like life will never be the same again, that our family will never be together again. Sometimes I think that it would have been better for my sons and my daughter to have gone to work at 16 and found work at home. Sometimes I feel like God has taken them away from me but then I know that this is not so, I know that they were only ever given to us on loan. They never "belonged" to me and in doing what God wants them to do they will experience life in all its fullness. Sometimes I have this fear of ending up alone, like some of the elderly people I have visited over the years whose sons and daughters are in various parts of the world so that they have no family near them to look after them in their declining years.
A very long time ago I was out with my mum. It was in the days when the buses had no doors and the driver was at the opposite end of the bus. She placed me on the platform, while she got ready to get on herself only to be horrified at he sight of the b us moving before she had a foot on the platform. All I had for companionship was my panic. Thankfully this lasted only a moment as the conductor realised there was a problem and rang the Bell to tell the driver to stop. I do not want to be in that position ever again!
In my more lucid moments I know that God will never leave us and He has blessed us with four great children , who are no longer children. Then I remember that God gave us His only Son, to die that we might live. In the last few weeks I have been given just a glimpse of what loosing a son must be like, what giving a child for the benefit of others feels like. I have had the sorrow of burying the children of parents who never imagined, for a second, that they would outlive their children. We read the story in the Old Testament, of the sacrifice of Isaac wondering how he could do such a thing. The God we worship is a giving God who tell us that he will "love you with an everlasting love". I have been telling the congregation that this is God's default position and we should take great encouragement from that. Did Abraham think that God was going to raise his son from the dead? Did he think that God would give him another son? I do not know but what I do know is that He loves me and He loves you, the reader of this piece, with an everlasting love. Does that not warm your soul? You are loved! Now, I dare you, ignore Him, tell Him He can stick His love. On the other hand you could thank Him and ask Him to be your God for ever.
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