Saturday, December 24, 2016

The Old Commandment vs the New

Jesus said the old commandment was “Love your neighbour as yourself”. But now He had a new one: “Love your enemy as I have loved you”.  Bible critics like to point out that the first one is found in variety of religions, is just common sense. But you never hear them talking about the new one, for some reason. Love your neighbour? - sure ok, but they go ahead spew scorn and division against those of a different opinion.  
But transforming enemies into friends with self-sacrificial love: now that’s pretty cool.                               Taken from Proverbs 25:21-22; Matthew 5:43-44; Luke 6:27-36

Monday, December 24, 2012

Your World is Fragile

Carl Sagan once said:

"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces." —Carl Sagan

     I confess I re-blogged this quote without knowing its original context, so I have to guess Sagan's point was to push for a lot more science education.
     That's a good idea. However, if/when it "blows up in our faces" (economically, environmentally, politically) it will be too late. So we also need a contingency plan to teach and empower people to survive, even thrive, with minimal technology off the grid.  

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Selling The Souls of Others

In the shadows of a blurry bronze mirror in his dim office, the medieval professor adjusted his moth-chewed turban. The office was crammed by piles of ancient books in stacks, bookmarks protruding, many laying cracked open. Buried beneath the paraphernalia of Magick and Alchemy, various pieces of massive old funiture supported 13 huge flickering candles. A dried bat was stretched out on one wall, a human skull sat on the edge of his writing desk, many blown-glass flasks and beakers lined the shelves, filled with herbs, mushrooms, and writhing swamp things.

Gazing into a particularly battered volume cradled in his left arm, absorbed with an illustration of a man standing in a circled star, Doctor Faust felt for an apple in a bowl, bit into it, then set it aside absent mindedly. Just such a circled star was meticulousy chalked full-size on the floor of Fausts' study. Still chewing, Doctor Faust casually grabbed his finely-wrought silver sceptre by it's head of pitted green crystal, and still cradling the massive volume, stepped with finality into the chalk circle.

In the 1600's most people believed Faust was a historical figure and that one really could sell one's eternal soul to the devil. Temporal success in exchange for eternity in hell. Nowadays of course thinking people don't believe this kind of silliness anymore. God's book also does not support it. Everyone is already destined to hell for their own sins already, no deals with the devil necessary. And Jesus "paying our debt" is of course just a metaphor for something indescribably wonderful: we don't owe anything to the devil and Jesus never paid him a cent.

Nevertheless, many Christians are like Doctor Faustus in a way, but playing with the souls of others. When I walk away from God's loving presence in exhange for a moment indulging my ego and my senses, how many souls do I blindly lose for eternity?

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

You Are Clean!

The leper, in dirty rags, stares at the ground in shame, despised and abhorred by the crowd. The crowd holds its breath, all eyes riveted on Jesus' inviolable hand - reaching, stretching suspensefully closer towards the untouchable. The crowd gasps as He gently lays His hand on the leper's shoulder- and amazingly speaks total healing into being! The crowd laughs and cheers with joy as the white flakes disappear, nose and fingers re-grow right before their eyes.

Jesus does the same for social and moral lepers, the shame-tortured, the self-loathed. He speaks innocence, purity and shining reputation into being. God spoke the universe into being: He has spoken your good reputation and flawless track record into being too.

Woe to him who dares deny or defy God's declaration, the purity God has spoken into being. If God is for us, who can be against us? Rom. 8:31

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Every Believer a Prophet, Priest and King

For 1000 years, through dark and medieval ages, the church in Europe languished with a stark contrast between what the clergy could do in ministry, which was everything, with, on the other hand, what the laity could do in ministry, which was nothing. Just like the nominal folk religion in Maluku, lay people were assumed to have nothing to offer.

Fortunately, over the last 500 years many Biblical perspectives have been restored, starting with the priesthood of every believer, which is that every believer is able to approach God directly without the agency of an ordained priest. When God takes a depraved sinner and creates in them a new spirit, making them a new genus of being, He makes them 1) siblings of Jesus and 2) incarnations of the Trinity. Every believer has a double-right to enter into the holiest Presence of God because every believer is a sibling High Priest with Christ and every believer is one with God.

But Jesus was also King, which office, through God's Presence living in them, God the Son also lives out through every believer. As the Son lives through us we manifest His kingship. Paul writes that we have been seated with Christ on His throne ruling over the universe. Christ shared his kingly authority with 82 of his disciples even before His death. What's more, He also taught that greater things we would do than did He, when God's Presence came to live in every believer. Even now, just like Jesus had, we have His authority as princes and princesses in His royal family to cast out demons, heal, and perform other supernatural signs of God's loving Presence.

It is really kind of amazing that the truth of the Son as Prophet living through His Body has been for so long muted and dormant. Yet the evidence is undeniable that God is channeling the Son's prophetic ministry through many believers today already, and He wants to do the same through every other believer as well. As Paul said, “Passionately yearn that you may ALL (every believer) prophesy”. (1st Cor. 14:1)

Friday, January 6, 2012

New Years 2012 Prayer with Fasting Report

I decided to do a 72 hour fast and prayer time in the first week of 2012. I initially just invited a couple friends to join me, friends whom I knew to be yearning for a deeper move of God in their lives. But then I thought I may as well send out an invitation to a slightly broader group of relatives and friends, ministry colleagues, old Bible college alumni and Facebook friends.

Eventually about 30 people from Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Weyburn, Regina, Moose Jaw, Calgary, Prince George, Williams Lake, Kamloops, Cranbrook, Grand Forks, Chilliwack, Langley, Vancouver, Nanaimo, Jakarta and Maluku fasted at different levels and prayed at the same time.

We were a bit shocked but of course very thankful how soon and powerfully God showed up. The first night of fasting with prayer the 10 or so people praying in Indonesia in two different provinces simultaneously (including myself) experienced the amazing sweet presence of God to the point that most were unable to stand and there was much laughter and supernatural joy for about 2 hours.

But emotional experiences are not the point or goal and I feel this initial phenomena was intended to help us persevere regardless of any enjoyable bits. So regardless of the initial fireworks, I am actually much more happy with how much praying I was enabled to do during the 72 hours. While people sent me some prayer requests, as I began praying for them I feel I received unexpected alternate issues to pray for them as well. ( I am wary of interference from my own imagination however so for now I'll just wait and see how much was accurate). When I would receive a new image or issue to pray for it was accompanied by a wave of God's presence inducing euphoria/elation/ecstasy and I laughed till my stomach hurt.

I hope that the addition of fasting to our prayer lives becomes a weekly habit. Even if it is just one meal every week, or get up to pray a few hours before breakfast, I know God will honor our fumbling baby steps far abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.

Prophecy Books

I read the following books on prophecy over the last couple months to try to learn a bit how to be more sensitive to the Lord's voice on a daily basis.

I was a hard skeptic about supernatural perception and healing (except for my own mystical experiences with God of course!) until I was invited to an evangelical Christian prophecy seminar in the summer of 1997 in Regina and was startled awake by the cold water of PROOF spraying in my face. As an eye-witness and recipient of prophecy in action I could not deny it any more than deny gravity.

So I really appreciated the first books in my list, “Growing in the Prophetic” by Mike Bickle, “You May All Prophesy” by Steve Thompson and “Extraordinary Power for Ordinary Christians” by Eric Tammaru a former beat cop. They start from the perspective of the antagonistic doubter and then walk you through some powerful evidence in baby steps then get into their majority content of practical how-to. One other reason Bickle's work is very valuable is because he writes from the perspective of a pastoral administrator, not a prophet, so there's lots of practical advice (and stories!) that will be helpful to pastors not comfortable with, yet reluctantly open to, the prophetic. Tammaru is the most accessible with LOTS of stories but very short. If you find reading to be work then start with him.

After you read those you might want to try “Prophetic Evangelism” by Sean Smith. This guy is a fiery African-American preacher and it sure comes through in his writing. You'll have to bite your tongue here and there at his creativity with English (interesting grammar and unfamiliar terminology), but it is worth it to press through because he has some very practical cut-to-the-quick principles, practices and guides to prayer for the novice. He also includes a lot of gripping stories.

That leaves the more scholarly, thicker and most useful books; “Developing Your Prophetic Gifting” by Graham Cooke, and “Prophets and Personal Prophecy” and “Prophets Pitfalls and Principles” by Dr. Bill Hamon. I'll talk about Hamon's stuff first. These are the 1st and 3rd volumes of a series. I didn't read the 2nd volume because it was too general for my purposes, and then I found that Dr. Hamon gave a synopsis of it anyway in vol. 3 which I appreciated because then I realized I hadn't missed anything not reading vol. 2.

You may find yourself pausing at a couple of Dr. Hamon's eschatological and ecclesiological positions, but then again he doesn't claim to be a Biblical scholar, rather a down-to-earth practitioner of spiritual gifts. So just set those few theological curios aside and tune in to the rubber-meets-the-road practicalities. Really stuffed with solid, practical practices from like 30 or 40 years of non-stop full time ministry in the gifts of the Spirit. His ideas of how prophets and pastors should work together should spark some thinking in the reader who is a pastor wondering how to manage church governance with prophets operating.

The last book on my list, “Developing Your Prophetic Gifting” by Graham Cooke, is the most thorough, well-written and organized. It could really suit for a 1st year Bible college text. If you only read one or two on this list, I would have to recommend Bickle's and Cooke's books, in that order. But its up to you.

Addendum: I also found a very useful old book by a doctor professor from Fuller Seminary named John Wimber. The book is called “Power Evangelism”. If you don't like reading much (hmm well then I guess you may not have made it till here!), take heart because this was made into a video series which your church secretary should easily be able to order in for you to watch. You might even be able to borrow it! (hmmm there should be a unified database of church libraries with interlibrary loaning) Well anyway I really liked Wimber's approach because he came at it scientifically as a respected academic. I believe the Vineyard denomination came out of his work. 

Happy reading, and trying some stuff!

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Luke 11:5-13

Well I couldn't say for sure but I guess that consistency has recently born fruit in the decision to fast and pray for 3 days in the first week of the new year.  I have also been reading a bunch of different books (some not that good!) on tuning in to God's leading on a daily basis, especially in order to minister His wonderful loving Presence to others.  So I guess filling my thoughts with that stuff as well inspired me to do this prayer-with-fasting.

I was very pleased when about 17 people have now agreed to join together to fast and pray for up to 72 hours (different folks with different types and levels of fasting depending on their ability).  People from Regina, Prince George, Moose Jaw, Cranbrook, Jakarta and Maluku.

So I made a Facebook group called:

Luke 11:5-13

This is for members to post the things they are currently praying for so we can join together. And if they get some sort of message they feel is from the Lord they can post that too.

Monday, January 2, 2012

How to Develop a Good Prayer Habit

I have been slowly working away at developing a more consistent prayer life. I have hit on some techniques that I guess must be helping. Problem is when my alarm goes off at 4 or 5 am the temptation is just too strong to just turn it off and roll over and go back to sleep till 7.

The first key is to go to bed soon enough.  How important are the tv shows, internet surfing, YouTube, Facebook and computer games? So I try to get into bed by 9:30 to be sleeping by 10pm so I can get a good 6 hours of sleep in by 4am. So I set two alarms, one very quite one in my bedroom and one very loud one in the living room.  I ensure the time on the two clocks is synched and then set the quiet one in my bedroom for 3:55 (in the village) or 4:55 am (in the city), and the loud one out in the living room for 5 minutes later.  I put my clothes in a pile to easily pick up in the dark and carry out into the living room. I get dressed next to the loud alarm and turn it off. After a few weeks of this my body learns to wake up a minute or two before the first alarm so I am not jolted nastily awake by the alarm. By the time I get to the far alarm I am sufficiently awake and far away from the bed that I can resist going back to bed because I have remembered how awesome it is when God intervenes!

The other thing I got into now is not having a coffee and bite to eat when I get up.  So I get a 2 hour fast every weekday with my morning prayer time.

I am back

Our internet was out of commission in Babar Islands for 2 months so I couldn't post.  We came back on line on November 27th! Then Christmas happened.  But one of my resolutions for the New Year is to write on the blog more frequently. I am also going to make it more reflect a journal and current events in my life and ministry.  I'll be doing the occasional devotional item still, but will definitely try to relate the weekly goings on in the Babar Islands more. But look at the last post from me earlier today. Hope you get something useful out of it.

Temptation is a Personal Attack

Don't take it personally? You had bloody well better take temptation personally. Interpersonally in fact. If you downplay the constant stream of messages to you from the Deceiver, you have swallowed their biggest and best lie. 

They want you to blame yourself for being a screw-up, for just being tempted, for "thoughts" "just occurring". They want you to dismiss their presence and influence. They don't want you to know they are constantly whispering lies to you.

So wake up! Open your eyes and your ears! Temptation is an external attack on you from demons who want to kill you, destroy you and steal every good blessing God has intended to lavish upon you.

Do not get sucked into blaming yourself for being depraved. God gave you a new spirit. You are a sibling of the second Adam, with a new spirit newly breathed into you by God Himself. With this new spirit God gave you one ability, and one alone: 
  • to enter and stay in His presence and never leave, 
  • to cling to Him constantly, 
  • to turn to Him for help every second. 
Just do it!

Saturday, September 10, 2011

We need some freakin monsters on our side!

God's stories being spoken out orally is not enough. That is great that live humans are telling Bible stories.

But it needs to be bathed in suicidal unconditional surrender, in desperate, groaning prayer, in broken-hearted fasting and in crazy chance-taking to do signs and wonders.

Bible stories are just squiggles of carbon on dried out tree pulp. Just inanimate records of once live, embodied revelation. The original embodied and lived event is the real revelation. Bible stories whether oral or written are just abstract representations, fossils. What God wants His Word in the Church to do is to bring these fossils back to life in the here and now. Like Jurassic Park. We need some freaking monsters on our side! The stories are just computer code. We are the massive, slumbering Transformers that run on that code!

The Biblical events need to be re:incarnated, revealed in our flesh afresh, anew in current contextualized embodied, acted revelation. The stories of Jesus and apostles performing signs and wonders like casting out demons and healing the sick and prophesying what they could not possibly know naturally, are not picturesque parables to teach some sublime spiritual truths: they are models and patterns for how we are supposed to replicate their ministry NOW, once again being filled with His empowering Presence to heal, to point out our need for God and reconcile the masses to God, only as His awesome Presence moves, only by the agency of His unique incarnation, Jesus.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Godless Ghosts (cont'd)


Recently I wrote on Pascal's wager, which goes like this: “If there is no God and you live for Him, then when you die (and all consciousness and memory of whatever you did in your life vanishes, so whether you sin or serve all is forgotten as if it never happened), you have lost nothing. If there is a God however and you reject Him, then you will have lost everything”

Problem is of course Pascal was thinking in a totally Christian environment, so the god in his wager he assumed to be the Christian God. But Pascal's wager could work with a variety of god's without telling you which one was the right god, so you could live your life for god, but the wrong god, and you lose anyway.

And now of course it is very common for people to believe in ghosts, an afterlife, extra sensory perception and miracles with NO god. With multiple universes and dimensions with multiple conflicting laws of nature possible, they like to think anything is possible and nothing is explainable, or that everything miraculous is attributable to unknown, yet-to-be-discovered natural laws.

And that's exactly the kind of atheist I was. No arguments or rationale convinced me that there is a God and that Jesus is the only way to truly know God. I was not convinced by argumentation about fossils and floods. No, I was convinced by a spiritual revelation of God's loving presence channeled through a Christian explaining and qualifying it as in and through the name of Jesus alone. This is the kind of evidence the world needs now. They need to experience God and the gifts of His spirit directly through Christian agents who verbally qualify it as in and through the name of Jesus alone. And that is why we need revival with signs and wonders accompanying.

Hit and Run

In the city of Tual, Maluku, Indonesia I got on a minivan bus at the side of the road when there's this loud bang and clattering right by the minivan and I look out and there is an old man of about my age laying face down in the middle of the street obviously just knocked down by this motorbike which is also laying down beside him and the driver as well crawling out from underneath the bike! Then some people rush up and help the old pedestrian to his feet as the motorbike rider also stands up staring in shock and dread at the old guy. Then our minvan driver slowly pulls away from the curb into the night and some random guy out of the crowd runs up to the scene and punches the side of the minivan cause he thinks the minivan was involved! Suddenly I am aware of a possible nasty scene developing with a mob gathering accusing the bus driver of involvement, and with us in the middle of it all as easy marks to blame it all on and pay everybody compensation!  But before these thoughts could even solidify in my mind or say anything the driver had already eased away wisely getting us out of there. Now I understand why people do that here!

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Imagine No Religion

Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and all North Africa and the Mediterranean were Catholic and Orthodox lands up till the 600's. (See map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Justinian555AD.png)

About the beginning of the 600's the Muslims started conquering and subjugating these Christian lands, forcing conversions. The Muslim empire continued conquering and expanding into Christian lands for 500 years, that is from the 600's through the 700's, the 800's, the 900's and the 1000's. Finally in 1096, after 500 years of losses to Muslim expansion, the Catholic nobility of Europe decided to fight back and try to liberate the Catholic and Orthodox lands now occupied by Islamic forces.

In general the Catholics lost and the Muslims won. (See map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_Mediterranean_1450_.svg)

While parts of the Balkans were regained along with Spain eventually, yet descendants of the Muslim invaders still occupy parts of the Balkans to this day, and the eastern part of Orthodox Greece and part of Cyprus is still occupied by Muslim invaders. The Chirstian majorities of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Arabia and Egypt and all North Africa were mostly forced to convert to Islam. Islamic traders, missionaries and armies were then free to expand from country to country further and further afield;  West all across North Africa to Morocco and across to crush all of Christian Spain, ever East along the coasts of Asia as far as China and on into the Pacific, and South along Africa's East coast deep into the Southern hemisphere as far as Madagascar.

The mainly Catholic response to Muslim imperialism, now popularly called The Crusades, lasted around 200 years. This belated Catholic resistance to 500 years of Muslim expansion into and conquest of Christian lands, and the Muslim response that crushed the Crusades, resulted in between 200,000 and 1.5 million deaths on both sides over 200 years.

But squabbles between the world's great religions really has nothing over the record of modern athiest states. Just as Europe's Catholic nobility finally fought back after 400 years of Muslim invasions of Christian lands, so also when atheist Nazi Germany attacked and occupied Catholic Poland in 1939, the Poles and their allies fought back, immediately drawing Christian England, Canada and Australia into the 2nd WW.

For the record:

Soviet revolution:               killed 9 million
Soviet forced starvation:    killed 4 million 1921-23
Stalinist Russia:                 killed 20 million
Nazi Germany:              
   in death camps                killed 12 million
   outside camps                 killed 54 million
Communist China:             killed 60 million

Total Deaths Attributable
to Athiest states:                 156 million killed

John Lennon sang “Imagine no religion.” We don't need to. It is too clear where athiesm leads.

Street People Receive Knighthood

Avoiding things that can harm you is perfectly natural. Perfectly.

Ancient Hebrew tradition has a proverb warning young Israelite men to avoid loose women. But Jesus did the opposite. He chatted with a woman of bad reputation and in the process transformed her into a saint.

Ancient Hebrew tradition commanded avoiding lepers. But Jesus did the opposite, instead reaching out His hand and touching a leper and in the process healing him. 

If you believe that Jesus is God's unique incarnation and that there is restoration with God through no other name, then you have the right and ability to bask inside and incarnate God's powerful Presence, the same Presence that raised up Jesus to life from the dead. But you must be willing to go against conventional wisdom.

Whom did you avoid last week?
Seriously. Think about it.
An annoying relative? A bore? A street person scrounging for bottles? Someone who hurt you?

Don't trust in the approval of the beautiful, the influential, the talented and strong. 

Trust rather in God's approval. He wants you to go love the poor and the weak.
Go against society. Cross the room. Walk away from the cool, the smart and the rich and rather go spend time with the marginalized. And God's loving Presence through you will transform them before your eyes into angels, your royal siblings.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Godless Ghosts

Yesterday I posted on Pascals wager.  I knew that it was flawed even before I posted it.  Problem is,  that kind of logic might have worked with a lot of Westerners 50 years ago, but now many people believe in an afterlife WITHOUT God.  I myself was one of these.

If one meets someone interested in this kind of discussion, one might tighten the focus and talk about the unique and exclusive claims of Jesus.  All other world-class faiths allow other ways.  If you are a good Christian, you can still reach nirvana, according to the Hindu faith.  The same goes for Islam and Buddhism and countless folk beliefs.

Jesus said however that there is no other way to be happy in the after life except in submission to and trust in himself alone.

So if Jesus is wrong, and you follow him, it doesn't matter whether you follow Christianity or some other faith or even a religion, because the particular tenets are not important to the other faiths but what is important to them is that you are a good person. (Bad people need not apply).

But if Jesus is  right that he alone is God in the flesh and that trusting him is the only way, then it would be stupid to say he was wrong and go off and follow some other faith.

So to update Pascal's wager, if Jesus is wrong and you live a good life, then it wouldn't matter what faith you follow.  And if there were no God it wouldn't matter how you had lived.  But if Jesus' claims are true then it is imperative for your eternal welfare that you allow him to love and forgive you, adopt you as his child into his big family, and surrender to his loving help to live his way.

Friday, July 1, 2011

A Wager of Galactic Proportions


A wise man (Blaise Pascal) once said something like this:

If God doesn't exist, then it doesn't matter how we live.  The only meaningful record of our lives, our memories, would be completely obliterated in death.  

Whether we love or hate Him, pretend He doesn't exist, do good or evil;  
Whether you starve to death at age 2 or live in luxury till 90;

Without a God,

All would be erased when the maggots ate our brains.  
All memory of our lives disappears at death, 
All manner of lives lived, 
All becomes meaningless nothing: we might as well have never existed
All disappears exactly as if it had never happened.

However, if I obstinately choose my own selfish way, and He does exist, I will have lost everything for eternity.   

Therefore I will choose to love Him, because if in the end all memory of my life is lost, I would have lost nothing. But if He exists, I gain everything. 

Friday, June 17, 2011


A couple weeks ago on Babar island I took my motorbike on the trail to Tela to see how passable the trail was before dragging along Kathy. I came to one narrow log bridge. There was a flat rock filling a pothole smack in the middle of the trail, right at the start of the bridge. I had to drive right over it. But as I gave it a bit of gas, the back wheel slipped sideways on the slippery rock, pointing the bike off to the left. At the same time the rear knobby tire grabbed onto the rough rock on the side and, well, I shot off the edge of the bridge.  The bike fell straight down with a flip 'n twirl somersault and then whumped the stony creek bed, while I was launched 4 or 5 meters and landed on a big boulder.

Slow mo replay: As the bike went left off the bridge, the front wheel dropped off the edge, then the engine hit the edge of the bridge and forward motion abruptly transferred into a somersault, the whole bike pivoting over where the engine was grabbing the edge of the bridge. The bike pivoted in a cartwheel and I was catapulted into space. But my weight and fall trajectory at the same time tipped the bike into a left ward fall so it flipped lengthwise and sideways at the same time. It just happened to be in a laying down position as it slammed into the stony creek bed, the axles pointing at the sky. 

I vaguely remember doing some fancy foot work and hand placements as I myself made contact with the creek bed, intentionally rolling into a somersault to lessen the impacts. You can bet I thanked God I was thrown clear. I only got a few scrapes, wrenched my back, burned my ankle on the muffler and got some pancake-sized bruises on my knee and wrist. 

As I lay on my back in the water writhing and screaming for a second or two, I was at the same time aware that this display was futile and I'd better get my backpack and bike out of the water before they were water-damaged. Whimpering, I immediately struggled to my feet again and limped over to the bike to stand it up. Fortunately no water went up its tail pipe. The stainless steel tail pipe was now all dimpled like from hail damage, from slamming into the stones of the creek bed. 

So now I had the bike nicely standing upright, parked down in the creek bed and no one for miles and no way to get it out because the creek banks were too steep. I climbed up out of the creek, took off my soaking wet shirt and layed it on a bush to dry. The sun was warm and dried me quickly. Calming down I realized I could make a ramp of rocks to walk the bike out. I went back down into the creek and started gathering head sized rocks to build a ramp. But then some other motorcyclers came and stopped to help and so we just lifted the bike straight up onto the edge of the bridge, and my ramp building was abandoned. 

I pressed on to Tela but didn't feel so good for some reason. The back forks were really bent so the rear tire was rubbing on the fender, making a burning rubber smell and a loud growling sound that caused some discussion amongst the gardeners I passed. Having met with the priest to arrange work with the translation team, I wanted to go back home to Tepa. I sawed off some of the chunks of fender using my trusty Gerber multi-tool, and headed home, crossing that bridge again, this time real careful like.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Maximizing Misfits

Who's responsible for misfits?
You are.

Skipping out, dropping out,
acting up and out,
disrupting, rebelling, fleeing,

Challenging!

The misfit gets blamed for missing the fit.

But why do we want the misfit to conform?

Well......maybe we don't.
Maybe its just the managers who want them to conform.

Is someone in your circle "causing problems"?
Why not come alongside them, help them achieve their dreams?

Is someone you know messing up at work or school?
Maybe the system's cramming a square peg into a round hole.

Don't join in breaking their will;

Smash the mould that's killing them.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Testimonies?

In normal English usage "testimony" refers to a factual recounting of a real event which an eyewitness experienced.  Maybe it is a traffic accident, maybe war crimes.
(Not a "testimonial" which has a commercial connotation associated with an endorsement of a product by its user)

In evangelical/fundamentalist Christian subcultures of Canada "testimony" bears an additional sense of a personal account of how God-in-Christ intervened miraculously or providentially in the speaker's life somehow.  Often it is limited specifically to the process of how a person initially turned from an unbeliever to a believer, or was "saved".  (In many "charismatic" (in the theological sense) churches one may "testify" at many, if not most, religious meetings, and this "testimony" may be about some more recent event in the believer's life which they interpret as being an instance of God's intervention in their personal life and of their (eventual) positively evaluated response to God.) 

I have witnessed middle-aged to elderly people attending a meeting invited to stand and spontaneously give a "testimony".   I remember several times being struck and fascinated by vivid detailed glimpses into of regular people's personal life events situated 30 or 40 years in the past, the minute details still sharp from repeated retellings over the decades.  And I recall thinking "but what has God done in your life recently?"

Now, language and consciousness are indivisible aspects of being human.  Our human awareness and experience of existence is impossible without numerical, lexical, logical and grammatical polarities such as "I/you",  and "body/thing", and "this/that" and "one/two".  On the other hand the very concepts of "body/mind", "language/awareness"  or  "speaking/acting",  while on the one hand help us think and improve our experience and use of these "things" (for love, mercy and justice), at the same time this codification sets up an unreal split or division between them.  I would like to say "Speaking and acting are indivisible" but this statement self-destructs because it is equal to saying "two things are one thing" which is not currently logical in English.

Nevertheless, I believe action speaks and speech acts.  Therefore, the Christian "testimony" consists of more than a story told in words: it is also actions and attitudes.  How we act towards and treat our family, neighbours, acquaintances, school mates, work colleagues, other drivers on the road and people we don't particularly like, speaks volumes.  But we have known this since kindergarten, when we heard it said: "Actions speak louder than words".  So testify to your world about your current love affair with God-in-Christ through your whole life, today.

Friday, February 25, 2011

You and God

The two year old can’t talk, doesn’t have the words, but reaches up her hands to strong young daddy. He reaches down and lifts her up, cradling her in his left arm as she clings to his neck. He pushes open the screen door, strides into the back yard picking up a small plastic toy shovel on the way. Hands it to toddler. He walks into the garden, sets her down in a safe spot and shows her a digging motion with the toy shovel “Dig sweety. Dig like this!” She has no clue what a garden is- what planting, weeding, watering, harvest are. No clue about the fathers plan, about the future, how things work, what to do. She is blissful, ignorant- basking in daddy’s presence. He sets to work with a will and a purpose, turning over the fallow earth. She whacks the ground with the toy shovel feebly, spastically, wobbly gaze immediately towards daddy to see what’s next.

Weeks pass. The season progresses. There they are again, she with her toy watering can, watering stones and babbling to herself. Daddy is watering in earnest, systematically, with a view to the harvest.

Now toddler lounges in the luxuriant shade of a leafy green-bean teepee. Daddy is out in the sun picking luscious juicy plump tomatoes. He picks up toddler on the way to the house to enjoy yummy tomato sandwiches. “You worked hard, sweet-pea” he says lovingly as she rides in his arms with her head on his chest. “Look at what we grew!”

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Singapore Airport Freakout

So yeah our ticket back to Indonesia had us fly first from Vancouver BC south to Portland Oregon where we would then transit onto a much bigger trans-pacific flight.

So  we're in portland airport and it is like 10 minutes to boarding time and I approach the check-in desk to see if we can maybe get a better seat with more leg room for the 11 hour flight to Tokyo. The clerk says "These boarding passes you have aren't good enough. I will issue you new ones." Ok I think fine. Who cares?

So then the clerk asks me if I have a return ticket to come back from Indonesia. No, I reply honestly.  "Oh but you have to have a return ticket otherwise we can't let you board" Just great! He confers with a colleague and she comes over and looks intently at the computer monitor hidden from my view. She says to the first guy "No, this rule is for visa on arrival passengers whereas this passenger (me) already has a visa" But they call in some security supervisor ("Red Code") to tell them what to do.

Meanwhile they start boarding!

So this woman comes and reads the rules on the monitor and says "You will have to purchase a return ticket before we let you board".  I am like praying my head off.  "Lord please influence their hearts and minds to interpret and use their discretion to let us on this flight! Please give me the grace to receive whatever the outcome of this is! Please grant me the discernment and creativity to navigate successfully through this!"

So there are like five passengers left in the line-up boarding and the rest of the boarding lounge is empty and the security supervisor says "No: looks like you are gonna have to buy a return ticket. Let me see your luggage claim tags" Oh no! I think to myself, She is going to pull our luggage off the flight! Then she says "Let me just read the rules again" The 3rd last passenger disappears down the gangway to board.  I feel inspired to stand up with our carry-ons and walk over to the gangway entrance like we are just about to board. I am standing in front of the boarding desk and the security supervisor is standing there staring at the hidden monitor.  She says to the first woman "They are going to have to buy a return ticket" The first woman says nothing.  So I feel inspired to stretch out my hand over the counter and point at the monitor screen that I can't see and say "But this rule only applies to people getting a visa on arrival in Jakarta whereas I already have a visa" At this point the first woman pipes up and says "That's right" The security supervisor then relents and says "oh ok I see. All right then. Off you go" And we are the last ones to board! Crud! Not the kind of excitement I need!

OK. So anyway they also said they couldn't print off boarding passes for the last leg of our journey from Singapore to Jakarta. We didn't know why, but they said we could just get new ones when we went to board in Singapore. Fine.

So we go to the boarding gate in Singapore airport (and it is like at least a kilometre walk way out to the end of this ridiculously long terminal wing) and ask if we can board with the e-tickets we have and they say no we need to get new boarding passes.  So anyway long story short here I am walking and running back and forth the one kilometre plus (so now my leg is killing me) from the boarding gate to this service counter trying to get this stupid boarding pass printed that Delta should have just given me. As it turns out, the Delta staff in Portland (yes, the same ones who didn't want to let us board without a return ticket) had completely changed our registered ticket number when they re-printed our boarding passes so that in Singapore they could find no record of our booking, and again this is 30 minutes before take off!! Argghhh!!!  But a very helpful young woman of a different airline very adroitly helped us by reconstructing our proof of booking from looking at our old boarding pass stubs (which Kathy had saved, precious woman that she is) from our previous journey legs and also from looking at our luggage tags which showed also that we were booked all the way to Jakarta.

Moral: DO NOT FLY WITH DELTA!!!
DO NOT ROUTE THROUGH THE STATES IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO!!!
GOD ANSWERS PRAYER IN TIGHT SITUATIONS!!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

What Can I Do?

I was thinking about recent progress in relation to my work in holistic rural development and wondering how much credit I should honestly take.  I want to accurately credit God where it is due and not steal His thunder.

I was tempted to say "I can do nothing: it is all God" but for the fact that he holds us accountable and responsible for our actions, to the point that someday for some he will say "Well done, wise and faithful servant of mine! Come on into the eternal blessings" - which tells me that God gives us credit for our actions.

My conclusion is that God gives us one ability and one alone: to choose to surrender/cling to him. We can cling a lot or we can cling a little.  Only as we cling to him does he incarnate himself through us and do that which has lasting value.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Be a Hero Today

Now just because objectivity is not really that attainable is not to say that subjectivity is bad. There is yet another sense in which "subjectivity" is also good. It is how God created us to be: He created us in His image; is it not fitting we should partner with Him in creating new realities by the power of our word? We say to love "Exist!" and it is so. Because in grammar-speak "subject" also means one who acts, one who initiates and does things- an actor or agent.

Because we don`t know very much, except that we are going to die, we are desperately in need of God`s intervention. All we can do is cling to the loving Presence of God made available uniquely through His incarnation, Jesus. And so He helps us manage our animal instincts and channel His loving Presence. And in this mutual loving indwelling, us in Him and He in us, He delegates to us the authority and choice to re-create the universe, beginning with our personal realities.

Today you can recreate new worlds for those in your life, your home and neighbourhood, your work and school. You can change their realities by loving them as neither they nor you ever dreamed possible. Just acknowledge God`s loving Presence with you now and surrender unconditionally to His will for you regardless of loss, cost or consequence. Just keep clinging to Him and follow Him wherever He goes- into solitude on your knees, into prison to visit the lonely, or skid row to hug the unhuggable, or to leave the popular clique and sit with the losers, or to ask forgiveness of the neighbour you hate or to pay back the money you owe or to turn away from some kind of escapist behaviour to instead- cling to His loving Presence. Then with His loving eyes and heart incarnate in you will see and feel how to be a hero today.

What Do I Know or Care?

If nothing else, I read a lot. The Bible, theology, philosophy- and I can't for the life of me say as I know a heck of a lot. I now know I know nothing. And it seems like most thinking people today agree that we don't really know very much. Our theories of ultimate origins, of the structures and ends of the universes, of how many dimensions there are and what they might be like, of how different minds, societies and cultures work- All our theories are highly speculative. With 7000 or so different human cultures on our little planet, all differing in what we value, believe, assume and our reasons for what we do- we have to ask a lot of questions and talk for a long time just to get to know one another and understand each other. That's why thinking people say "all is relative" and "we create our own realities", imprisoned in interconnected labyrinths of imagined worlds. Nietzsche said we are "trapped in a prison house of language".

Well, a lot of religious thinkers and philosophers have being saying similar things for thousands of years. The Bible for example has many stories and statements about how limited human understanding is. But beyond our profound ignorance, the Bible adds that we all helplessly and hopelessly tend to cruelty, injustice, irresponsibility, callousness, escaping "reality", the single-minded pursuit of pleasure at any cost, self-destruction, hatred, bitterness, arrogance, selfishness, thoughtlessness, recklessness, negligence, narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, defying and ignoring God.

So I don't know anything and can't do anything good, trapped in my subjective (mis)interpretations of my social world, and unable to care. How awesomely kind of God to persist in seeking us, breaking in to the prison houses of our minds and filling us with His loving Presence, motivating and guiding us to surrender unconditionally to fulfill His loving will.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

The Right to Bear Arms

This is a note for my American friends.

Hi. I don't necessarily endorse the American doctrine of the citizens' right to bear arms, but I just want to point out the anachronistic nature of it.

The doctrine was developed in the age of muskets and canon, before steam power and electricity.  The SPIRIT of the doctrine is that the populace has the same firepower as the state.  The POINT was for the citizenry to be able to defend itself from the tyranny of the state.

Obviously now the balance of arms between state and populace is extremely out of balance, to say the least.

If the SPIRIT of "The right to bear arms" were fulfilled, that would mean ordinary citizens had equal access and control to every means of control and attack that the state has; nuclear, biological, chemical, submarine, aerial, satellites, nanotech and everything in between.  I'm just sayin is all.

So, the NRA and other defender's of private ownership of automatic and semi-automatic small arms are completely delusional about their ability to stop US governments from oppressing and overpowering ordinary Americans.  The only result of liberal small arms ownership is negative: high rates of domestic murder, accidents and crime.

So unless you private American citizens are going to somehow achieve equity with the state in all areas of modern warfare, which as you must admit looks pretty impossible, you should just hand in all your guns now and bring down the crime rate, the domestic murder rate and the number of accidental injuries and deaths from small arms misuse.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Fiery Tornado Still Calls Us To Follow


 The second book of the Bible, Exodus, is the story of the creation of the Hebrew nation 3300 years ago in the ancient Near East. It has an interesting image of the presence of God as a tower of smoke in the daytime and a tower of fire at night.  Wherever the Presence led, the new nation was to pack up there tents and follow.  The Presence of God led His chosen people through scorching desert where there was neither food or water, yet as they followed, He always provided their every need.

God is still on the move today.  He hovers by your place of prayer before dawn, calling you from oblivion to enter His Presence.  There is nothing more rewarding to me than basking in His loving Presence.  Wherever He calls, there I will follow. I love His touch.  I love to feel Him smiling on me.  If His Presence enters a prison, I will follow just to be with Him there. If He shifts to the realty office, I will run, laughing, bringing my deed. If He moves into a hospice, there I will follow.  If He moves to the inner city, there I will live.  I just want to cling to His loving Presence and bask in His beauty, channeling His love to whoever is there.

"God became man that man might become God" -Athanasius


When Christianity was still pure, white hot brilliant in the crucible of Roman persecution, the leading thinkers of the church had a remarkable catch phrase:
“God became man that man might become God”.  They did not mean it literally of course, but were just using exaggeration to convey an important point: God came into humanity in Jesus, but at the same time Jesus brought humanity into God.

Jesus was one with the Father in a significantly different way than are we, in that Jesus was God, while we are not.  We also are one with God, but relationally, not ontologically. We are not God. God is not us. That is the difference between Jesus and ourselves. 

Now Jesus is a model, the first of billions to follow His path. Similar to how God and Jesus were One, the loving Presence of God in the being of Jesus and the being of Jesus in the loving Presence of God, so are we who have been reconciled to Him through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Yet because God is not limited by a physical form He can completely inhabit our entire being like water and wine can intermingle or coinhere in one clay jug.  As we respond to God’s drawing near to us, available only through the advocacy of Jesus, and we draw near to Him and surrender to Him and embrace Him, His loving Presence enters into ours and ours into His, and thus, relationally, we become one in love.  We surrendering all to Him, He delegating all authority to us in loving trust as He thinks His thoughts through us and feels His desires through us to do His loving will.

Is the World the Body of a Slaughtered Deity?


What does the Bible’s first chapter really mean?  Understanding only comes when you first understand the religion of the original audience. 4000 years ago in the ancient Near East most people thought there were many gods, jealously and lustfully feuding and carousing, mirroring human society. People thought there had been numerous bloody wars in the heavens, divine juntas and revolutions between the gods. In the process the gods had slaughtered one godess in battle, butchered her body and made the parts of the cosmos from that. Then the gods got tired of all the work involved in running the world so made humans to be their slaves.

The Bible opens with a markedly different picture.  There are no other gods. There is only the One who has always existed.  There is no gory pantheon, no wasted battlefield from former eons of divine conflict. No. This One simply speaks into being all that is, and it is perfect from the start.  And humans are not a mere after thought, slaves created by the cruel pantheon motivated by laziness.  No. Where the religions of the day thought their wood and bronze sculptures were manifestations of the capricious pantheon, the Bible’s first chapter takes a radically different track: it is HUMANS whom the ONE God has created to be His instrument and representative in the world. Rather than slaving for the gods, dressing and feeding idols of wood, stone and bronze; the Bible instead introduces humanity as the noble representatives of the One, who delegates to them the benevolent care and good governance over all creation.

Spiritual Warfare?


I have a problem with so many people using this term because of the violent, militaristic connotations.  They put on a loud, imperious voice and shout at the devil, waving an imaginary sword.

In one of C.S. Lewis fantasy stories an omnipotent but all-loving lion, Aslan, creates a new world, Narnia. But an imperious being from another world gains access to Narnia and imposes a never ending winter on Narnia, enslaving the beautiful creatures of Aslan and turning any who defy her into stone. 

When 4 children from earth “stumble” into Narnia, one is deceived by the witch, betrays his brother and sisters and ends up also enslaved by the witch.  However, Aslan outwits the witch and her simple magic by allowing her to kill him. His deeper magic is released, He comes back to life and winter in Narnia ends, the creatures whom the witch turned to stone are released and the witch is deposed,  fleeing into obscure exile.  The four children from earth are crowned as kings and queens of Narnia and a long age of peaceful summer ensues.

The Biblical version of Christ’s life by St. Luke portrays Jesus as the powerful creator incarnate, returned to transform the frozen and enslaved earth. From birth through His adult ministry Luke portrays Him in opposition with the evil one.  Jesus is tempted to use His power to help people politically or through charity.  Yet His stated purpose is to suffer and ultimately die.  And it is in His refusal of fame and power and comfort to the point of death that He gains His ultimate victory over the evil one and decisively breaks the back of the curse holding the world in its grip, in His death finally taking away the barrier between us and God, the record of our wrong-doings, and instead reconciling us to God finally so we can enter into God’s loving Presence, and His Presence into us.

The way of Jesus is our model.  Our greatest victory in this “spiritual warfare” is as we “die”.  It is daily.  To walk away from fame, from esteem, from comfort, from intimacy, from physical delights, from entertainment, from freedom, from security, from power, from control, from influence, from everything we rely on for stability and comfort and fulfillment.  But only love can motivate us to do so. And this love is not from within. It is the love of God that inspires and motivates us to surrender all to Him just so we can bask in the glorious, brilliant warmth of His smiling, lover’s gaze. We sacrifice everything just to be close to God, and He brings us back to life on a higher plane, transforming the world by His love incarnate through us.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Faith is Weird


God doesn’t want robots.  He could force His presence on us but that would be a kind of violation. Forced intimacy. We have laws against that sort of thing.

A lot of regular folk in this world would marry a millionaire, but not for love.  You really can’t blame rich people for wanting to marry other rich people.  They’re just looking for true love.  But God is like this billionaire in love with a garbage picker in Mumbai. And His capacity for love is infinite so He desires all of us.
 
God isn’t interested in a relationship where people only think about what they can get from Him, or because they are afraid of Him, or just because His infinite power and knowledge and ever-presence is overwhelming.  God doesn’t want to overpower us.

God only invites us.  If He were to make Himself visible, do all these amazing miracles all the time, we would be COERCED to surrender to His desire for us.  God wants people who truly love Him for who He is. That’s why there’s faith.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Psalm 11:7 says:
"The LORD is good and loves good deeds;
those who do them will live in his presence." Kerry's Version

...and those who live in His presence will do them...

It is only by clinging to God's presence moment by moment throughout the day that He enables us to do truly supernatural good deeds.  We cultivate an awareness of God's loving presence all day long as we practice paying attention to Him, constantly adoring and thanking Him, gazing in to His beautiful face with our inward eyes, clinging to his neck with our spiritual arms as we let him carry us along. Encountering His love thus motivates us to reach out and love others, especially those we tend to avoid and ignore; yet at the same time doing good to others, so that it costs us, is in itself another way to cling to God's loving Presence. 

Communing with God lets us love others, and loving others lets us commune with God.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Corporate Salmon Feedlots Poisoning Wild Salmon

Just heard a very good radio documentary on CBC Radio's "Ideas" program. A marine biologist named Alexandra Morton is helping rally the people of Canada to protect them from their government's management policies in regards to salmon farming and the pollution they pump out.

Listen to the interview: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/01/10/saving-salmon/

Check out Alexandra's websites for yourself:
http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/01/the-year-of-the-wild-salmon-people.html
http://www.wildsalmonpeople.ca/

Why Is Smoking Still Legal In Canada?

The federal government has the power to make all kinds of dangerous substances illegal, like crystal meth and ecstacy. So why don't they make smoking illegal? The only answer I can come up with is that some very powerful and rich owners of tobacco interests have the politicians firmly in their grip. If the politicians want to stay in power, they have to "strike a deal with the devil". What can we do to force the politicians to make smoking illegal in 2011?

1. Network civil activist groups like the Spirit Bear coalition and organize a leadership team.
2. Get our facts straight. Conduct scientific polls to convince politicians to support criminalization.
3. Recruit high profile spokes-people.
4. Get the press on our side. Conduct a viral social media blitz.
5. Push for a national referendum.
6. General strikes, boycott key tax generators and flash demonstrations at high profile sites. Schools and universities strike first, and then private industry and the public sector. Hurting the governments tax revenue by striking and boycotting in industries that generate the most tax revenue, we can put pressure on the politicians to criminalize tobacco.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Why we need Bible story tellers



God’s ultimate revelation is Jesus Christ, not the written record of His words and actions. Jesus Himself is greater than the writings about Him. And which is the Christian more like, this human Jesus? or sheets of tree fibre spattered with ink? The New Testament writers teach that Christians are incarnations of Jesus, that is, that Christ lives in, with and through us. The NT writers also say that the Holy Spirit lives in, with and through us, and yet again they say this of God the Father. (In other words it is the Trinity who indwells us, lives with and through us. (John 14:17,18,20,23; 15:4-7; 17:21-23,26)). The apostle Paul as well says we are God’s revelation.

How the Bible relates to the Christian might be loosely compared to how software relates to the robot for which it is written. The software is unrealized or only potential until it is installed in the robot and the robot’s actions fulfill the purpose of the software. (the analogy breaks down of course in that we have free will. We are not robots, not slaves to God’s will). So the written Bible as revelation is however unrealized, still only potential, until it is applied in the Christian’s life and the Christian incarnates Christ to the world in the Christian’s attitudes, actions and words. While it is undeniable that there are a few exceptional cases where some rare individual entered into an initial knowledge of God in Christ through the Spirit by reading written Scripture alone, yet the overwhelming pattern for coming to know God and growing in intimacy with and likeness to Him, is through face to face relationships with living Christians. This fact, that living Christians who realize the ideals of Scripture in their daily lives are a more complete and clear revelation than writings on paper, should have implications for the translation and implementation of Scripture.

Now just to be absolutely clear, I believe that every living, viable language needs the complete written Scriptures. I also believe that there needs to be enough literacy amongst active lay Christians (perhaps minimally 10%?) so they can study and correctly understand the complete counsel of God, and help to keep their faith communities faithful to the records and revelation of God’s words and actions through His servants as understood and recorded by the Biblical authors. Every living, viable language needs the entire written and printed Bible in that language.

However, to fully reveal God’s will, the written Scriptures also need to be embodied in living Christians. It is not either or, not an exclusive choice between the two modes, but it is a matter of needing both. That is why translating oral Bible stories to be used immediately by Christian story tellers dovetails so nicely with written Scripture. Where the written Bible already exists in a less-loved and less understood language of wider communication in a bilingual community, this needs to be augmented by story tellers proclaiming and enacting a collection of oral Bible stories in that community’s unwritten indigenous heart language.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Internet Safety

I was finally able to order the black box that will allow the blocking of dangerous websites.  I am toying with suggesting to the bishop of Elephant Island that we structure access to the internet like a reference library.  That is, patron comes and pays  a small search fee, a human librarian takes their request for information, searches the internet for a few relevant sites, then grants access to only those specific sites to the patron pursuant to his specific request.  Cumbersome but safe and it generates a paying job for an Elephant Islander.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Co-author this blog?

Hey if you would like to contribute posts as a co-author, that'd be great.  Just let me know.

Holistic Service

When I was working on my MA in cross-cultural ministry I did a little pilot survey at a university to determine if there was any way the church I was attending might be able to help the students.

This was the best educational experience of my life because it was hands on, directly related to my daily life outside of class.  Some refer to it as learner driven education.

I found that 1st year university students in particular voiced some common unmet needs.  They said they wanted help with getting control on their personal finances for one thing. They also said there was a shortage of gymnasiums where they might go to play floor hockey or volley ball to take a break between studying. They also wished they could talk to people who were already out working in the field they were headed for. They also overwhelmingly said that if a Christian acquaintance would just invite them to some kind of event, they would certainly go!

Spiritual Marginalization in Secular Education

That was my initial/provisional topic for my research project for my MA Applied Linguistics.  I realized however that the sacred/secular is a false dichotomy, a social construct not actually identifiable using positivist means. What I ended up doing was more of a literature review about certain claims by some vocal fundamentalists that "secular" school books were harming their children's faith. On the contrary, I found a lot of solid research demonstrating that in fact school texts have very little influence on kids changing their worldview.  I found instead a lot of evidence that in fact the most influential element in children's worldview change is the presence in their life of someone they admire who respects and loves them. Which reminds me of something Kuhn said about scientific revolutions being social phenomena, where young students are socialized into a scientific tradition/sub-culture/society and then once they are relationally secure, they take a leap of faith to commit to that groups' philosophy.
What principles might we extract from this and how might we apply them?

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Why I am writing this blog?

There's a lot of folks out there with lots to say on their blogs. I can't promise that anything I write won't be drivel, but if a few people seem to be encouraged that'll be enough for me.

A word of explanation about the description:
"Talking with friends about incarnating Jesus. Post-Protestant, pre-Constantine, paleo-orthodox, maximally contextualized, non-dogmatic, holistic."

"Post-protestant"- Christian factions, friction and fractions sadden God and give good reason to unbelievers to dislike the institutional church. If we all believe the Apostles' Creed literally, then lets back-burner our irrelevant surface differences and collaborate to transform the world with love!


"pre-Constantine"- The Roman Emperor Constantine early in the 300's AD legalized Christianity, freeing Christians from persecution (you know, being thrown to the lions, burnt as garden torches etc.) and quickly instituting Christianity as the official religion of the (declining) Roman Empire. Christians were increasingly hired into the civil service and church organizations increasingly were involved in the business of state. As a state religion mixing in to state affairs the Church lost a lot of its spiritual and moral authority and got more and more corrupt, leading to such debacles as the Crusades and the Inquisition.  So I think a radical separation of the institutional church and state are crucial for maintaining a clear and pure love that unmistakably speaks of God's supernatural presence and intervention.

"paleo-orthodox" - this is a common term nowadays which by my understanding includes the idea of a more bare-bones Biblical theology that abstains from a lot of speculative systematic theologization that Christendom got bogged down in in later centuries. Specifically I define it as a reference or allusion to the Cappadocian Fathers, who were much taken with the co-indwelling of the three members of the Trinity, and of their drawing humankind (consisting of physical matter and animal life, yet in soul and spirit in the image of God), into this amazing co-indwelling. Jesus the man was absorbed into the Triune Godhead, and we in turn participate in a similar (though ontologically different) co-indwelling.

"maximally contextualized"- by this I mean that as intimacy with God through Christ spreads from culture to culture, the source culture should make sure the receptor culture is free to incarnate the life of Christ in their own culture without pressure to use culturally relative baggage from the source culture. So, in application, a viable society of Christians could base in a home or any other space such as a library, a community centre, cafe, condo lounge, pub, university whatever. And traditional Christianized words, symbols and traditions from the source culture all need to be critiqued for suitability before adopting in the new Christian community in the receptor culture. 

"non-dogmatic"- in accord with Scripture (and many other human traditions) I confess that we humans know very little and greatly misplace our confidence in our ability to understand the universe, ourselves and God.  Sages of the ages and across the humanities overwhelmingly realize that we culturally-bound humans usually project our culturally relative beliefs unto others when we should not. What I believe we need is a stance of radical humility, curiosity, openness, generosity and celebration in regards to the positions and worldviews of others.  We need to tolerate and celebrate our differences if we are going to collaborate in God's loving transformation of the world.
 
"holistic"- scholars (not me!) of ancient Hebrew language and culture have found that God created humankind an indivisible unity.  In recent centuries thinkers have realized that it was pagan Greek thought that introduced to Christian theology the idea of a three distinct pieces: body, soul and spirit.  Scriptures teach the inherent and intrinsic eternal value of the physical creation.  Scripture teaches that this world will be renovated and last forever as the home of a re-created humanity (Isaiah 65:17; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1).  Christ cared for the whole person, not just invisible spirits. Our destiny is not wearing white night gowns floating amongst the clouds playing harps. No, we are forever creatures inseparable from the biosphere.  Eternal life will be bodily life in a real world. Scripture pounds home again and again that God's true love ministers to people's physical and emotional needs. Linguistics tells us that the majority of our communication is non-verbal. To communicate God's love incarnate through us then we need to attend to our hurting neighbours' physical, mental, emotional and social needs- to manifest a limited fulfillment of God's loving transformation of the created order.

Well I actually would like more of a collaborative creative writing enterprise. I was listening to CBC radio while driving across the prairies and heard about a guy writing 24 books in a year at the biggest bookstore franchise. He said he wished people would come up to him and interrupt him and chat,  but they don't. So I imagined myself going up to him to chat and looking at what he was writing, and then I imagined I would want to contribute to what he was writing. And that was when I thought of a wiki for collaborative writing.  Well I suppose there's every likelihood of quite a few sites like that already. But anyways we'll try the medium of blogging first but maybe we'll have to migrate to a wiki or discussion forum...?

But anyways I'll be posting random ideas, thoughts, rants, book reviews, experiences and proposals for social action. I really look forward to your comments and I'd be happy to extend author rights as well to any who are interested.