And don't come back

This is the day that the LORD has made;
    Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

- Psalm 118.24.

This time five years ago, I was receiving weekly doses of poison and daily radiation burns to my chest after being diagnosed with a rapidly growing malignant tumour just above my heart and invading my left bronchial tube. Today, I went into an oncologist's office and was told not to return, as five years of follow up is enough.

Although it is still possible for me to experience relapse, the chances are that any cancer now found in my body is more likely to be a new growth than a renewal of the one that was well on its way to killing me in 2006/07. I am obviously delighted to reach this milestone and continue to receive each day as a gift. I did not deserve to live, did not earn my reprieve, did not qualify for healing through the quality of my faith. Faced with a very rare form of cancer (numerous specialists have given me the impression that I'm one in a million), medical science took its best (highly educated) guess as to treatment and it worked beyond all expectations.

And so praise God for life, for health, for wonderful support from family, friends and even strangers, for medical specialists and all the care I have received over five years from dozens of healthcare professionals both in Oz and the UK and for public healthcare that has meant my total out of pocket expenses have been AUD $0 + GBP £0 for treatments that probably cost tens of thousands (thanks fellow tax-payers!).

Yet the experience continues to have its shadows. Given that the first side-effect mentioned on the consent forms I signed for both chemotherapy and radiotherapy is that those treatments are themselves carcinogenic, cancer is still quite likely to be part of my future, as is reduced life-expectancy. I am also aware of the costs the illness and treatment have brought to my health in other ways; being poisoned and burned are not generally conducive to good health (I've always thought that Nietzsche's boast that whatever did not kill him could only make him stronger was one of his sillier ones).

And I am not the same man I was. Being gravely sick has reconfigured my emotional and spiritual life, not to mention shaping my academic interests. For much of this I am grateful (and this is undoubtedly the true referent of Nietzsche's comment), especially for the reminder of my own frail mortality and the liberating realisation that survival is not our highest priority. These are important lessons that I hope always to keep close to hand. Has the experience also made me more pessimistic about our future prospects? Given that being ill significantly overlapped with the period during which I began investigating ecological and resources predicaments in greater depth, it is hard to tell whether the chicken or the egg came first.

The significance of my reaching this milestone was brought home powerfully to me a day or two ago when I came across the story of Kristian Anderson, a Sydney Christian man in his 30s with a wife and young kids, and who died from cancer two days ago. Kristian recorded more than two years of his physical, emotional and spiritual journey since diagnosis on a blog called How the Light Gets In (H/t Andrew Paterson). I ran out of tissues while reading it. I never met him, but I thank God for his life and witness, even amidst great darkness, and I pray for his widow and little boys.

Life is a precious gift. Let us rejoice in each day we receive.

Where are the wise men today?

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.

- Matthew 2.1-3 (NRSV).

The Gospels are filled with characters whose reactions to Jesus serve as positive and negative examples to readers. The text invites us to reflect upon our own reactions and which characters we resemble.

The well-known story of the Magi (or wise men) often simply supplies so many more figures standing in the background of a nativity scene we have surveyed hundreds of times, or perhaps a brief gloss on why we give gifts at this time of year. But there is far more to them than their stunning generosity.

The Magi, whose precise origins are only gestured at ("from the East") and whose number can only be guessed from their threefold offering, were confronted with the emergence of something new and unexpected; they dropped everything and departed into the unknown, embarking on a long journey, whose dangers are compounded by the treasures they carry. They search for a figure who brings the future: a child born to be king of a nation presently under imperial occupation. Holding high status in their own society, they depart to where they will likely be misunderstood and mistrusted in order to offer a symbolic gesture of hope that points to new possibilities. They sit lightly to the status quo, dropping their various pressing responsibilities and disrupting their daily routine in order to acknowledge the new thing that has appeared and see where it leads. They are thus open and receptive to the future, and search for it beyond the boundaries of the comfortable.

As the story unfolds, the Magi's hope and faith inadvertently disrupt the political order. They are received at Herod's Court - perhaps the most obvious place to begin a search for a royal child: within the household of the one presently occupying the throne - and yet quickly discover that the new they seek is not simply the continuation of the present, but arises from an unexpected quarter. The royal child belongs outside of contemporary constellations of power and so represents a challenge and a threat to them. The Magi are willing to place themselves and the social order at risk in order to honour this new figure. Neither their own survival nor the preservation of the peace are sufficient to deter them from pursuing their quest.

When they reach their destination, they are overjoyed. Despite the humble surroundings and the great distance they have travelled, despite the incongruity of their wealth with Mary's poverty, despite the foreignness of the context and the difficulty in accepting an infant of no standing as the object and bearer of their hopes, they kneel and pay him homage.

There are many mysteries surrounding these Magi. Who were they? Where were they from? Why did they interpret a star as having significance for Judah? And why, having found the child and sworn fealty to him, did they depart from Bethlehem and from the pages of history? Yet their utter receptivity to the arrival of the messianic moment offers us a strange and disquieting model of faith and hope.

In contrast, King Herod presents a picture of suspicion, hostility, self-interest and the worst kind of deadly conservatism. Bearing the title "King of the Jews" through an act of betrayal that rendered its messianic symbolism largely impotent, Herod clung to the power granted him at Rome's pleasure. Faced with the arrival of foreign dignitaries with stunning and potentially explosive news, Herod's receptivity is pure pretense, his engagement with the traditions of holy scripture self-serving, his hospitality merely an opportunity to secure his own position and power. He does not want anything new to emerge without it being forcibly dragged within the sphere of his influence and benefit. The future must be made the servant of the present order and, ultimately, if that requires the sacrifice of future generations, then that is the price for stability. Suffering and violence are tools, justice and compassion secondary, honesty and integrity expendable: nothing must threaten my present comforts. The Herodian way of life is not up for negotiation.

Are we any less foolish today? Where are the wise men? And most importantly, where is the Christ-child to be found: amidst our comfortable status quo that requires the destruction of others' futures? Or as yet unseen, hidden in plain sight amongst the lowly and filthy and requiring a journey of faith conducted with little more than flickering starlight for guidance?

Twelve days of carbon Christmas

A very large part of our ecological impact is hidden in the stuff that we buy. We often overlook the resources required to produce our consumer goods. For instance, some people obsess over personal water use and are proud that they now turn the tap off while brushing their teeth (a no-brainer), saving a handful of litres each time, but ignore the hundreds of litres required to produce the dairy and meat products they consumed before brushing.

Now that Advent has begun, it may be fruitful to consider the ecological impact of our Christmas shopping. This infographic (click to see at a more readable size or go here) lists twelve kinds of presents which each involve about 50kg of carbon dioxide emissions (or equivalent) in their production. Some may surprise you (for instance the ecological impacts of gold mining are shocking, and carbon is not the worst of it. I am seriously reconsidering whether gold rings are a wise symbol of fidelity). For reference, the average annual Australian, Canadian or US per capita footprint is something like 18-25 tonnes of carbon dioxide (or equivalent), depending how you calculate it. The UK average is approximately 8-14 tonnes. The global average is around 5 tonnes. To minimise very serious climate consequences (which mean social, economic and political consequences), we probably need to be more like 1-2 tonnes each, so a 50 kg gift would represent up to 1/20th of one's total annual carbon budget.

If you're looking for ways to cut down the stuff you give and receive this Christmas (while enhancing the spiritual, relational and celebratory tone of the season), you might like to check out some suggestions I made last year.

Ecological legalism and Christian freedom

Some questions: What is your carbon footprint? How does it compare to the global average? To the global required average? And what are you doing to reduce it?

Dig beneath the surface of ecological issues and for many people, apart from fear, the second most significant factor driving our responses is guilt. So much of the discourse around ecological responsibility has the feel of a new legalism, a set of norms available to external quantification and verification that can at best provide useful guidance and at worst either crush motivation or provide an open door to self-righteous superiority (depending on the size of one's footprint). Indeed, the whole concept of an ecological or carbon footprint is ripe for interpersonal comparison and when linked to moral judgements of the necessity of reducing it, the full range of contemporary ecological psychoses becomes manifest: holier-than-thou accusation, desperate performance, pious self-denigration, tokenistic conformity, resentful rejection, weary indifference, paralysing despair.

If we are nonetheless to take our ecological concerns seriously (as the scriptures, reason and a passing familiarity with our present condition suggest), then do we have to live with such legalism? Of course not.

Basically, we need a way to talk about the good life to which Christ calls us that speaks in the tones of grace not law (apart from the law of love). This good life may well often look like taking up a cross and denying myself, but I walk it in hope and faith that the path of love is ultimately the path of life, even if I have to wait for God to raise the dead to see it.

We are set free by Christ to live as servants of God and neighbour. This is the only path to life, and at times it can feel narrow, and yet the content is actually quite flexible. Andrew Cameron speaks of the ethical life as being like a river - there is a strong current in one direction (love), but within that, there is water moving in all kinds of ways, at different speeds and so on. Yet there are still river banks. This is his attempt to speak of how the scriptures can be quite specific in their prohibitions ("do not lie"), but general in their exhortations ("love your neighbour").

The question for us as Christians seeking to follow Christ amidst a world of ecological degradation is therefore: what is the space of Christian ecological freedom? Where are there hard lines that we ought not cross? And, much more importantly, how do we talk about (and live) the strong current of love? Complicating matters is the fact that many aspects of our ecological crises are cumulative, involving too much of an otherwise good thing, rather than the commission of acts that are in themselves always wrong. In this way, I think that ecological irresponsibility has a somewhat similar structure to drunkenness, or gluttony. I may know that once I have had ten drinks, then I am in disobedience to the warnings of scripture against inebriation, but there is not necessarily a line we can draw in the sand and say that up to this many drinks is I am simply enjoying the fruit of the vine. Perhaps legal blood alcohol limits for driving might give us a ballpark estimate, and perhaps contraction and convergence models of carbon reductions (applied on a per capita basis for our nation) might give us a ballpark estimate for our the path of our personal carbon footprint goals, but the law of the land is always going to be both too precise and too blunt an instrument for forming the mind of Christ within us.

If our goal is defined too narrowly in terms of certain emissions levels or atmospheric concentrations or personal footprints, then the complex world of goods and the discernment required to navigate it can become oversimplified. Even amidst the grave perils we face, Christian obedience is a path of freedom and joy, of trusting the goodness of God under the weight of a cross, of dying to self and receiving new life being granted as a gift.

Some better questions: How does new life in Christ lead into delightedly sharing my neighbour's burdens? In what ways are my neighbours threatened by ecological degradation? Which parts of my life and the life of my community contribute to this path of destruction? How can I discover new patterns of thankfulness, contentment and engagement to express the abiding peace I have received from Christ and the deep concern for my neighbour this grants me?

Dogville: Grace as a test?

My wife and I saw Lars von Trier's Dogville recently. Our opinions of the controversial Danish director had been diametrically opposed. I loved both Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves. Jess had heard their plots and refused to see them because they sounded awful. So convincing her to watch Dogville was a bit of a coup, helped by a friendly neighbour who dropped in the DVD without our requesting it and my pointing out that it would be rude to return it unwatched.

We loved it. The minimalist set creatively captured the panopticon experience of small town life. The acting was strong. But the most interesting thing was that Dogville is a very insightful picture of what so many people (including more Christians than we might realise) think the Christian message says. Without mentioning God (the town has no church and the mission house perpetually lacks a preacher), the film is deeply theological. Life is a test: will we accept Grace into our lives freely and discover a gift we didn't seek and didn't deserve? Or will we try to pay for Grace, or worse, constrain and even coerce Grace? And if we fail the test, then comes merciless judgement... but I don't want to give away the ending.

Highly recommended. Distressing scenes, but then you already knew that because it's Lars von Trier.

Swimming in stuff: regifting and post-Christmas regret syndrome

The dust has settled. Advent is over. Christmastide is over. Gifts have found their place. Debts from spending splurges are (possibly) still being paid off.

The volume of stuff that is passed around at Christmas is staggering. While most (at least much) of it is an expression of love and relationship, nonetheless, large numbers of gifts are unwanted by the recipient and are regifted, donated to a charity shop, lie unused in a cupboard or end up as landfill. What do you do with your unwanted gifts? And do you need to tell the giver about the gift's destination? Have you ever refused a gift?

While retailers and manufacturers love it (the more landfill, the better, from their perspective) and have in many cases become dependent upon it, the Christmas splurge can leave people in debt and can unnecessarily increase the burden we are placing on the planet's resources and living systems. Does it have to be this way?

There are a host of culturally-specific social norms around gift-giving. For instance, is it rude or is it actually obligatory to open a gift in front of the person who gave it? Different cultures give opposing answers. And so I'm aware that even raising the question of how (and whether) to do gifts at Christmas may seem rude to some people. But it is important enough to risk being rude, since it is also inconsiderate to let the annual consumerist orgy continue without thought, protest or comment.

So what can we do to reduce the number of unwanted gifts while still expressing thoughtful care for one another? Perhaps it may help if we make explicit the ultimate goal of giving gifts, which isn't (I presume) to keep retailers in business, or multiply the stuff in the world, but to express our love for, relationship with and delight in another. But gifts aren't the only way of doing that. Gifts are only one love language, and in the consumerist frenzy that passes for Christmas in some places, the language of gifts may sometimes send confusing messages. Perhaps it is time for some creative translation?

Perhaps we could deliberately expand the Christmas tradition from gift-exchange to the giving of blessings. This wouldn't rule out gifts, but it would deliberately open up other forms of blessing as legitimate expressions of Christmas generosity. Many of these are already widely acceptable as gifts or gift alternatives, but it is worth listing a few suggestions (feel free to add more in the comments). Some examples:

• Sharing a poem (written or found)
  
• Sharing a significant piece of scripture and the reasons for its significance
  
• Writing a letter.
  
• Giving a piece of art fashioned by the giver.
  
• Sharing a hug or other physical expression of affection (perhaps a holy kiss!).
  
• Bestowing a word of encouragement.
  
• Promising an act of service (e.g. lawn-mowing, babysitting, repair work, etc.). Some may be able to be performed immediately.
  
• Promising an act of joint service (e.g. an invitation to help out at a soup kitchen together).
  
• Promising a shared experience: going out together, making something together.
  
• Pronouncing a verbal blessing ("The LORD bless you and keep you"). These can be powerful when both parties take them seriously and look each other in the eye.
  
• Singing a song for the recipient.
  
• Sending a postcard or letter together to absent members of the group or others who need encouragement.
  
• Giving a TEAR gift (or equivalent vicarious gift through some other charity).
  
• Loaning (or passing on) something precious (e.g. a favourite book or CD).
  
• Sharing a favourite recipe.
  
• And, of course, giving a physical gift, which could be secondhand, handmade, fair-trade or sustainably sourced.

I am sure there may be all kinds of practical issues around some of these suggestions, but surely Christmas doesn't have to lead to drowning in stuff.

How Genghis Khan cooled the planet

Frank ponders how to give an eco-friendly gift, and ends up discussing the difference between hope and stress.

Ben Myers has stopped blogging about faith and theology and has become a short story writer (briefly). And he is frustrating brilliant at that too! It was bugging me that most of his stories seem to be set in the US. I was about to comment on that trend when I came across this one and I felt right at home.

Amidst all the climate records set in 2010, a new melt record for the Greenland ice sheet was set in 2010.

And Mongabay tells of How Genghis Khan and Hernán Cortés cooled the planet (perhaps Christopher Columbus should get the credit). I'm not advocating that we try that particular strategy of geoengineering.

On imagining the future: Human action is reaction

"Come now you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.' Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wishes, will live and do this or that.' As it is, you in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin."

- James 4.13-17 (NRSV).

If making confident assertions of the likely course of my personal life is arrogance that ignores the fact that I am not in control, then expanding such claims to society as a whole seems sheer hubris.

Nonetheless, it is important to note that this passage from James doesn't rule out all expectations of the future playing a role in decision-making. It is not that Christians are forbidden from considering the future or making plans based on such considerations, but that all our plans must be written in pencil, not ink. This requires a certain chastisement of imagination, or perhaps better, imagination's acknowledgement that it is imagination. The future is uncertain; it is an arrogant boast to confuse pictures of a possible future with our desires for the future and assume that we can (or must) ensure the realisation of those desires.

The future is not ours to seize and shape, but God's to give and take. Our role is humble receptivity, trusting thankfulness, loving perception and hopeful prayer.

Does this stance foster passivity, a resignation in the face of suffering and so a complicity in failure to secure liberation for the oppressed? It can and all too often has. But it need not. And a thorough account of human action will be more open, more honest, more creative and more effective for taking the priority of divine grace more seriously. God initiates, we respond. Human action is reaction. That is the lesson of James.

This does not require passivity, rather an openness to the unfolding possibilities of loving God and neighbour, an openness in which we take seriously our situation and take just as seriously the Spirit's power to breathe new life into hearts of stone.

Each of us is thrown into a concrete historical situation that is neither of our choosing nor our fashioning, born within a family and culture that we can only receive. Rejection or reformation are, of course, forms of reception. We do not begin with a blank slate, even if we wish to shatter or erase what is written. We are born amidst a broken glory. Unbidden, we both rejoice and suffer as a result. Our world, our selves and our time are not creatures of our will, to be made into whatever image we desire. We receive them. And we receive them as the gift of God despite the flaws evident in them, giving thanks for what is good, trusting that what is not is not beyond redemption.

No deficiency in my self or my shared world or the span of time for my life is excluded from this trusting acceptance because at the heart of the world, self and time which I receive lies Christ, who is the hope of healing, of new life in the deadest of ends, of space to breathe.

And so the gift received is my life: my self, my world and the time of the former amidst the latter. And the hidden centre of that gift is Christ, who is the image of my true self, the founding principle of creation and the alpha and omega of time. Human action begins in humble receptivity towards and trusting thanksgiving for that gift.

Yet I am also called to account for what becomes of my self, my world and my time. The gift brings responsibility. Not only is the gift to be received, but understood, entered into and explored. The gift invites not mere submission of the will, but the delight of the heart, the joyful harmonising of the affects. Coming to know this gift involves not simply the intellect but crucially love. Only a participation in God's passionate concern for his creation (whether or not this is how we conceive it) enables us to see what is actually around us. The dispassionate observation of objective inquiry is frequently a necessary step in this process, but it is a limiting of focus that occurs within a broader framework of care. We learn about the world and ourselves and the time available to us because we care what happens, who we are to become. We are responsible for the gifts we have received.

And having become responsible, we therefore care about possible futures, about paths that open before us, about the destiny of the good things entrusted to us. We face future prospects because we cannot do otherwise without closing our hearts and hands. And faithful imagination requires the abandonment of false hopes, as well as the rejection of myopic assumptions that things must remain as they are. The pursuit of responsible care for the gifts we have received may require of us the rejection of utopian fantasies, but also the questioning of the status quo. What we may hope for along the way is neither ease nor comfort, but that the road we walk will not, ultimately, be a dead end, that our labours of love will not be in vain.

The future is not ours to seize and shape, but God's to give and take. Our role is humble receptivity, trusting thankfulness, loving perception and hopeful prayer.

The path of faith, hope and love - that is, the path of true human action in the way of the crucified and risen Christ - is narrow, dangerous and often not immediately perceptible. It can only be walked with prayerful dependence and an ongoing openness to correction and further guidance. But it is a journey into life.

Banksy's crucifix

As we enter Christmastide, and the whole period between Christmas and Easter, Banksy helps us reflect on their connections. An image for further meditation.

How has the celebration of the coming of one who came to set us free become an occasion for enslavement to our desire to consume? Will we learn joyfully to embrace less in order to be truly rich?

There are only 365 shopping days until Christmas. Use them wisely.
H/T Ben. Ben also links to this annotated Bible, solving the riddle of what Christians ought to do with Santa Claus.

What are the sources of obligation?

In a discussion on Milan's blog, I was asked, "what are the sources of moral obligation to the state and/or parents, aside from consent?" I thought I would post my answer (slightly edited).

---

What are the sources of obligation? Many and varied, though I would even want to question the language of “obligation” as a primary way of speaking about morality. I’d prefer to refer to concepts such as our freedom to love within moral community.

Opportunities to nourish the good and redeem what is evil are granted by God as gifts. They are occasions to reflect something of divine generosity and faithfulness and so to express our true humanity and creatureliness. Put in slightly less theological language, moral virtues are excellences in character that belong to what is properly humane and their development constitutes part of the gift and privilege of becoming more human, more ourselves.

A crucial aspect of human existence is our identity being formed in community, being received from those around us (not in a deterministic way, since the reception is not purely passive but can be creative). And so relationships of trust and mutual care are at the heart of ethical deliberation. We are therefore to honour the relationships into which we are born precisely as a reminder that our existence and identity are received, not self-forged.

These relationships may begin with a family circle (“honour your father and mother”) and move out from there. At higher levels of abstraction, such as a nation, then the appropriate honour may be quite limited. For a modern nation-state, as an invention of modernity, the appropriate form of honour may be quite minimal indeed. Established political authorities are part of the network of relationships into which we are born and which we are to receive with thanksgiving, though not without critical and creative receptivity to possibilities of growth and reform. And the necessity of such critical and creative work regarding the contemporary nation-state is evident in all kinds of ways, not least the ways in which most contemporary governments fail miserably in their appointed task of minimising evil in the ecological sphere, and so collude (with corporate power amongst other things) in the undermining of the conditions under which human society can flourish.

Such are some thoughts off the top of my head. Sorry if they are a little shorthand at points. Hopefully, they give you a little bit more of a taste of where I’m coming from. I began by noting the sources of moral obligation to be varied, and moved on to speak of our identity as humans (and as creatures: our moral community extends beyond the boundaries of homo sapiens). I could equally have spoken about becoming more like Jesus, the true human, or of living in light of God’s promised future, or living in line with the realities of the created order, or of the imitation of God’s gracious care, or of responsiveness to God's summons. Each of these require more unpacking. I guess my point is that I see morality as a web of sources and resources for growing in faith, hope and love. Consent takes its place amongst these resources as an aspect of human will expressed in relationships. Consent creates and requires trust (in some measure) and so forms part of faith (which is more or less another word for trust, in my book). Consent therefore has an important place in moral discussion, but not an exhaustive one (as is often assumed or claimed by many political liberals – using the word in the technical, rather than partisan sense, to refer to a worldview based on voluntarism and so placing consent at the core of interpersonal and political morality).

Life choices and regret

“Long story short: we don’t get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we chose [...] is a lie. To be human is to learn that we don’t get to make up our lives because we’re creatures [...]. Christian discipleship is about learning to receive our lives as gifts without regret.”

- Stanley Hauerwas.

Hauerwas is not saying that choices are irrelevant, simply that they are secondary to living well. More important than choosing is receiving with thanksgiving. This is a very countercultural claim in contemporary liberal democracies, where everything is geared towards the assumption that only things we have chosen are valid and that we ought to be shielded from anything we haven't selected.

Work, rest and ministry: how many hours should a Christian pastor work?

A few years ago, I completed a B.D. at MTC. Most of my classmates are now serving around Sydney (and various other bits of the world) leading congregations as full-time paid ministers of the word (some are translating the Scriptures in other lands, some are teaching in schools, some are being full-time parents, some are doing other excellent things here and there).

We keep up with each other through an email list whose discussions have at times been very amusing, very useful (as people share resources and ideas and struggles) and occasionally very contentious. Over three or four years studying together, we developed a healthy mutual respect and learned to rely on each other's insights.

A day or two ago, a new debate started (or restarted, as it has been discussed a number of times before) concerning the appropriate number of working hours for those serving as pastors of Christian congregations (which includes the majority of the group). A number of excellent points have been raised and discussed and a number of models suggested. I thought I would post my contribution to the discussion (slightly edited to remove references to specific names).

Dear all,

Coming from a bunch of girls and guys who only work on a Sunday, I don't know what the issue is!

But then again, I'm approaching my 31st birthday and have spent the grand total of 11 months in full-time employment, so I don't know why anyone would listen to me on this matter. Thus, everything said here ought to come with a sodium warning for the amount of NaCl with which it must be taken.

And so, more seriously, thanks to M for raising what I think is up there as possibly the #1 long-term danger for pastors, presbyters, priests and paid-ministry-of-the-word staff (does that cover everyone? Hmm, "PhD students" also starts with 'p'...). And thanks M for your honesty about your struggles with this issue. It is not easy, and the fact that the kinds of roles that many of you fill do not have obvious distinctions between work and non-work only makes it harder. Furthermore, it is easy to seek quick answers through adopting a one-size-fits all approach, as well as easy to repudiate such an approach as legalistic and believing that my situation/character/marriage/church is unique.

And even if we don't set ourselves up as superior to our classmates and colleagues (able to handle constant pressures that others need a break from), perhaps we sometimes (consciously or unconsciously) set up our work as more important than the work done by our congregation members. If I am serving God's church and proclaiming his good news for the poor and teaching his word and ministering his holy sacraments and so on, then how can I stop for anything other than death (and its foretastes in hunger and tiredness)?

However, even leaving aside the highly problematic (and self-serving!) division of "gospel" work over against "secular" work, this question fails to note an even more important distinction: between work and rest (as P has so eloquently reminded us). In the beginning, the culmination and high point and goal of creation is not humanity, but Sabbath. And in the second creation account, the 'adam was created and placed in the garden to work and serve the ground, but also to enjoy the trees. We are made to smell the roses, not just put manure on them. We are first recipients of all God's good gifts (beginning with the breath of life and culminating in the holy Breath) before we are co-workers with him. We are first his children before being his servants. We are first those whose feet are washed by Christ before those who will die with him. In these ways, passivity is more fundamental to our creaturely (and Christian) existence than activity. And being presbyters, priests or PhD students doesn't change that. Christian leaders are Christians before being leaders.

Taking a slightly different tack, as someone who struggles more with laziness than workaholism, I wonder whether both sometimes arise from a similar source: the desire to please others (as M as suggested), otherwise known as status anxiety. While the workaholic may (as well as having wonderful and godly motives) fear the disapproval of others and so keep working, the lazy freeloader like myself may fear the discovery that even trying as hard as I could I would still not please others and so hangs back from trying too hard in order to avoid having to face this reality. Both the workaholic and the bum are (partially) motivated by a good desire (the desire for love and approval) that has been misplaced. It is good to be loved by others and to delight in being delighted in. But we are the delight of God.

"YHWH your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”

- Zephaniah 3.17*
*Yes, this is said to Israel, but onto this tree we have been grafted.

And so being loved (or hated, or - worst of all - simply ignored) by others can take its secondary place. Held in God's embrace, we are freed from constant anxiety and constant activity, freed to enjoy, to receive, to be. Our work is good and rightly takes time and care, effort and attention. But our rest is better.

While writing this post, my message on the list received this reply:

And yet, the Sabbath which is the high point of God's creative project is one in which he continues to work (cf. John 5.17) and is the (temporal?) context in which he invites humankind to join him in that work. Is it rest as passivity or rest as shalom, toil-less, peaceful labour which has the prior claim on our agendas? After all, the first command is to fill, not contemplate, creation; and although the trees of the garden are aesthetically pleasing before bodily nourishing, 'adam is placed there to work and not to watch, but watch over.

Here is my reply:

It was neither passivity per se nor (self-serving!) contemplation that I had in mind, but rest as receptivity that I was particularly arguing for. That, although it is more blessed to give than to receive, we can only give if and because we have first received (and continue to receive) everything from God. I am quite suspicious of turning "rest" into "doing more work" (even "gospel" work) because it sounds like the addict justifying her habit through special pleading. My point is that unless we acknowledge and dwell in the fact that we are creatures whose every breath comes as a free gift, then our frenetic activity can quickly become self-justification.

Before the first command came the first blessing. And that is what I am saying. Being blessed comes before obedience.

I'm dreaming of a nice bitter Christmas

Kim Fabricius on why we ought to boycott nativity plays rather than anti-Christian movies.

And Rev Sam on why children's longings for presents might not be such a bad thing after all.

...And another!

More books arrived today! Two of the Williams, the Hart and the Jenson (see here for details). There was also a second package containing another lovely suprise (see here and here) from yet another friend whom I am yet to meet. Thank you, Tracy!

Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida & Marion on Modern Idolatry by Bruce Ellis Benson (IVP: 2002)
How can we talk about God without just projecting our own wishes and fears? Might not a lot of what passes for theology really just be anthropology writ large, as Feuerbach claimed? Perhaps surprisingly for some, Nietzsche, Derrida and Marion are three philosophers with a lot to say to theology on this matter. Benson explores these three thinkers against the background of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Husserl and Heidegger in order to expose our idolatrous tendency to make God in our own image.

This book sounds reminiscent of Faith and Suspicion: the religious uses of modern atheism by Merold Westphal and comes with high praise from Drew. I'm looking forward to it - how I will decide on a reading order for all these new books, I'm not sure. At the moment, I'm still plugging through Bleak House while I dip into each and try to decide...

And again!

Yesterday, I mentioned two lovely suprises. Today I received a third:

Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America edited by Darrell L. Guder (Eerdmans: 1998)
A second collection of essays on contemporary church life and direction recommended by my new rector for our discussions and planning. From the blurb on the back: "What would a theology of the church look like that took serisouly the fact that North America is now itself a mission field? This question lies at the foundation of this volume written by an ecumenical team of six noted missiologists - Lois Brrett, Inagrace T. Dietterich, Darrell L. Guder, George R. Hunsberger, Alan J. Roxburgh, and Craig Van Gelder." I am no expert on the disparate collection of phenomena sometimes called the emerging (or missional) church, but listening and learning to new voices in missiology sounds like a good idea as I start a new position in which evangelism figures prominently.

Thanks to yet another kind donor for helping me prepare for the year(s) ahead. Since he is a blog friend I'll express my gratitude by saying go check out this great post on legalism.

In praise of... surprises

As mentioned previously, I've been constantly touched and overwhelmed by the support and love Jessica and I have received in all kinds of ways over the last month or so, including some creative and unexpected measures.

Today I received a number of surprises. Not only did the first of the Barth volumes arrive (III/4 and IV/4), but two more books I didn't realise had been purchased for me from my Amazon wish list. Here they are:

After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity by Miroslav Volf (Eerdmans: 1998)
What can we learn about the church from the life and nature of the Trinity? A trinitarian ecclesiology from one of the most interesting and important theologians at work today, in which he interacts at length with Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) and Zizoulas. I'm not expecting to agree with everything Volf writes (his take on the Trinity sometimes seems a little too symmetrical and neat), but I've wanted to read this book for a couple of years. I intended to get to it in third year ecclesiology, but other things crowded it out.

The Church between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America edited by George R. Hunsberger and Craig Van Gelder (Eerdmans: 1996)
An interesting collection of essays on contemporary church culture, life and mission. My new rector has been thinking about this book and suggested I read it as we reflect on what we do and why at All Souls.

A huge thanks to the two individuals who orchestrated such beautiful surprises. You know who you are (I do too, since your names appeared on the receipts with the books). As a bonus surprise, I'm not sure that I have ever met either of you!

Surprises remind us that the future is open to God's radical intervention. He has bound himself to the future in promises, but the fulfillment is always more than we could ask or imagine (Ephesians 3.20).

Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
   and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me,
   the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
   rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
   the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.

- Isaiah 43.18-21 (emphasis added)

Series so far: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X.

Worse than death? IV

Death is not the focus of life
I asked recently how do you want to die? and received a large number of very interesting responses.

As Christopher pointed out, Stanley Hauerwas likes to ask this question in order to point out that our common answers as Westerners (quick, painless, sudden/in sleep) are basically the opposite of what Christians of an earlier age might have answered.* Indeed, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer includes a petition asking for deliverance from a sudden death. They feared what we crave, because they wanted time to prepare for death, to ensure they were reconciled with God and neighbour. While this might partially be attributed to a medieval Roman Catholic lack of assurance and the importance placed on the sacrament of Last Rites, the modern desire to avoid death - or rather dying - by all means possible reveals a deep fault line in our culture. We are petrified of death and either obsess over it, or (more commonly) simply avoid all mention and thought of it.
*For those interested in chasing up this thought from Hauerwas (and many others he offers on Western attitudes to illness, dying and medicine), check out this podcast. Skip the first five minutes of intro if you already know who he is. If you're new to his work, he can be difficult to listen to and moves around quickly, but there are many gems in this hour-long talk to make it worth the effort. Much of the rest of this post is indebted to thoughts from this talk.

We have medicalised death so that physical health becomes the primary paradigm through which we understand it; the hospital the primary location of death; the doctor takes the role of priest and research our hope in the face of death.

Fear of death dominates our culture, either explicitly, or implicitly. This is what drives the present fear of terrorism: the idea that dying at the hands of a suicide bomber is the worst possible outcome, justifying the erosion of well-established social institutions and freedoms.

But if Christ is Lord of the living and the dead, if Christians hope for life to come again to our mortal bodies by the Spirit, if death's sting is drawn, then it is possible to live and die without death dominating our existence. Life is a good gift and every breath is a reason to rejoice, but we are not to let the task of staying alive take centre stage. If there are things worse than death, there are things better than life:

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

- Psalm 63.2

Series: I, II, III, IV, V, VI.

In praise of... generosity

To kick off this series (introduced here), I want to praise an act of creative Christian generosity initiated by Ben Myers on my behalf, and taken up by many others. As mentioned previously, Ben set up an account to which many others also contributed in order to allow me to make Amazon purchases from my wish list. In a few days, US$242.54 (plus a US$20 voucher) was raised. From a friend whom I've only met once, this lovely gesture has been one of many times I've been touched, encouraged and challenged by his warmth and thoughtfulness (for another example, see here). And for the many who gave (many of whom I've never met outside the blogosphere), I thank God for your gracious sharing and desire to be a blessing with the things God has given you. I am excited about the many treasures being shipped Sydney-wards as I type! Although Ben has already published my choices, I thought I'd do so again with some brief explanations of why I picked this tasty menu of treats.

George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age
An important book on theological method that has set the agenda for much subsequent 'post-liberal' theology. I almost picked it to review for a college assignment last year, but read the much thicker Drama of Doctrine* by Kevin Vanhoozer instead. Since it has come up repeatedly in Patrik's recent meme (e.g. here) about most important theology books of the last 25 years, I thought I should grab a copy when Amazon had it for a reduced price.
*Drew rightly wants us to link to original publishers rather than Amazon, though WJK Press directed me to Amazon when I did a search. Go figure.

Robert W. Jenson, On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult Notions
I'm down to give a few sermons later in the year on doctrine of humanity as part of a five-part series inspired by this fascinating post from Kim Fabricius. I think this is my only pick from the wish list I had up when Ben launched the appeal. My apologies to those who were hoping to see more from this list, though I received a few of my wishes for Christmas and hadn't updated my list. I've always wanted to read more Jenson, one of the foremost living theologians.

David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of The Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth
Another frequent recommendation in Patrik's meme. A number of bloggers have been reading this book and posting their thoughts (e.g. here amd here and here). It sounds like quite heavy philosophical theology at points, but I'm keen to read it because my love of Nietzsche has driven a large wedge between Plato and Christianity for me and it sounds like Hart is keen to defend some aspects of Plato. I want to see whether such a thing can be done.

Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology
I've always been fascinated by Williams from a distance as he does his dance as Archbishop of Canterbury and theologian. I'm glad that this figurehead is both a serious thinker and media savvy, even if I'm sometimes puzzled by his comments (and sometimes delighted - check out this quote). I picked three Williams texts that grabbed my attention in order to get to know him a little better first-hand. I'd like to try to write something on him this year and so need to start getting familiar. This collection of essays has been recommended to me as a good intro.

Rowan Williams, Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St John of the Cross
This text combines two areas of speciality for Williams: spirituality and patristics. Both are fields I've been getting into over the last few months. I'm particularly interested to see what he says about Augustine, though I'd also like to be better introduced to more of the desert fathers, who have not featured heavily in my own theological education, despite being influential on a number of people I love dearly. I'm keen to get more of an idea of what is going on in Christian mysticism.

Rowan Williams, Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another and Other Lessons from the Desert Fathers
See above. The bonus of this book (a republication of what was originally a short little book called Silence and Honey-cakes (a great title) is that it has many extracts from the desert fathers - and is cheap!

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: II/2; III/3; III/4; IV/2; IV,4
Ben regretted that the money wasn't quite enough for a full (paperback) set of Barth's life-work, the unfinished masterpiece of 14 volumes of Church Dogmatics (the greatest theological landmark of the twentieth century - see here for more praise). However, I already own a number of hardback volumes secondhand (I/1; I/2; II/1; IV/1) and so thought I'd do a little detective work for some secondhand Amazon bargains - the postage to Oz is a little steeper than usual, but the prices were worth it for these - each was under US$30 and some under US$10! I make no promises about getting through them all in the next months, but they are a resource for a lifetime of theological depth and pondering. Where Barth gets it wrong, he's still masterfully stimulating.

In all this, I've tasted God's generosity through his people. This imitation of God is also a participation in his giving.

Let us praise what is good.
Series so far: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X.

In praise of... praise

A new series

O Lord, open my lips,
      and my mouth will declare your praise.      - Psalm 51.15

I used to think that praise, like love, was a zero sum game. I thought that in order to make sure God got the highest praise, I had to refrain from speaking too highly of anything else. Superlatives were therefore reserved for divine things. Saying too much about what was good was a threat to what was best.

But this needn't be the case. Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4.4). Whatever brings joy and life, whatever multiples love and fosters hope, whatever truly exists, is a gift from God for us. Gifts that were intended to evoke our thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4.3). When we praise a good thing, this needn't threaten God's glory, because if we are acknowledging a gift, then praise reflects positively on the giver. By praising the goodness of the gift, we praise the generosity of the giver.

Of course, since our first parents arrogantly asserted their independence from God, the world is now also cracked and good things that usurp their specific place and function become a threat to one another, like a cancerous growth in the body of the world. Nonetheless, the fundamental affirming of "good, very good" still applies, even when more must also be said.

I come from a Christian culture that can be very highly critical, and where initial appreciation of some limited goodness can all-too-often be merely a prelude to tearing something apart. We love to critique, to feel good about ourselves by pointing at flaws in others. I don't like this culture, nor the fact that I enjoy complaining as much as the next person. But perhaps even this negative reaction is itself an example of the culture. Instead, I want to learn to be a praiser - to see and love the good. To hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good (Romans 12.9).

So let us praise what is good.
Ten points for guessing why I selected this picture. There may be multiple reasons.
Series so far: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X. Full series links can be found here.

Worse than death? II

Sin is worse than death

Our God is a God of salvation,
   and to GOD, the Lord, belongs escape from death.     - Psalm 68.20

Death will be the last enemy to be defeated at the general resurrection of the dead and the renewal of all things. Yet while it will be the last to go, it is not the Great Enemy, the Adversary. There are things worse than death.

There are things that diminish life, that corrode joy, that devour the heart, shrink the spirit, corrupt the good. Sin is worse than death. Death brings an end to the goodness that is life, but sin can take what is good in life and turn it sour. Death is a negation; sin is a negative. Death reduces to zero; sin puts it in the red. Now, of course, the picture is more complex than this, since what is good is not removed when it is corrupted, and evil is not simply the reverse scale of quality as good. Created things remain good, even while corrupted. Fallen humanity in particular is a complex thing, simultaneously both blessing and problem, both gift and cursed.

When our first parents disasterously declared their independence from God, claiming their own pre-emptive knowledge of good and evil, God's gracious response was to cut them off from the tree of life:

Then the LORD God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”-- therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

The denial of everlasting life to the wayward husband and wife was to place a boundary on the spread of evil, to prevent it becoming forever woven into the fabric of the world. Death, the return of the dust to dust, was on the one hand the inevitable result of life that denies its own basis as the generous gift of God. Human death is a self-made self-annihilation, a suicidal turn from the source of life. But, on the other hand, it was also from the start useful as a curb on evil: a self-limiting curse.

Again, we must be careful here. Simply having boundaries, being embodied, temporal or dependent are not themselves problematic. Such finitude is part of the good gift of God. The finitude of death contains a darkness not found in being six feet tall or living in a world where snowmen melt. The tragedy is not change, not limit, but the disordering infection of rebellion, a will turned upon itself, an entity oriented to its own goals without reference to the whole or the head. This is the sad shock of sin: irrational, destructive, malignant - and ultimately self-destructive. Death is the result, but sin is the cause.

Sin is worse than death. Untrusting anxiety, apathetic lethargy, bitter regret, faithless betrayal: these are the real enemies of God and his people. These will blunt and bleed the soul, poison the spirit and stop the heart more surely and grievously than the cessation of brainwaves and breath.
Series: I, II, III, IV, V, VI.
Fifteen points for naming the novel in which the ill-treated heroine is finally captured at this ancient location.