Glocal Christianity

Justice in Public and Private

In "Divine Justice as Restorative Justice", Christ Marshall sums up what is a major concern of mine in terms of Christian public witness:

"Christians today often suppose that ecclesial ethics—how believers are to treat one another within the community of faith—have no pertinence to the ethical standards and legal practices that apply in mainstream society. Church and world are assumed to be entirely separate domains with their own distinctive norms. As a result, conservative Christians in America often rank among the strongest supporters of the current, highly retributive penal system, with its galloping rates of incarceration and its enduring, shameful reliance on capital punishment. They sense no tension between their support for a relentlessly punitive criminal justice system and the incessant call in Scripture to practice forgiveness and reconciliation, a call they conveniently confine to the sphere of interpersonal relationships within the Church."

"But such incongruity is theologically indefensible. The Church is called to bear witness to the reality of God’s saving justice in Christ, both by pro-claiming it verbally in the story of the gospel and by putting it into practice in the way it deals with offending and failure in its own midst. Knowing God’s justice to be a restoring and renewing justice, the Church is obliged to practice restorative justice in its own ranks and to summons society to move in the same direction. There can be no justification for saying one thing about God’s justice in Church and advocating the opposite in the world." 

How do you understand the link between justice in church and the world?

I’m a Soul, Man

What is a soul? Is it something we have or something we are? This is a question that Delmar B. Epp explores in "I’m a Soul, Man: One Psychologist’s Reflection on Human Nature". 

The different options as he sees them are:

• Radical dualism
• Emergent dualism
• Reductive materialism
• Nonreductive physicalism

The fourth seems closest to my own view? What about you?

Myers Briggs and the Imago Dei

Well, what do you know! Although everyone is created in the image of God, it appears NTs are especially and INTPs even more so. Who am I to disagree?

Shamans, Sages, Priests and Prophets

Some of you may be interested in downloading and reading "Shaman, Sage, Priest, Prophet and Magi: Exploring the Architecture of the Religious Wise Man" by Dominique Beth Wilson, a Grad Student from Sydney University. I came across it earlier this week.

I found it had a lot of resonance with some reflections I've previously posted on "Types of Religious Practitioners", which was itself inspired by Paul Hiebert's "Understanding Folk Religions". To eleborate further on what I wrote there, shamans and the prophets are more inspirational-style leaders, in direct contact with the numenous, while priests and sages are the more institutional-style leaders, with their contact with the numenous being more indirect. Understood this way, I would have thought Dominique's magicians are just a different type of shaman. Indeed, understood this way the healing activity of Jesus would also be classified as shamanic, given it involved approaching his Father on behalf of the people. Anyway, see what you think.

Further searching also turned up another interesting book, "Priests, Prophets, Diviners and Sages: A Socio-Historical Study of Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel" by Lester L. Grabbe. Unfortunately though, it is unavailable in ebook version, and the snail version is retailing at the bargain basement price of $532.32 on Amazon.

Beyond the Burial

"Jesus Risen" by Ausagi

For an event that changed the world, images of the resurrection are few and far between in Christian art.

I would love to see more by Christian artists. 

Wounded Healer

"Jesus Christ" by Armia4design

The artist quotes, "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities."
(Isaiah 53:5)

Hello Possums

Here is a joke a work collegue shared with me today:

There were five churches in a small town:

The Presbyterian Church,
The Baptist Church,
The Uniting Church,
The Anglican Church and
The Jewish Synagogue.

Each church and synagogue was overrun with possums.

One day, the Presbyterian Church called a meeting to decide what to do about the possums. After much prayer and consideration they determined that the possums were predestined to be there and they shouldn't interfere with God's divine will.

In The Baptist Church the possums had taken over the baptistery. The deacons met and decided to put the plug in the baptistery, fill it with water and drown the possums in it. But the possums could swim, they escaped and there were twice as many there the next week.

The Uniting Church got together and decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God's creation. So, they humanely trapped the possums and set them free a few miles outside of town. Three days later, they were back.

The Anglican Church baptized the possums and registered them as members of the church. Now they only see them at Christmas and Easter.

At the Jewish Synagogue, they took one possum and had a short service with him called circumcision and they haven't seen a possum on the property since.

Ackbar Jesus

"Ackbar and Jesus" by Linkakami

Admiral Ackbar had good intentions ... but missed the bigger picture.

Illegal Jesus

"Illegal Jesus" by E9.

Somewhere it seems to have been forgotten by conservatives that Jesus was himself a refugee.

Good News for the Anxious

“I am the one that raises the whip to your already racing heart … I’m the voice, you know the one, who's always questioning, questioning, questioning everything you do, everything you think.”  

This is the voice of Anxiety, from the Beyond Blue clip that is hitting social media by storm. This is the voice that one out of every four of us experience some time in our life. And it is not a new experience either. The ancients themselves asked, “What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labour under the sun?” (Ecclesiates 2:22) and cried “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” (Psalm 139:23) If you’ve ever woken in a panic in the dead of night you are not alone.

At the end of the clip, Anxiety asks, "So, now that we have become acquainted, what are you going to do about it?" Having suffered from anxiety myself, this is a question that interests me deeply. Now of course there are secular answers to this, and of course we should explore these options. But above and beyond this I am after spiritual help, so I have also sought guidance from scripture.

For instance, the apostle Paul counselled his communities with these words, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  (Philippians 4:6). In this he followed Jesus, who said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? (Matthew 6:25) and “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27)

However, taken in isolation, I find these words less than satisfying. For who of us can stop worrying simply by self-effort? Would you accept these words from your doctor? And who of us has not experienced unanswered prayer? What happens when you’re left in an anxious state despite prayer, even in your prayers?

This is where we need some gospel perspective. We need to remember that Jesus himself suffered from anxiety, not least in the garden of Gethsemane, on the night before his crucifixion. Mark tells us, “He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled.” (Mark 14:33) God among us ... he experienced anxiety! 

Think about it. Meditate on the implications. If God experienced anxiety, then experiencing anxiety is not necessarily an imperfection in us. It cannot, at least not automatically, be attributed to sin, or idolatry, or a lack of faith. Moreover, remember that Jesus acted faithfully even in his anxiety and saved us through this act and subsequent resurrection. His experience of anxiety was transformative. So, I seek for his experience to be transformative for me also.