Dear God...

How do you feel about people starting prayer with 'Dear God' or Dear Heavenly Father..."?



And how would you suggest a better way forward?

Defining Work

"Work is the stewarding of Gods creation under Christ's rule, requiring us to fill and subdue it, to care for it and enhance its fruitfulness so that humanity continues and prospers in God's world in communities of care." H/T Rowan Kemp.

Discuss.

Guest Post: On Martyrdom and Persecution

A Guest Post by Alison Moffitt

Student: Sir?

President Bartlett: Yeah

Student: Do you consider yourself a man of principle?

President Bartlett: I try to be

Student: Well... Don't you consider, I mean I know they're our enemy, but don't you consider there's something noble about being a martyr?

President Bartlett: A martyr would rather suffer death at the hands of an oppressor than renounce his beliefs. Killing yourself and innocent people to make a point is sick, twisted, brutal, dumb-ass murder.

I recently rewatched the West Wing episode produced just after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The episode is called Isaac and Ishmael. This scene, where a student quizzes President Bartlett on martyrdom, has really got me thinking. What does it mean to be a martyr? What is the 'proper' context in which to die for your faith? Is President Bartlett right?

Last year I went to a talk by Bishop Josiah A. Idowu-Fearon who was visiting Australia at the time. Bishop Fearon oversees the Diocese of Kanduna in Nigeria. It straddles the middle of country, the very volatile part where the predominantly Muslim north meets the predominately Christian South. It's a dangerous place. Religious tensions are mixed up with political and economic power, and are regularly expressed with violent physical attacks.

Speaking to a small audience of mainly Christian workers in Australia last year, Josiah Fearon talked about the difficulties of leading the church in a climate like this. Not only does the church feel threatened by reactive Muslims, but many members of the church believe that it is their duty to defend the honour of the church through avenging other injured Christians or even attacking Muslims who slander the church. Fearon clearly articulated his own stance: Christians follow a crucified Lord, who was insulted, oppressed, persecuted and killed. He told his followers to turn the other cheek and warned his followers that they would be abused just like him. Christians who feel like they must defend the honour of their religion through further violence, or even avenge the injury or death of family, are not following Jesus as they do these things.

Josiah Fearon's attitudes have made him the target of a few assassination attempts, not just by Muslim extremists but also by Christian extremists who think he is too soft in his approach. But I don't think he is being soft. I think it would much harder to take persecution 'lying down' than fighting back.

Although they speak about slightly different things, I'm inclined to think that Josiah Fearon would agree with Jed Bartlett on martyrdom, and Jed Bartlett would agree with Josiah Fearon on persecution (even though Jed Bartlett is fictional...). Martyrs die for their faith, but they don't kill innocent people. Persecution means enduring suffering and humiliation without ever seeking revenge, and Christians must never initiate violence.

Do you think this is the correct way to view things? Issues of violent persecution and martyrdom don't really come up in contemporary Australian society, but they definitely do right now in other places of the world. This week, 13 people were killed in a religious attack on a village outside Jos, one of the larger towns in Josiah Fearon's diocese. Most of them were women and children. Is it fair to say that the church should sit by and watch people get abused and killed? If you were a Christian leader, how would you seek justice if your local community was governed by sharia law? Would you take justice into your own hands?

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honourable in the sight of all.If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written: "'vengeance is mine, I will repay', says the Lord". To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give hims something to drink; for by doing so you will heap burning coals on his head". Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:17-21

P.S. Did anyone notice that Josiah Fearon and Jed Bartlett have the same first name?

UPDATE from Matt: Last year at CMS I was involved in interviewing Josiah Fearon. You can watch the interview here.

Another Political Quote of the Week

Actually, this is from February.

"Homelessness is a choice." - Tony Abbott

This was Abbott's response to a question asking whether a government under his direction would continue with the Rudd government's goal of halving homelessness by 2020. It was also his reflection on Matthew 26.11.

Theological fail?

...mens eadem...

"Don't be conformed to this present evil age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind..." - Romans 12.2

"The word of God was the sweat of [Paul's] brow, but it was also the life of his mind. Our juncture of history is rather like Paul's in one respect: it requires a Christian preacher to come to the defence of the life of the mind. As Universities daily conform themselves more closely to the school of wizardry in children's fiction, a repository of magic techniques to get startling effects, who else is left to care for how people, as individuals, think for themselves about the coherence of understanding, principle, and purpose that makes the difference between living in freedom and living in servitude? As the young flock in ever greater numbers to our Universities and colleges, who is there to talk to them seriously, and with all the resources of refined scholarly culture, about the meaning of their human existence, about how vast quantity if scatted or organised information can be distilled into something worth a humans being's while to be occupied with in his or her one and only venture in life? Of course, we shall be told that virtue cannot be taught, that the existential dimension of wisdom is something each person must discover for him or herself, not a topic for inclusion in a syllabus, to be "covered" in a tutorial. All of which is perfectly true. Yet wisdom can be present or absent as a goal and a horizon, before which everything covered in a syllabus can begin to assume its real importance. But this requires teachers who believe that learning is not simply perfecting a performance, but has to do with the terror and hope that is due to existence itself. It requires teachers who believe in the human reality of salvation and loss, who live out their academic roles as those who continually ask how they may be saved?" - Oliver O'Donovan, No End to the Word, The Word in Small Boats, 2010.

Quote of the Week by Lindsay Tanner

"[I'm] not really religious; I'm an Anglican.'' - Lindsay Tanner, Federal Finance Minister

h/t Alison

Peter Hitchens on faith and his brother

How I found God and peace with my atheist brother: Peter Hitchens traces his journey back to Christianity.

"Why is there such a fury against religion now? Because religion is the one reliable force that stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. The one reliable force that forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law. The one reliable force that restrains the hand of the man of power. In an age of powerworship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power."

4 Quick Questions and 1 Strange one with...

Me. About my work with the EU and the Howard Guinness Project. Over at Jeremy's blog, Micaiah Sells Out...

Let Light Shine out of Darkness

⁶

"For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

If there is one thing that stood out to me as during student during my time at Sydney Uni, it is the EU's commitment to the t-shirt truth that "Jesus Christ is Lord." This is the gospel we proclaim and live out on campus.

Photo: The light tower of the new law building library.

Cash Cows?

Alison and I are both involved in ministering to International students at our church. We are really thankful for the opportunities we have to share Jesus and our lives with people. But it has made us really aware of how poorly treated international students are. They are charged an incredible amount of money come here and study, and then receive no financial assistance in terms of travel insurance or medicare. International students will often work long hours each day, and are usually underpaid. Unaware of their rights, I've heard too many stories from students in the past three years who have been taken advantage of by the employers.

Michael Spence, reflecting on the racial violence against overseas students that has made world headlines for the past year, has this to say:

"...[W]e need to get serious about the services we provide to overseas students. Each student we welcome into Australia is a person with complex needs and aspirations, unlike the volumes of coal and iron ore that have traditionally dominated our links to Asia. Students should not be perceived as cash cows to be milked at every opportunity. Sure, overseas students make a huge economic contribution but why shouldn't state governments recognise this by, for example, treating them like other students and providing travel concession cards?" - SMH

Dr Spence argues that a way forward is for universities to provide more on site or local accommodation for international students. He also notes that "our education links are often as strong as, if not stronger than, our diplomatic links." I think that I agree with him. However, I want to take it further; because it is not only institutional change that is needed. It's not only our governments and universities that see overseas students as "cash cows", but employers who work international students on 12 hour shifts and pay them a pittance. Our landlords who charge students $200 a week to share a two bedroom apartment with seven other people. What is need ultimately is a change of heart. As agents and victims of sin and evil, what we need is to be set free.

That's why I'm thankful for being involved in the overseas students ministry at church. Because as Australians and Chinese (and one Colombian guy), we can say "yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Cor. 8.6.)

Hope We Can Believe In?

As part of the 2010 Sydney Festival, ABC Radio National hosted an event called Hope 2010: Crisis, Catharis, Renewal. Nine panelists were asked to talk about what they hope for in 2010. The Australian public were also able to "offer their hopes, fears and dreams for 2010."

Of interest to readers of hebel will be the contribution by Michael Spence. Dr Spence in the Vice Chancellor of Sydney University. He is also an ordained Anglican minister. I heard Dr Spence on Saturday night, and he said that his Hope 2010 speech was an opportunity for him to give 'account of the hope that is in you' (cf. 1 Peter 3.15).

You can listen to Dr Spence's address here.

Evolution, the Enlightenment, and Worldviews

From HERE.

Divining the Past: Dialogues between Christianity and history

A Call for Papers

Over at Faith and Place Meredith has launched a conference hosted by the Evangelical History Association:

"Divining the Past is a conference dedicated to the exploration of relationships between Christianity and History. How has the Christian tradition informed the theory and practice of history? How important is history to the belief and expression of Christianity? And how have Christian people, groups, movements, ideas and experiences been significant in past centuries? The conference aims to bring together a variety of perspectives on these questions. It is open to scholars associated with theological colleges as well as universities. Students doing original research in history are especially encouraged to participate.

The EHA invites proposals for papers on any aspect of the relationship between Christianity and History. We particularly welcome papers with an historiographical or theoretical focus, or that engage with the following topics:

• Religion and politics
• The church in society
• Evangelicalism in Australia
• Christianity in ancient history
• Christianity and universities
  

The program will feature a panel on the theoretical and methodological links between Christianity and the discipline of history.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Dr Meredith Lake - meredithelake[at]gmail[dot]com - by 31 March 2010."

Gen Y and the Failures of the Church

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters:^* not many of you were wise by human standards, ^* not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’" 1 Corinthians 1.26-31^272829303"

At work this week, we spent some time thinking about how to reach how to reach Gen Y with the gospel (for the purposes of this post Gen Y is anyone born between 1980-1995). We want to reach this generation in an appropriate way. As I've mentioned elsewhere, there are three main issues that concern this postmodern (in practice if not in thought) generation: authenticity, community, justice.

These are three itches which I think the church can scratch. But before we get there, we need to remind ourselves that 'the Church' has a significant image problem with Gen Y. The image of the church that Gen Y knows is either something resembling Philip Pullman's Magisterium, or the daggy American evangelical straw man who sings kumbaya and has eight children. In the short lifetime of Gen Y, several major denominations have been caught up in significant scandals that became front page news in Australia and overseas. Beginning in the 1980's with the revelation that child abuse had been happening the church, Gen Y has been exposed to stories of Christian leaders marriage infidelities (or in the Roman church, headlines of Catholic priests and bishops fathering children), which was soon followed by stories of financial indiscretions. A new genre emerged that argues that the truth about Jesus and early Christianity had been covered up by the church. And faith increasingly mixed with politics, especially (but not exclusively) in America with the alliance between conservative Christians and the GOP.

In the 25 years of my life, the church has been presented as irrelevant, anti-intellectual, medieval, chauvinistic and homophobic. According to the new atheists, it is dangerous for you. It is increasingly portrayed in newspapers such as the SMH as being run by reactionary, self-interested grey-haired men. This is the image that the average non-Christian first year starting university this year will have in their mind.

How do you evangelize someone who thinks of Christianity like this? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Asylum

Four friends on the illegal refugee situation in Australia:

Michael Jensen - Sink or swim? What to do with boat people

Meredith Lake -A home for the persecuted and the poor? and Boat people: a challenge to Australian sovereignty?

Alison Moffitt - Two cents on Asylum Seekers

Jeremy Smith -Christmas Island – have a read!