I live in a heavily secularised society, where Christianity is a tiny underground stream within a lot of people. My friends are lapsed Christians, closeted Christians, once-a-decade Christians, Catholics who don’t go to communion at their friends’ wedding (and who wish they did) and a full array of sincere, idealistic cynics.
And I love them more than I can say. To me it is blindingly obvious that they are the tax collectors of our day. I want to remain “understated” enough so they’d still count me as one of them. I never want them to think that I’ve got something that they haven’t. They are my church.
"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' Lk 18.13.
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Love it!
Most of you will have seen these already, but they're hilarious, and they're by a Spurgeon enthusiast as well (even when I don't agree, I *love* Spurgeon's abrasive tone!). Do check out the others as well!
Monday, 30 July 2007
World's Worst Bible Interpretation: 1
It's time for a bit of humour in here, so my blog will be hosting a little "worst of" of things I've heard about the Bible. Feel free to add your own. Our first contestant is my friend Sergei:
S. The Bible says you should turn the other cheek but, but only once. That's what I'll do, but after that I'll break their neck.
D. Um...
S. The Bible says you should turn the other cheek but, but only once. That's what I'll do, but after that I'll break their neck.
D. Um...
Doing without desiring
One of the reasons why I love Nietzsche so much is because he’s amazingly good at bringing to light the nasty subtext which accompanies many Christian endeavours. He does a grand job of debunking Christian do-gooding: we mimic a couple of gospel stories and then think ourselves as “Christ followers”. But we haven’t grasped his broader vision, and we certainly wouldn’t subscribe to it if we did, let alone die for it.
Occasionally, I engage in “doing without desiring”: I do not have the vision, but I do the “right thing” anyway. I do this because I honestly do not know any better, and because I believe that God blesses our genuine attempts, and that he might even walk us there.
So recently, I was chatting with a guy on the street while waiting for a train, and some nasty subtext ran through my mind: “hell, this guy does not speak any of the main European languages, we can’t communicate at all and I’m bored, we're going to run out of things to say, shit I didn't think of that, and how do we inscribe this into the future? He better have e-mail”.
I do not have a clear idea of why I decided to strike up a chat with this guy. I had no vision: to my dismay, Christ's is Chinese to me. Still, I thought that we might learn to interact with each other and to care about each other and that, if we were going to do that, we simply had to start somewhere. So I forced things a bit, hoping for the best.
The social distance hit me like a punch in the face: the whole thing felt much more like a collision than an encounter. But I’m still hoping, because several of these “collisions” have, by the grace of God, led to the most beautiful relationships.
Still, I’m tired of operating without vision, I’m tired of being genuinely ignorant of it, I’m tired of not knowing where to learn it from: I want to understand the mind of Jesus! (And maybe Nietzsche felt the same when he wrote that the only Christian died on the cross. I can relate to that).
Recently, I was reading some stuff by Jean Yves Leloup, a French theologian, on Matt 10.38 “anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me”. Leloup, based on the Greek version of the NT, seems to think that we could understand this passage in a new way: “anyone who does not take his cross yet follows me is not worthy of me”*.
This, in turn, could mean: “embrace the full vision, don’t follow bits of what Jesus said without taking on his full holistic vision, and without the full consequences of pursuing it”. I really want to know what this vision is now! And I want to know where the hell I can learn it from!
Occasionally, I engage in “doing without desiring”: I do not have the vision, but I do the “right thing” anyway. I do this because I honestly do not know any better, and because I believe that God blesses our genuine attempts, and that he might even walk us there.
So recently, I was chatting with a guy on the street while waiting for a train, and some nasty subtext ran through my mind: “hell, this guy does not speak any of the main European languages, we can’t communicate at all and I’m bored, we're going to run out of things to say, shit I didn't think of that, and how do we inscribe this into the future? He better have e-mail”.
I do not have a clear idea of why I decided to strike up a chat with this guy. I had no vision: to my dismay, Christ's is Chinese to me. Still, I thought that we might learn to interact with each other and to care about each other and that, if we were going to do that, we simply had to start somewhere. So I forced things a bit, hoping for the best.
The social distance hit me like a punch in the face: the whole thing felt much more like a collision than an encounter. But I’m still hoping, because several of these “collisions” have, by the grace of God, led to the most beautiful relationships.
Still, I’m tired of operating without vision, I’m tired of being genuinely ignorant of it, I’m tired of not knowing where to learn it from: I want to understand the mind of Jesus! (And maybe Nietzsche felt the same when he wrote that the only Christian died on the cross. I can relate to that).
Recently, I was reading some stuff by Jean Yves Leloup, a French theologian, on Matt 10.38 “anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me”. Leloup, based on the Greek version of the NT, seems to think that we could understand this passage in a new way: “anyone who does not take his cross yet follows me is not worthy of me”*.
This, in turn, could mean: “embrace the full vision, don’t follow bits of what Jesus said without taking on his full holistic vision, and without the full consequences of pursuing it”. I really want to know what this vision is now! And I want to know where the hell I can learn it from!
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
Love is looking together in the same direction
Does anyone else loose patience with the notions of “being Christ to your neighbours” or asking “what would Jesus Do”? I’m sure these can be useful concepts on some occasions, but I find that they seriously mess up my subject positions and introduce a huge distance between the poor and me. For the record, I’m a sinner redeemed by grace. My place is right there kneeling on the pavement with the guy who does so in Munich, begging for God’s grace. We are all poor, some of us are also poor economically*.
Maybe God will give us the grace of obeying his will. Of all prayers I like the blind beggar's best. I'm not sure whether it's the appealing to Jesus which I love or the knowledge that He will, in fact, have mercy on us beggars.
* I realise that this last line has sometimes been used to attack liberation theology. This is not the way I mean it, and I am not saying that economic poverty is irrelevant to the Kingdom. Just that I don't like bourgeois alms-giving, a moment in which we get to feel all good and righteous while this is the very moment at which our humility is most needed. How do we dare feeling like the good guys? No one is good but God.
Maybe God will give us the grace of obeying his will. Of all prayers I like the blind beggar's best. I'm not sure whether it's the appealing to Jesus which I love or the knowledge that He will, in fact, have mercy on us beggars.
* I realise that this last line has sometimes been used to attack liberation theology. This is not the way I mean it, and I am not saying that economic poverty is irrelevant to the Kingdom. Just that I don't like bourgeois alms-giving, a moment in which we get to feel all good and righteous while this is the very moment at which our humility is most needed. How do we dare feeling like the good guys? No one is good but God.
Monday, 23 July 2007
Handel and cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance affects my complexion and my ability to play Handel... And I love playing Handel, so off the cognitive dissonance goes.
What is solidarity?
1. My intuition was saying don’t seek to be righteous, don't engage in do-gooding.
2. Someone else wrote that no-one cares about your personal vices; it’s about the harm inflicted on other bodies.
3. A third person said “build relationships”.
The three ideas are very good. Taken together they could be even better. I kind of feel like transcending Luther and James while bringing in some Paul. Maybe later.
2. Someone else wrote that no-one cares about your personal vices; it’s about the harm inflicted on other bodies.
3. A third person said “build relationships”.
The three ideas are very good. Taken together they could be even better. I kind of feel like transcending Luther and James while bringing in some Paul. Maybe later.
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