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Forget other people trying to kill me for my faith, I have enough trouble trying to do it myself!
31 May 2008
Paul responds to Craig Hovey’s guest post, on the place of martydom in modern western christianity…My first response in reading Craig’s thoughtful question “are christians worth persecuting?” was who could be bothered to kill us when everyone is busy trying to find their own happiness to worry about the occassional dark little christian cloud that might sometimes try to rain on their parade? My second response was i can’t even kill myself in the way my faith suggests i should so why would anyone else want to bother. To use the jargon, i am so self obsessed that I’d rather be comfortable in my right to my life, my way, than die to myself and give up any ofmy rights, especially the right to be right.
There are a few potential killers out there of course… not least us christians! We are quite good at persecuting each other at times, my brand good your brand not so kosher, but at least we can unite to persecute the godless pagans!
Other suspects, well I’m sure we’re the butt of many a new atheist joke but then again we’re also very good at returning the favour.
Some of us even worry some sections of liberal society, especially that sneaky fundamentalist moral agenda – happy to label all sorts of behaviour as bad and affecting our eternal destination (so the church at least claims ownership of our immortal souls post death!).
Then again the govt has been trying to make a claim on our bodies in life, warning us of the dangers of excess alcohol, (illegal) drugs, obesity and cigarettes for instance and we’ve just kept chugging, snorting, stuffing and puffing away regardless!
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Self published, and available free online, the Misseo Dei Breviary, was birthed in the daily life of a missional community.
If you are looking for an engaging, and easy to use daily prayer practice, this book is a good place to begin.
I just got the printed copy, it’s easy to carry around, and I’m trying it as part of my christian formation and practice.
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Laura Anne, one of our guest writers, writes this in response to Craig Hovey’s post… I’ve said before that I love doing youth work because of all that I learn from it. Well, sometimes that’s true. But what I’ve been finding lately is that the young people pose questions that force me to pick up my bible. And what I’m read usually challenges me to throw out religion and open myself up to God. And when I do that, my pride is humbled, my ears are opened to what He has to say…and it’s not always what I want to hear.I realise how much I focus on the parts of the bible that make me feel good, and brush the parts that don’t under the carpet of ‘well, that’s not relevant in the light of the New Testament and Jesus coming to earth and dying for our sins’.
Every week I meet with 2 women to study and pray together. At the moment we’re looking at the prophecies of Ezekiel. The devastation and destruction that resulted of years of the nation of Israel who was given guidance on the best way to live in the world and was asked to live it to show how God was a just and righteous God…doing the exact opposite…falsifying God’s Word to make it what they wanted to hear, acting in ways more wicked than the surrounding nations.
Even post-Jesus’ resurrection, do we not have the same things asked of us?
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Craig writes… are Christians worth persecuting? My assumption in To Share in the Body is quite simply that most of the time we are not. Martyrdom, when it ever happens to Christians, is something Western Christians are far removed from. It either happens in countries far away or in periods of history we can read about from an equally safe distance. “We” are not the ones being martyred. But is that as it should be?What if the reason has less to do with Western governments being benevolent and more to do with the church’s compromise to culture?
In the book, I try to take seriously the fact that the New Testament often seems to assume martyrdom and persecution. Was that more than a historical curiosity that we can look back on? What if instead our reading of the Bible causes us to wonder whether we are not persecuted for the right reasons? This is the question I put to my investigation into the Gospel of Mark.
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Paul writes… welcome to this week’s blog theme: a faith to live for… a faith to die for? Who owns our bodies? What is worth dying for? How do we/can we die when as soon as we open our mouth to say we’re a christian everyone else around us dies of boredom, rolling their eyes in apathy? Where does martyrdom fit into our faith in a post 9/11 world?
We are priviledged to have a Craig Hovey, author of To Share in the Body, as our guest this week. Craig has written a post for the site which we would encourage you to think about and interact with him and each other.
We also hope to have a couple of response posts from some of our other guest authors and a wrap up at the end of the week of questions and themes to explore together in the future.
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I only came across this the other day, Slide Share.
You can use the site to host and share your powerpoint and keynote slide shows on your blog/web site. They also have a huge number of interesting slide shows that are public from other users.
I’ve inserted the slideshow from my talk to the EA UK, and at the Christian Resources Exhbition, below as an example.
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I was asked the other day for a list of recommended UK church blogs/bloggers.
I have a few in my bloglines feed. But it struck me again, that when it comes to anything related to the emerging church (for and against, pragmatic or theological), they seem to be thin on the ground.
And I don’t mean someone who has a blog, but rather someone who blogs regularly, about emerging church related issues.
Then if we asked about female UK emerging church bloggers, and non white bloggers, the list seems to get even smaller.
So over to you, tell me the UK bloggers you know and are reading. I already know about Jonny Baker and Maggie Dawn (Andrew Jones is a kiwi).
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Paul writes… Beware fundamentalist, intolerant, determined christians are conspiring against us with “unprecedented political access!” Against the backdrop of the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Bill going through Parliament this was the message of a Channel 4 documentary last night. The upshot message of “In God’s name,” filmed by David Modell seemed to me that we should be afraid… very afraid! Oh and for once that “we” is us in the UK, rather than our American cousins!
Now watching the film last night I found it disturbing at times with some of the views expressed on a range of flash point topics such as: sexuality, Islam, science, and abortion. It was car crash tele at its best, after all the free use of the word fundamentalist and the candid views expressed made me predujiced to begin with. Is there a more emotively negative word in our post 9/11 age than “fundamentalist?”
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I’m traveling today to Calvin, Grand Rapids, MI (US) for the conference on Philosophy & Liturgy.
And I’m making this trip, with the help of Tripit.com. This web application is just amazing.
After setting up my account, I forwarded my flight confirmation emails to my account, added the conference events, car rental, hotels, and it collates and automatically sets up a schedule.
Then I can give a link to friends, family who can access the schedule, and have my details and contact info etc.
Integration with google maps for automatic directions, adding notes, and then taking all this with you on email, online, or your mobile, is so helpful.
So if you want help with making and sharing travel plans, try it.
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If you haven’t met him already, let me introduce you to Tim Keel, and his new book.
Tim has been involved with Emergent US near it’s inception.
He’s the founding pastor/planter of Jacobs Well,a well known emerging church (I’ve been a few times and they are just the most wonderful community).
Tim has a blog, that he needs to write on more often here.
And Tim has a book that came out recently, ‘Intuitive Leadership‘. To say it’s good would be an understatement.
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