Poverty in the Bible

  The bible does not just talk about poverty as one issue of many. Nor does it soley give us perspesctives or commands on 'dealing with' the poor. The Bible happens within the context of poverty - that is where it's story takes place! It contains a message that speaks directly to the hearts of the disenfranchised, the weak. And rather than offering a social critique that's made simpler and easier for those already finding life too hard, it has the cheek to say that it's message is too hard for the rich and privalledged, that the wise and intelligent cannot understand it. [1] This understanding is something many of us in the Church are only just comming to realise. Although I, and many others, live lives fraught with wealth and privalege, we dare to hope that one day we will live in a kingdom where there is no rich, poor, war or debt. I'm outlining some of the reasons for this below, in the hope that more people will be inspired to start asking the questions that will change the world.

  To start with, in the Hebrew Bible, most of the Prophets were poor (e.g. Amos), and so many of its heroes were the weak and marginalised (David was a shepherd boy, Gideon was the weakest of his tribe, Abraham became a nobody, a wondering nomad [3]). The bible is a story told from the margins of history, the victims of the powers and kings that we learn about in our histroy classes today.

  Then comes Jesus. The teaching of Christianity is not from an individual of elevated position, who through kindness writes on behalf of those 'below' them. No, rather the greatest teacher of Christianity, the 'supreme interpreter' of the faith, is a carpenter's son, who leaves even that to become a homeless Rabbi, with 'no place to lay his head'[2]. In fact, the only place in the scriptures where Jesus has any money at all are where he has to borrow it (for a demonstration), or where he performs a miracle, taking a coin from a fishes mouth. His main listeners would have been the peasants and workers of his day (note that he visited mainly towns and villiages, not the centres of power). Most of his recorded parables spoke directly into the situations of the powerless. He was poor, and he was the hero of the poor.

  Out of all this comes the Church, a group of followers of this radical and unconventional leader, who they call their King! Not only do they perform simple 'acts of charity', they form what appears to be a new society (or should I say Kingdom?) among them. Although most of them are poor, they share with each other so none go hungry. Even their enemies had to admit '[the Christians] feed our poor in addition to their own' (Emporer Julian - a persecuter of the Christian movement)[4], sometimes going without themselves in order to feed their neighbour. They were the victims of poverty, spiritual and physical. They were the answer to poverty. They were the Church.

[1] Mark 10:15;24-25, Luke 1:51-53, 1 Corinthians 1:27
[2] Luke 9:58
[3] Amos 1:1, 1 Samuel 16, Judges 6:15, Genesis 12:1
[4] Eberhard Arnold, The Early Christians in their Own Words, p11 (which itself cites: Julian, Sozomen, V.17; see also Harnack ET, vol. 1, p. 162)
(note - many of the biblical references here are not singular occurences in the bible, and are repeated in other places also)

Guayaquill poem

 Well, it's been too long since my last post, that's for sure! I'm back in England now, and officially finished my time with action teams, which has left my quite low. I'm settling in slowly though. Anyway, today I'd like to share a poem I wrote in Ecuador, after looking up at the clouds, and remembering a time back home when I'd been out at night far away from any city.

    I sigh for clouds that once, with stars, shone silver white,
            are dimmed, darkened like dust,
            by the glare of these bright bulbs.
    Such sorrow, I say!
    To see this beauty: tamed and tarnished.
    But why weep I for clouds, while hungry children stand?
    Because 'tis not of clouds I write,
            but YOU.

 I'm not really sure what this is about - it sums up my feelings about a lot of things really.

My thoughts on the disruption in Peru

I recently had to travel across Peru, and was surprised to discover the roads blocked by an organised demonstration taking place across the country. This inconvenienced me personally (like having to spend 2 more nights on a bus, and missing a few meals), but I had to wonder: why were the farmers of Peru going to such trouble? Surely, my inconvenience must be nothing compared to theirs, if they were prepared to forgo work to protest against the government? Having had two nights on a bus to think about this :-), I've got some thoughts I'd like to share.

First, let me explain what the protest was about: in South America, governments have a habit of selling off natural, and often public, resources in order to raise finance. Companies from China, Europe and the US can make a killing on these, especially when they are something needed by the local populace. Now, what has happened in Peru is this: the government made some promises about limiting this trend, but DESPITE this have agreed to privatise the water system, selling it off to a Chinese company. Since the farmers of Peru rely on this water to irrigate their land - not just so that they can sell crops, but so that they can EAT - this is a big concern for them (bigger than a delayed journey, I should say!). You see, while the government charged for the water, the price was actually quite low. But the foreign company plans to charge three times as much!

Other than that the police were trying to dissipate the protest (through means of teargas and such), I know little of how the protest was handled, and whether any of the protesters demands have been met. I most certainly sympathise with them, though (as opposed to a government that cannot even look after the basic interests of its citizens), and hope and pray that this privatisation doesn't happen. I also see that this is part of a bigger picture, the selling up of the earth, and something that I doubt is preventable. It makes me so angry that a government should presume it has the authority at all, to sell something as public as a river, that God made for the benefit of all. How much better would the lives of the majority be if we would stop thinking of the earth as something to be exploited? We could have such full lives, and so many good things, if only we lived as God desired, and not as we do!

Thinking of this reminded my of a speech, made by Chief Seattle in 1854:
"How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? ...
...He [the white man] treats his mother, the Earth, and his brother, the same, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the Earth and leave behind only a desert."

I'll leave it there I think, but there's a lot more I'd like to say. Perhaps in another post :-)
Tim

Poem

I wrote this poem a couple of weeks ago, and think I'll put it up here. Most of the images come from somewhere else (like, the bible), and it sounds a bit forced, but at least it rhymes, right? It's basically about the church - what it's meant to be, how the world has gone wrong, and the hope we we have.

In the world but not of the world,
Live as light while prophesies unfold,
A nation set apart not to impress but bless,
To rethink their lives and confess!

For the earth was once our mother,
we loved our brother,
But now we seek refuge under-cover,
Once, God walked by our side,
Now, spirituality is left, untried.

But a hope is here, a city on a hill,
Where the hungry eat, and the thirsty drink their fill,
Where a river runs, and trees stand tall,
They walk with God, as before the fall,
And there's a place for all.

Well, that's it! I've got *loads* of thoughts I want to write up from the Peru trip, mainly due to the protest we went through.

ciao

Mystery

Hi there! Just a quick thought today, but one I believe to be most interesting! Been thinking about the idea of praying 'in the spirit'. We often view prayer as one of two things - listening to God or speaking to him. However, something fascinating is that some people (myself included) do not simply experience God's presence when they pray, but feel that the spirit influences the prayers themselves. One of the most extreme example of this is speaking in tounges: a person will often speak to God like this, even though only God knows what they're saying! It's almost as if God were praying to himself. This suggests to me another way of thinking about prayer: as taking part in the relationship between the Spirit and the Father. Following from this is the idea that we do not experience God only when we are silent, but also in speaking.

I'm not sure this makes perfect sense, or is entirely orthodox, but I think it worth pondering on.
Tim

Christian culture

 I recently listened to a seminar given by John Smith at greenbelt 07, in which he talked about making the gospel relevant to culture. One of the subjects he covered was how we need to take the form of culture - the means of expression, and adapt the gospel to it, to work within it. This got me thinking, though: if you can take the form of a culture, and express something new within it (like the Celtic Christians did with their culture), then what are the implications of this for a Church that seems to have its own culture?

 I love the culture I've experienced in the Church - the ways of talking, in-jokes, etc. However, there is a way in which this tendency gives me cause for concern. One way (which has been spoken about plenty before), is it can lead the church away from the world (it was called to be 'in the world', if you recall), and so 'Church culture' can end up making christians less relevant, and so be a stubling block to faith.

 The second is more worrying. If you can take a culture and express the gospel within it, with the culture still looking Celtic, or Nepali, or English, then who's to say you can't take the Christian culture, and hide something in that, with it still looking, outwardly, Christian? John Smith gives an example of this. One of the early heretics, who advocated monism rather than trinitarianism (seems abstract I know), had many people believe him because he wrote good praise music. That is to say, people didn't realise he was a heretic, because his message was encapsulated in something that looked Christian, on the outside.

 So, what does this mean to the Church today? For one, I think we need to think carefully, when we hear Christians preaching, or churches acting, about whether their message is in line with the Gospel. I don't presume to have the authority to do this for you, but here's a couple of examples.

 One of these is from Britian, at the time of the British empire - it feels to me that plenty of people (but not everyone) used Christian language, while justifying the most horrible acts: the conquest and oppression of other countries, and the slave trade, being among these. The film 'Joyeux Noel' captures this most powerfully for me, where a bishop is portrayed encouraging a group of soldiers to fight. Although he starts by reading scripture, uses Christian language, and all the form of a mass, what he says is completely off the page (you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQir3WYIAAw)

 Another example is how some churches in the US, while using Christian language, don't seem to preach the whole of the gospel:

'Patriotic pastors insist that America is a Christian nation without questioning the places in distant and recent history where America has not looked like Christ. Rather than placing our hope in a transnational church that embodies God's kingdom, we assume America is God's hope for the world, even when it doesn't look like Christ. Dozens of soldiers who have contacted us confess a paralyzing identity crisis as they feel the collision of their allegiances. At the same time, many Christians are questioning whether God is blessing these wars and whether it's enough for our money to say "In God We Trust" while the daily reality of the global economy seems out of sync with God's concern for the poor'- Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw (Jesus for President)

 It's not always easy to distinguish between authentic Christianity, and false teaching, but I hope that I've been able to make things a little clearer. Often, 'false teaching' is propagated simply by people who don't know any better, and don't realise what they're doing. Anyway, may the spirit guide you to what is right and true, and the powers of this world have no hold upon your life,

Tim

Am I a Christian?

Hi - for my first post here, I thought I'd post a mini-essay I wrote a while back, on what I think (or thought?) it means to be a Christian. Of course, I don't claim to have condensed the fullness of the Christian message into a few paragraphs, but I do think it helps summarise where I am quite well.

Am I a Christian?

Someone asked me this recently, and I feel I didn't answer very well! So, this is me trying to figure out what the question means, and my answer to it. In the world today, and even in our Churches, I feel this question has become too easy to answer, as christianity has become more about what one thinks than what one wants and does. I don't feel this is right. First, being a Christian means to follow Christ, which must mean more than just believing the same things he did. In the bible, Jesus is very critical of people who 'believe', but don't act in the way God would want. Being a Christian MUST, for me, be more about how we do live than how we think we should live, and what we think exists. Second, having a set of beliefs that define precisely what's true and what isn't also makes me uncomfortable. One reason for this is that us humans are limited - we make mistakes when we reason and attempt to describe things. Another, more important one, is that God is so much bigger than us. Isn't it arrogant to think we can describe God, her creation, and what she wants us to do, with a set of rigid beliefs written out by human thinkers in human language? [Note – when I wrote this, I was also attempting to question the idea of God as masculine. I’m not sure, now, whether I was correct in this, but I’ll leave it the same anyway.]

For me, there are two ways we need to rethink what we mean by 'christian'. First, we need to go back to thinking of a Christian as being a 'little Christ' - so you are only a Christian in so much as your life looks like that of Jesus. Second, instead of our faith in God being about affirming a selection of truths, we need to think of it in terms of a relationship. Knowing God is much more like a child being caught up in the arms of its mother, than an intellectual decision. So, basically, to be a Christian is to allow ourselves to be caught up in the embrace of God, and to respond to that embrace.

So, in this sense, am I am Christian? I've definitely sensed God, and 'known his presence'. I've also felt the call to be Jesus' disciple, to radically transform the way I live my life, and myself. There's just one problem: I'm hopelessly inadequate. I've given some things to the poor, but barely ever enough that it actually changes how I can live. I have, in small ways, pulled myself out of a consumer society that tells us to value ourselves by how much we can buy. But not nearly enough. In short, I've dabbled in Jesus' way, but in no way is my life as radical, free or beautiful as his.

I'm afraid YOU are going to have to decide for yourselves if I'm a Christian, as it isn’t really something I have the authority to answer. Am I, in some small way, like Jesus? Or am I just another hypocrite with a lot of words but no courage to actually do anything? Like I said, you decide.