Blasphemy Challenge

Hi guys, as you are aware, I have been playing around a lot on myspace of late (in an attempt to get my head around it for UNOH promotional purposes - see shobie's myspace page... I did that! - but I did not come here to blow my own trumpet). While playing around on myspace I came across a group known as the Confession Campaign which is a direct response to another group known as the Blasphemy Challenge. The Blasphemy Challenge is a bunch of sceptics or rationalists convincing people to make videos and post them on myspace or youtube, renouncing the holy spirit in their lives. I am not quite sure of the rational behind it, to me it seems quite juvenile, but in the U.S. it has got a lot of attention and the church is up in arms about it.

The Church of course has responded, and the Confession Campaign is one such response, here is what they see their mission as...

We have one weapon, prayer that is aligned with the WORD OF GOD. This is how we'll fight off this challenge and whatever else Satan schemes with. Our goal needs to be to expose these fads, educate people about these fads, and to help the lost from falling for these frauds. This is our mission statement: 1. Confess Jesus with your mouth. 2. Confess Jesus with your lifestyle. 3. BE BOLD!!! Do you want a challenge? Then follow these 3 things. Make a video, we'll put it on this site, leave a comment, send pictures, confess Jesus at school, work, or the street, do whatever you feel challenges you... but BE BOLD

Now I strongly agree with the sentiment above - this is how I am trying to live out my life... the problem is that the only real outcome seems to be that people are making videos stating that they believe in the Holy Spirit and follow Christ. What it ends out as is a Tit-for-tat battle, and really, what good is that?

Yet again, I think that we have missed the point (I don't think that the confession campaign has missed it - I think those subscribing to it have). Yet again the church has circled its wagons, trying to defend itself against attack. I hate to tell you this guys, but a video stating that you believe in OR renounce the Holy Spirit is going to do nothing in the bigger scheme of things.

A friend of mine, Ash Barker once said something along the lines of "The world does not need more words, the world needs more words become flesh" which to me follows on from St Francis' famous quote of "everywhere you go preach the Gospel, and if necessary use words". The blasphemy Challenge in my opinion only exists because the church has lost it's way, has become a laughing stock & is viewed as hypocritical. If we actually stopped trying to defend ourselves and stepped out & lived the Gospel (and the Gospel is good news TO THE POOR! - the hurting, the lonely, the marginalised etc), then maybe the world would once again see that the church is a force of change for the good.

If they are going to persecute us - and the bible says they will, let them persecute us because we are doing the right thing and not because we are sitting back, getting fat, protecting ourselves and hurling judgement and condemnation onto the world.

The church in the west is once again being forced into the margins, we are no longer main stream! - we are getting back to where we were in the first 300 years of the church's history, a powerful time for Christians, a time of persecution, but also a time of witness (through action) and effectiveness. Lets pray that the church wakes up, sees the position it is in and starts to head out into the world to make a difference and does not become defensive and circle its wagons until it is finally taken over.

heartache and joy

We are going through a particularly tough time at the moment. There has been a very large amount of heartache and pain in members of our extended family of late, I will not go into any details about it, as many of the people who read this blog are known by these family members and I have to give them the respect that they deserve. Needless to say that these situations are playing in the back of both Naomi & My heads as we continue on in our work here in Noble Park. It is difficult as we dedicate ourselves to our work to know that family members are suffering, and while if it is ever really needed we could go and be with the family, there is a sense of separation as we have dedicated to living and working in this community 24 hours 6 days a week. Our prayers and thoughts are with them all.

At the same time, we are facing heartache here in our community too, we have now been in the community long enough to experience the ravaging power of addiction, as two of our regular friends have lapsed into their addictions again and have ostracised themselves form the community. It is horrible to think that just a month or two earlier these two people were active participants in our community and now they have hidden themselves from any assistance and are suffering under the influences of their addictions. I am told however that more often than not these things are cyclical, and that these people will most likely be back, and the hope is that eventually, as we demonstrate the liberating power of Christ, the cycle will be broken.

Needless to say, these things make us feel like we are under attack, (and this is where the old Pentecostal theology comes back into play guys) and the only time that we get attacked seems to be when Satan feels under threat from our actions (I am not saying that these things are only happening because of us - that would be extremely egotistical, the universe is way too complex for that, but things do seem to align and occur at particular times, it is almost like there is some higher power at work). We will continue to do our work regardless, we will continue to stand in opposition of the work of the enemy, we will continue to see God's Kingdom come.

The reason for Satan's attack on our lives would have to be that like no time before in the year or so that we have been living in NP, Naomi and I feel really plugged into the community, we feel like we are really contributing and really digging deeper in the lives of those around us. We have become extremely involved in a group of Burmese immigrants, working along side their kids, teaching them English and helping with their homework, visiting these people and really building relationships. We have also started to build friendships with others in our community, including a Sri Lankan family with a son who suffers from the same disability that I myself do - cerebral palsy. Anyway, all this to say that we feel that we are really at home and in the flow here and we praise the Lord as a result!!

Please pray for our family and friends who are suffering.

Pray for our own peace of mind and strength.

Pray that we can continue to dig deeper into this community and these relationships, seeing real transformation occur.

Thank you...

Peter

Sacred/Secular Duality

In playing around with myspace over the last few weeks, I have been confronted by a theme that I often think about and probably have blogged about in one form or another many times, and that is, what does it mean to be a Christian…

I came across one site of a guy professing to be a Christian. In his “about me” blurb, he mentioned that he believes in forgiving but not forgetting, and explained about how he has a 3 strikes and your out policy (as if this is a virtue), unless of course you do something really bad and then you are out on the first strike. I have read other myspace entries by Christian musicians explaining about why they don’t sing Christian songs, and whilst I understand the dilemma they are going through and understand what point they are trying to get at, there seems to be this duality going on in their lives, where they can separate the sacred from the secular within their own lives.

On the subject of Christian art, I agree, a Christian should not feel compelled to sing about Jesus, just like a painter should not feel compelled to paint the cross in their work, but if an artist is a Christian, doesn’t their artwork by default become Christian? The values sung about the feelings expressed, should be a reflection of that belief (and again I am not talking about veiled love songs that actually are dedicated to Jesus and not a girl/boy friend). In the same way, the work of an abstract artist who is a Christian, is imbued with the values of that persons relationship with Christ, even without Christian icons being present on the canvas, and even without anyone else understanding the value of the work…

My point by all of this was not to defend the work of a ‘non-religious’ Christian artist, but to challenge the separation of sacred and secular in our lives. I don’t think it can really be done. Again I am not saying that we need to fluff around acting religious, greeting everyone we see with a “Jesus Loves You” and calling everyone brother or sister, but if the values of the Gospel, the values of the Kingdom, are not present in our lives, then our lives are not given over to Him, and we need to reassess our values.

This kind of concept reminds me of the movie “The people versus Larry Flynt”, a biographical movie about a pornographic magazine editor. In this movie, Larry becomes a Christian at one point, and from the portrayal in the movie, it seemed to be a genuine conversion, but Larry tried to continue his magazine editing work whilst professing Christ (from memory he even tried to put Christian articles in his magazine). Anyway, the point was that something had to give in the scenario, and for Larry, he let go of his Christianity. Similarly, I had a friend who was involved in the drug trade (and other shifty dealings) who became a Christian and tried to balance the two, again he found it impossible and let go of Christ (the positive side of his story is that God has continued to pursue him and through business failures and marriage failures, this man is beginning to turn once again towards Christ). For myself, I used to work in a newsagency, every day I would sell Tatslotto tickets, now that I work in the context that I do, amongst those who are affected by gambling addictions I do not feel that a Christian should work within such a destructive industry.

But those examples are extremes, which make a point, we are faced with these sorts of decisions every day, and not only referring to big things like the industries we work in. We are to be challenged by day to day things, do we display forgiveness in our live (70 x 7 – and this is not literal), we should display morality in our choices of how we live our lives (do we support industries that cause harm to others, do we lie to get advancements in work, do we manipulate situations to our advantage), we should also display compassion (opening our eyes to the hurt that is in others and helping them wherever possible). We will never be perfect in these things, it is a continual learning curve, but if we don’t challenge ourselves in these things we will never change, if we continue to justify our actions, because it is the way of the world then we will never see His Kingdom come.

This morning as I did my reading I was challenged again by this passage; it is relevant and I think that all of us in this comfortable western existence that we are in need to keep it constantly in the back of our minds as we go about our day to day…

"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:37-39)

Australian Poverty

Poverty is a confusing word. Probably the first thing that comes to mind when we think of poverty is the starving children from African nations that we see on T.V. through World Vision (and other groups) ads. This is extreme poverty, the sort of thing that the Make Poverty History campaign is aiming to eradicate. Fortunately for those facing extreme poverty, this form of poverty is easily marketable; for those of us that have not been desensitised by the ads, the injustice and suffering of the sunken eyed, swollen bellied kids standing in the squalor of the slums they live in breaks our hearts.

Unfortunately, poverty affects many here at home too. It is not the same sort of poverty, and it is difficult to market, in fact many of the people facing poverty in Australia have been vilified in the minds of the general public. Thanks to people like Derryn Hinch and other similar talkback radio presenters, these people are labelled as dole bludgers or no hopers or other derogatory titles that just help in keeping these marginalised people in their place.

There is this financial measuring stick in Australia known as the Henderson Poverty Line. The HPL was developed in the 70’s as a guide for what it would take for individuals in Australia to cover their essential living costs. This figure takes into account whether a person is living as an individual or as part of a family of differing sizes and is adjusted every three months in relation to costs of living, inflation etc. Obviously, the HPL is the line that is used to say if a person is living in poverty or not; a person living on full Centrelink payments is living below the HPL. Having said that then, a person living on Centrelink cannot meet their day to day costs of living; this is probably done in the government’s infinite wisdom to encourage people to get a job, however, for many this is not possible.

For myself, I have gone through a stage in my life where I was classed as long term unemployed. I know how degrading it is to be in this situation, and I came from a privileged background… I had a stable and loving family, I had all my needs and most of my wants met as I grew up, I had a good education, yet I could not get a Job. Every fortnight as I filled out my jobseekers diary, I felt the humiliation. Every time I had to queue up and hand in the form I felt the same oppression as those around me.

The people who I meet and walk with every day all have different stories, some of them suffer from physical disabilities, some have had unstable childhoods, that resulted in them not getting a great education, many have fallen into the trap of addiction, many of them are mentally ill, and many come from third world countries where even if they were educated and employed back home (and few of them are), they find themselves without recognised skills here in Australia. Some more of these people have simply made bad choices, but what ties these people all together is that they are trapped within the welfare system; a system that is very hard to claw your way out of.

Few of these people will have the opportunity to work their way out of the welfare trap, some will try and fail time and time again, and others are doomed to be dependant on the welfare system for the rest of their lives with no support structures in place to help them out. Those stuck in the trap will continue to live in a situation where they don’t have enough money to meet their basic needs, for those facing addictions, the problem is only made worse, as they need to gain money to feed that habit and eat as well. Rehab, psychiatric, counselling and medical help is hard to come by, it is expensive or inadequate; free support is often stretched thin and as a result only basic care can be offered.

These people do not have the family support that many of us have, they often have been ostracised from their family, and have worn out any friendships they had. So they are alone, the only contact they have with people is with case workers or centrelink staff (where they are usually only a number or a commodity – I once heard of a centrelink manager referring to people who come through their doors as “STOCK!!!”). Our society in general looks down on those suffering with issues of poverty, if they recognise them at all, so there are very few supportive, healthy relationships that these people can create. These broken, hurting and lonely people can build friendships with others in similar situations, however this too can often lead to further hurt and hardship, and people can find themselves deeper in the trap of oppression, depression and degradation.

My aim in this blog entry was to try and make a case for poverty in Australia, it may not look the same as third world poverty, but it is still robbing people of a decent quality of life. Hopefully I have conveyed the hopelessness that these people face – this is not what God wants for any of his children, and it is something that we as Christians need to face. The Salvation Army estimate that 2.5 million Australians live in poverty, that is 12% of our population. According to a report by the Salvos, this is an increase of 400,000 over the last 3 years. There is a big job ahead of us, and we can no longer justify living for ourselves…