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I wanted to think a bit about human rights in the context of Christian economic life. This might seem like a digression, but I don't think it is because a lot of the debate about what kind of economic system is just often seems to center around the concept of human rights. The first problem I have is about talking about human rights is that, theologically, I don't believe in them. According to Christian theology everything that human beings have is mercy or grace, including our very lives. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Therefore, if we are speaking strictly in Christian theological terms, we can't really speak about "rights".However, I'm not ready to dismiss the concept of human rights out of hand. I suspect that, no matter which position one takes in regard to economics, all of us would have an instinctive problem with the "tough luck" approach. "You are poor, despite working 18 hours a day, tough luck; in the eyes of God you have no rights." Or "You worked hard for that money, but we're taking it away from you in order to help others less fortunate than you; tough luck, in the eyes of God you have no rights." I suspect that at least one of those statements will rankle you! For me, the concept of "human rights" is a secular expression of the Arminian (and catholic) theological belief that "God is no respector of persons" (to use the KJV/AV language). Theologically, I believe that God wants all people to come to him, regardless of rank, status, skin color, community affiliation, sexual orientation, gender or any other characteristic that people can think of. God does not love aristocrats more than peasants. He does not love rich people more than poor people. He does not love men more than women. As the African congregation I served in London often said at the beginning of the service: "Whoever you are, you are welcome here. Whatever you nationality, tribe, language, skin color or gender, everyone is welcome in the house of God." This message seems like something so natural to many of us in the United States, that we don't even question it. Yet, it was certainly part of Jesus' original Good News, because it was taken for granted in the Greco-Roman culture that the gods did prefer some people to others and that - for example - aristocrats, men, and the freeborn were ontologically better people than peasants, women and slaves. My African readers can correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the reasons this message was so powerful in the London African congregation was that, back home, different tribal groups were often viewed as being ontologically better than others. This congregation understood this part of the Good News because the opposite reality had been part of their life experience.I think that this theological conviction that "God is no respector of persons" can very adequately be expressed in secular language by the idea that all people are endowed with certain inalienable rights. It is actually the matter of "What are these rights?" that is probably going to be the big bone of contention. I'll try to start thinking about that in the next post.
I want to pick up on some thoughts from a sentence that I heard this morning. The sentence is: "I am less interested in placing blame than I am in learning what went wrong so we can fix these problems"* (please see the disclaimer below)This is a worthwhile sentiment which can also be a tricky one and those who read this blog-post today will likely recognize the very "tricky" context in which it was said. The most obvious objection to this sentiment is does this mean it's perfectly OK to be sloppy, incompetent or uninterested in doing a good job? If you are not pulled up for being sloppy, incompetent or uninterested, how will you learn to do better next time? And what about those individuals who may end up unintentionally victimized by your incompetence? Don't they deserve the satisfaction of seeing you punished?I acknowledge these objections. I acknowledge the fact that sometimes individuals have responsibilities that, for whatever reason, they are uninterested in fulfilling and which they deliberately shirk. I acknowledge that there should be consequences for irresponsibility and that people who are deliberately and willfully irresponsible should not be constantly let off the hook.But the thing is that things do go wrong in life. There are many times when failures are systemic and the failure is not really a matter of an individual being uninterested or incompetent. Sometimes there can be systemic failure even with everyone doing their job correctly. And yet we still love to try to single out an individual on whom to place the blame, whether or not they could reasonably be said to have caused the problem or even had the power to stop it.We are often more interested in finding a scapegoat to punish than we are in learning from our mistakes and fixing the system. I think I might go out on a limb and suggest that more often than not, we are satisfied when we have found someone to punish and we don't even bother trying to learn anything from our mistakes. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense if we put the majority of our efforts into learning from our mistakes?I've just started a new job and there is a lot of detail involved in the training. Yesterday, a co-worker worked with me for a few hours and she caught many of the mistakes I made. And this is how I really learned: I made a mistake, she caught the mistake, asked me what was wrong, I removed the mistaken item and placed it in the correct place and moved on. I learned from this because *I* physically corrected my own mistakes. I learned from this much more than I would have learned by watching my co-worker do the job.I think that there is theology here too. Christianity tells us that God is a God of grace, mercy and forgiveness. God is like my co-worker: catching our mistakes, asking us what we did wrong, asking us to correct our own mistakes and then helping us to learn from our mistakes so we can move on into a new future. God is not like many of us; God is not just waiting to blame and punish us with no care or thought about whether or not we have learned anything.I want to live in a world where I can learn from my mistakes. What about you?====* Disclaimer: I am not trying to comment specifically on today's news item about the failure to catch "the Christmas bomber". I am also not trying to signal blanket or uncritical approval for everything President Obama said, says or will say. I am not interested in a partisan conversation here; I'm interested in the idea and the attitude behind this statement.
This video over at Bible Versus would be funny if it weren't so sad. What I find 'amusing' (if that's the right word) about this video is that I've always paraphrased the 'Gospel' (Good News?) that I learned as a child as being: 'The Father has to send you to heaven because Jesus died for your sins, but the Father is really angry about that because he hates your guts.' Obviously, I'm not the only person who got that message!
We Christians really do seem to be terribly afraid that God will love people we don't approve of. Grace is great when God loves me. Not so great when he loves people who I don't like.
Many people get the message, one way or another, that God is both angry and vindictive and that one of the things he gets angry at is wishy-washy Christians who don't lay down the law and demand that others are scrupulous in their obedience to God.I found this post by Rev J extremely helpful. (Hat tip to John at Come to the Waters)Another thing my mentor said that will stick with me forever is that he has seen nothing in the Bible about people getting into trouble for having too much compassion. He said, “When I die and I meet Jesus I can see him upset that I judged too much but I cannot envision him telling me he is angry because I had too much compassion.”
I don't mean 'goofing off' as in 'wasting time.' I mean 'goofing' as in 'sincerely trying and getting it wrong.'
Will made an excellent comment in a previous post when he wrote about going to a leadership conference: I heard from a guy talking about how we tend to focus on our weaknesses rather than trying to grow our strengths. I wonder if when we (or those teachers in our churches) focus on what we are doing wrong almost exclusively if we hear a message that God is more of a hatchet man waiting for us to do something wrong rather than praise us, and even more encourage us, in what we do right.
Sometimes we can learn by listening to the experience and the warnings of other people. Other times, the only way we can learn is to do our best, to try something and to get it wrong. This process is part of being human and, I think, it's also a big way that human beings learn. I think that sometimes I live by a 'better safe than sorry' approach to God. I assume that God's biggest demand of me is that I don't put a foot wrong, that I don't goof up. But when you think about it, shouldn't 'grace' help us to dare in the service of God? To dare to be prophetic? To dare to do things differently? And, if we get it wrong because we sincerely tried to serve God, won't God forgive us? Certainly if we believe that he is a God of mercy and a God of grace, we can believe in God's forgiveness.
One of the reasons that we worship and fellowship together with other Christians is to be reminded of the basics of our faith. I had such an experience today. Wonderful Husband and I were having lunch with Real Life friends M, J and R. I credit this thought to my friend M, who will be reading this blog eventually (but who doesn't make a habit of leaving comments). Nonetheless, it's important to give credit where credit is due. Perhaps ultimately the credit goes to CS Lewis, who also said a similar thing.M noted that he reckons there is one common theme that runs through 'offshoots' of Christianity. I don't know what word to use and probably some will be offended at being called 'offshoots' of Christianity. Movements like Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons or even the Masons. That one common thing, M reckoned, is that they jettison grace.M reckons that grace is jettisoned because it is an offensive concept and I agree. I think that there are two ways that we can be offended by grace. Even though these two ways of being offended by grace are mutually exclusive in concept, I suspect that if we're honest with ourselves, in practice we all manage to be offended in both of these ways from time to time.The first way of being offended by grace is to be happy when the grace is applied to us, but unhappy when it's applied to other people. So we're happy to get a full day's wages for 4 hours' work, but we're unhappy that someone else has got a full day's wages for 1 hour's work. We are sometimes guilty of wanting grace for ourselves and justice for others.The second way of being offended by grace is being offended that we are in need of grace at all. Superficially, this can appear to be the more straight-foward of the two scenarios, but I suspect that it's the most devious. Because it's not just about us accepting that we are imperfect sinners who need God's forgiveness. It's about accepting that there isn't actually anything we can do to 'pay God back' for his grace.
I've just posted last week's sermon on The Prodigal Son.
I didn't have to preach today! I took part in the monthly United Service at my Methodist / Anglican partnership church and the vicar preached a cracking good sermon. I was grateful for the refreshment of not having to prepare this last week. It's given me a bit of energy in the run-up to Holy Week.
A day or two ago, I picked up a book on a book stall written by a Christian woman who was advocating that women should obey their husbands (AKA "complimentarianism", AKA "male-headship").Now, I confess to only reading two pages, but this is what I read. The author talked about how, marriage certificate in hand, she set out at the beginning of her marriage to change her husband into what she wanted him to be. She recounted how their marriage became more and more difficult for both of them as she set her sights on her own objectives of the sort of person her husband should be and tried with increasing lack of success to change him.The bit where I finished reading said something like "Too many women train their husbands and obey their children when they should be obeying their husbands and training their children."Well, guess what? This egalitarian agrees with all of those sentiments. It seems to me that this is just common sense. Children should be lovingly and gently trained and certainly not obeyed; children need adults to establish boundaries at a young age and then to help them learn to establish their own boundaries as they get older.And no-one in their right mind should ever marry a person with the thought that their spouse could be perfect if only this and that and that were changed. Assuming that a person has wisely chosen a spouse, the key to spiritual growth is in learning to love the person as they are rather than in trying to change them. The sooner anyone learns this in a marriage, the better for both parties. This is just total common sense.My only point would be that this goes for both parties. Men should not expect to marry a woman so as to change her into My Ideal Wife any more than a woman should try to change a man into My Ideal Husband. The Apostle Paul had a lot to say about law and grace; including the fact that grace does not mean that we should abandon ourselves to sinful behaviour. But I think that Paul's insight was that legal solutions to peace on earth don't work. If God actually did legislate that women must strive to change themselves according to their husband's command, this legislation isn't going to result in a loving, peaceful marriage. However, if both parties sincerely believe that they are to love the other and to do everything in their power to serve the other, then love will prevail. (This is actually a tautology because Christian love is, by definition, serving another.)The Law fears freedom and sees the freedom of love and grace as potentially chaotic, therefore Law strives to control Other People. Ironically, it is only the very freedom that Law fears that will result in the peace and harmony that Law wants.
This morning, as I try to do on a Wednesday morning, I attended the service of Holy Communion at my local Anglican Church and I prayed the familar words of the prayer of confession from Common Worship: Father eternal, giver of light and grace,
we have sinned against you and against our neighbour,
in what we have thought,
in what we have said and done,
through ignorance, through weakness,
through our own deliberate fault.
It was the phrase "through weakness" that hit me this morning.
I've always thought that confessing having sinned through weakness was saying that one had done something like broken one of the Seven Deadly Sins. For example a prayer on the order of, "Dear Lord, forgive me for having got angry at my Christian sister".
But this week, there have been times when I felt that I'd tried to do the right thing, that I honestly didn't know what to do for the best, and that I'd "missed the mark". It occured to me this morning, that I was forgiven for these sins of weakness too.
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 103:8)
I loved this take on Grace from James Alison*:
Gratuity is experienced as the lack of retaliation where some sort of retaliation is to be expected, and then as the giving of something unexpected. This surprising nonreciprocation is what pulls the person experiencing it out of the reciprocating mode-of-being and enables that person to begin to recieve and then transmit love as something simply given.
To me, this explains why Grace can never be limited to a select few and why God can never be violent.___________
*Alison, James, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin through Easter eyes, The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1998.
