Love

This post is a rant.

There are 2 things that I hear Christians say about love that really annoy me and I want to share them.

The first is that as Christians we are called to love each other but we don't have to like each other.  The last time I heard this was in a church meeting when I proposed that if we wanted to be a growing community we should first be a loving community.  This is a terrible idea (that we don't have to like each other, not that we should be a loving community).  I would hate to think that Jesus would ever say to me that 'although I love you and died for you, I really quite dislike you."  I don't know how we can say that we love people but don't like them and won't spend time with them.  That's not love.

The second thing that people say that seems to me to be fairly ill considered is that 'hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is.'  This is silly.  Of course the opposite of love is hate.  Love and indifference are certainly incompatible.  Indeed, indifference may well be an opposite of love (although I don't think it is).  But to say that hate is not the opposite of love is no true.

As far as I can tell love might be able to be defined as the activity of seeking good for the object of your love despite cost and consequences.  Jesus, when he looked upon his creation, had the attitude of 'If I can just have them then it will all be worth it.'  We are his treasure, the object of his love and he actively seeks our good by giving his own life so that we might have relationship with him.  Love is aggressive and active and selfless.

Hate, on the other hand, it seems to me, is actively seeking ill for someone.  Hate crimes, for instance, are born out of an emotion so strong that it causes you to act and do harm.  I dare say that we use the word hate more often than we should.

Indifference is passive and does no harm.  Although harm may come out of it as a secondary consequence at times, the indifference itself hurts no one.

Now I understand that when people say that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference they are often trying to say that not loving people enough to bring them the gospel can lead to their harm, but that's no reason to get it wrong.

So...
When you love someone, you have to like them.
Hate and love are opposites.  Indifference toward others is a sin, but it's not the opposite of love.

Thoughts?

Prodigal God

I recently read a book by Tim Keller called Prodigal God.  It's only a short read, and is relatively easy to read.  It's written to be able to make sense to new Christians, and even non-Christians who are keen to try to understand what the gospel is all about, but it's also very relevant to other Christians as well.

In the book Keller contends that the main character of the story of the prodigal son is not the prodigal son at all, but rather the older son.  He highlights that the two sons, both the younger and the older are outside of relationship with the father, but the father reaches out to them both.  The younger son responds with humility and begs for his father's forgiveness, which the father freely gives, and not only forgiveness, but favour.  The older responds with bitterness and anger that what is now his is being spent on the reckless younger son whose sins have been grievous.

Keller proposes that the audience who is listening to Jesus tell the parable is an audience of older brothers, not younger brothers, and that it is the older brother who constitutes the main point as the story ends with him outside of the party, not yet having decied whether or not he will come in.  Jesus wants the Pharisees and teachers of the law who are listening to this to identify with the older brother and to decide whether or no tthey are going to come to the party.  God has come to them, in their time and place, to offer his grace. 

The story of the younger brother is marked by his leaving his life of disobedience and taking back his place in the family, which he did not earn or deserve, and was offered freely by the father.  The story of the older brother is marked by the cliffhanger of his unresolved rebellion from the father due to his perception of what he deserved and, indeed, what his brother deserved.

I found this book pretty challenging because I have a lot of older brother traits that I always need to take care to ensure don't turn me into the older brother sitting out in the cold.  I don't hate the institution of religion, I'm pretty conservative in my ideas, I don't have many flights of fancy.  I'm pretty content staying in the one place plodding along with my family, working hard in my job and my church.  This kind of lifestyle lends itself towards an attitude of entitlement and a feeling of superiority over those who display younger broter traits, who I tend to think are largely irresponsible. 

The simple fact of the matter is, though, that Jesus loves the younger brothers and the older brothers of this world and calls us all to repentance and to change to be more like Him and like He wants us to be.  By God's grace I (hope) I am becoming less like the younger brother and more like Jesus wants me to be. 

Prodigal God is a great book to buy, read and pass on to others.  It's challenging and thought provoking and, as always with Keller, it's pretty spot on.

Vocation

I've been thinking a bit lately about remunerative work and what is honouring to God.  It seems to me that there are a few areas in which Christians working is taboo, and the rest is fair game.  We seem to be ok with separating our Christianity from our vocation and I'm not sure that I'm ok with this. 

My thinking on this issue is quite immature and my ideas are not yet fully formed, so I would really appreciate comments from people telling me what you think.

1. I think that what you do matters.  Some careers have the opportunity to honour God, some don't.  We must choose one that does.
2. Why you do it matters.  I'm a teacher, so it's easy for me to be self justified about what I do.  I teach kids in a Christian school and try to incorporate Christianity into what I do however I can. But why I do it is as important as what I do.  I recently got a promotion at my school.  I get paid more, get more time off of class and have some extra authority.  If any or all of those things are the reason I do it then it's all for nought.  I didn't get into my career for the right reasons, but I intend to stay in it for the right reasons so that I might honour my God in my work.
3. Who you work for matters.  If you work for a corporation, business or group that is in the business of hurting people then you are a party to their corruption, greed or whatever.  Some companies are just plain evil and if you help them to do what thy do, no matter how trivial, then that brings no honour to Christ.  If you're not sure about your company then find out.  The old adage that we need Christians in all types of careers and workplaces seems pretty weak to me.  We need Christians to do work that honours Christ.  Period.  Secular vocation can do that, but we need to be careful.
4. Money is only moderately important.  It's so tempting to seek out the best paying job we can get.  We need to be able to make enough money to support ourselves and our families.  Beyond that, the money, really, should be largely irrelevant.  I struggle with this idea because money is so tempting.  But if we really believe that our treasure is in heaven then we will see it this way.

So I guess I should put it on the line and give a few examples...

Take accounting, for example.  It seems to me that lots of accounting work is really seeking to help greedy people have more.  That's not ok.  There are also lots of accounting jobs that help manage money for great groups and causes.  They usually pay less and are not at all glamorous.  But you can make a living off of them. 

If you work in a job that pays pretty well but takes up loads of time so that you have little or no time to pursue ministries then who are you serving?  It's no good having all these skills to make money for a company and yourself if you spend little time actually following Jesus and looking out for and loving others. 

Jobs are a great opportunity for us to meet people to love and tell about Jesus and a great place to learn skills to serve our world.  I think, though, that we should be careful with what we do, why we do it and who we do it for.

What do you think?

Basic Comprehension

Given that the name of this blog is Basic Comprehension, I wanted to share some things about what I've been thinking in my reading of the Bible lately.

I've been spending quite a lot of time reading and thinking about the gospels, in particular Luke's Gospel, which I really like and think is understudied by most churches, usually in favour of Mark and John.  I've also been reading and listening to quite a bit of stuff by Francis Chan.  Francis is not your conventional evangelical expositor.  He would not make a very good Sydney Anglican minister and he is welcomed in lots of circles that don't really get along with each other.  This surprises me, because the things he says are pretty tough. 

One of the things he does that I have been really challenged by is wonder whether Jesus meant what he said and said what he meant.  Jesus said some pretty crazily challenging stuff and Francis dares to think that he meant it pretty much as he said it.  To often I hear Jesus' words reduced to ideas where what he meant was... and the message of what he meant is quite different to what he actually said. 

The classic example is the rich young ruler in Luke 18 who comes to Jesus and asks him what he must do to inhert eternal life.  He obeys the law and seems to love God.  But when Jesus tells him to sell all he has, give it to the poor and follow Him, the man goes away sad because he loves his money too much for that.  Whenever I hear a sermon or explanation of this, the explanation seems to begin with 'Now, Jesus isn't telling us to sell ll we have and give it to the poor.  What the message really is..." and so we reduce it to a vague idea of the pursuit of God over money and feel good about continuing on living our lives as we are. 

As I've been reading through the gospels and wondering what Jesus realy wants of us when he says "Follow Me", I'm thinking more and more that he does ask some people to sell all they have and give it to the poor.  I need to be willing to be one of those people if it's asked of me.  (How you know you're one of those people is a different discussion)

I'm trying to read the gospels, especially, more and more with an attitude of 'What if Jesus means what he says and says what he means?  What would that look like in my life, and how is that different to how I live now?"  Or, if I think he doesn't mean what he says literally, why not, and am I just kidding myself so I can continue to live in sin?

Christmas

This post is a little late, I started it a while ago, and have been too lazy to finish it up until now.

I am often told that I am a bit of a grinch at Christmas time, but I don't think that it's true.  I really do like Christmas.  I think that it's a great time of year.  People are generally willing to think of others, which is nice and lots of people give away extra money in the form of gift cards for others in poor countries, which I really like as well.

I do have a few problems with the way that we do Christmas, though. 

The more that I think about it, the more I have a problem with Christians taking part in the idea of Santa Claus.  It's not the idea of lying to kids about an imaginary gif giver who breaks into your house to give stuff to kids that I hate so much (although there seems little to like about it), it's the very person of Santa that I have a problem with.

Santa has no investment in anyone's life, except as a checker of naughty and nice and a gift giver once a year.  Even the focus on naughty and nice has gone by the wayside in our culture.  He used to be a cautionary tale, where he was used to try to get kids to behave.  Now he's just this guy who comes once a year to give presents and we give kids a sense of entitlement to having him come and give them something.

We say that Christmas is about remembering the Son being born to reestablish us into relationship with the Father.  The gift of the son is a gift of renewed relationship.  Santa can't bring gifts of renewed relationships because by definition he can only bring stuff.  Stuff we don't need and stuff which, quite frankly, distracts us and our kids from remembering Jesus and the relationship he brings.

The other problem I have with Santa is that it takes only a small amount of thought to recognise that he neglects the poor.  Even in movies they often have to address this where Santa has not given presents to some poor kid, because we all know that there are plenty of kids who don't get presents from him.  But he always looks good in the end because this is the year that they get something.  How ridiculous.

I love Christmas because we can remember that Jesus came to earth to live and die to repair our relationship with God.  Maybe at Christmas time this year we can give each other presents that improve our relationships with each other, like time and experiences that bond us together, so that when we compare them to the gift that God gave we are in less danger of being struck by lightning.  Because I feel pretty uncomfortable comparing the gift of Jesus to a bike.