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.

Music at the Thomaskirche

I went to a Motete today at the 800 year old Thomaskirche, where Bach was the cantor for many years. It was delightful. We heard the Thomana boys sing Air, and the organist play the canonical organ piece, fugue in D minor. Brilliant.

Two things struck me.

 First, classical musician friends of mine have told me that to play classical music in church in aus, you might as well play death metal. People dont like it, they say it has nothing to do with God, etc. Bach signed everything he wrote to the glory of God (Soli Deo Gloria), and some super famous classical pieces we know are cantatas of his written for Thomaskirche.

This brings me to my second reflection, which is that the very existence and amazing beauty of music is a pretty incredible invention and gift of God. We get so much enjoyment out of it, it can resonate with our emotions and bring out all sorts of feelings. I don't see an evolutionary precendent for this. If the apes like music, which I'm not aware of, it's certainly not nearly on the level that we do. I like to think, wrongly or not, that it's a gracious, incredible gift of God's to us, whose very existence brings so much glory to himself.

No challenges here sorry, except perhaps that if you're one of those people that are anti-classical music being played in church, then please stop! At our church in Leipzig we are privileged to have a Gewandhaus violinist (as well as several other very talented musicians). At the end of each service we have a piece of music played for reflection, and when he plays it's always some beautiful 'secular' piece of music which is guaranteed to get your heart beating a little faster, and if used properly, aids your reflection on God.

Does Science Destroy God

I gave a talk a few weeks ago at a place called The English Room, a language school in Leipzig. Below is a link to the mp3 and the slides. Not the best quality, but it works. Also, there are 28 funny pauses throughout the talk, which is when I had to manually walk to the computer and press next on the slide-show. If you follow along with the slides, this is your cue to go to the next one.

http://www.leipzig-english-church.de/uploads/TQN/

If anyone out there in the universe gives it a listen, I'd love to hear feedback, positive or negative.

Food

I just read an interesting blog post:
http://scientopia.org/blogs/thusspakezuska/2011/07/26/hunger-relief-vs-poverty-relief-i-vote-for-more-of-both/#more-1471

The things I hear about food in America scares me. It's not just the US though. I recently watched Jamie's School Dinners and couldn't believe what I was watching. There's a serious food problem happening in our society, and I think Australia is going pretty well, but is probably also going downhill. The stats are alarming (read that blog post). There are places in America where there aren't supermarkets, let alone fresh food?! Kids can't name basic fruit and veg by sight?! What's going on?

I recently heard that my high school closed down the food technology faculty. You no longer do cooking in years 7 and 8. We should be cooking at school from kindergarten on. And gardening! Is all that calculus actually useful? I eat food at least three times a day.

Completely incoherent, unstructured post. Sorry about that.

Romans 9

I haven't posted here for ages. This blog became, as they say, a statistic. The relevant statistic is that the vast majority of blogs are abandoned in the first year. Not surprising I suppose.

Last night we read Romans 9 in Bible Study. It's such a straight-forward chapter in some respects, that I'm surprised people have so much trouble with it. Why can't we just read it and accept what it says?

Something that strikes me is that Paul anticipates the counter arguments - "You'll say to me 'how can God find fault, for who can resist his will?'". Hey, that's exactly what I was thinking!

We can't resist God's will, and God's will encompasses minute details about our lives, including our salvation. That's that.

Philip Jensen - I don't know if he coined the expression, I've now heard it outside of Sydney circles - says that salvation is "100% God, and 100% us". I used to like this, because we have to be careful in some ways.

But I think these days I disagree. Not only is 100+100=200, but I just don't think it's true. We have no cause for boasting. God, in order to glorify himself, according to his great mercy, sovereignly implants a repentant spirit in us, without which we would never seek him, and with which we necessarily will.

So my actions, from the day I was born to the day I will die, were predetermined by God before the foundation of the world. Any lesser view detracts from the omni-everything of God. I am clay, or a sheep, or whatever else is unable to do anything but that which it/he is enslaved to or was intended for.

How can we get anything else from Romans 9?