f bomb

As our priest said in the sermon this past Sunday, quoting C.S. Lewis:

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.

but for the grace...

 

"There but for the grace of God go I...." How often have you heard someone say this, when seeing or hearing of someone less fortunate, someone in trouble, someone who's messed up their life?

What does it mean? It means that I could easily be there where they are, except for God's grace which has kept me out of that situation.

And what follows from this, is the unspoken conclusion: God's grace hasn't been there to keep them out of the situation.

Does this mean that His grace is selective -- it chooses some and not others? He gives grace to some and leaves others in the dirt? That He might be everywhere, but doesn't always take a supply of grace along? Spelled out like that, what do you think? Is this what you believe?

How about this idea instead:

[hold on to the center]

Miroslav Volf, speaking about I Peter, says it sums up "the New Testament teaching about how a marginalized group of Christians ought to be situated in the world"

Here's an excerpt from the part where he talks about the sectarian character of the church:

Often people think in terms of sect, or church, of someone who's really close to the power or to the margins of the power.

...

What I found interesting in 1 Peter is how it cuts across -- how it completely muddles these distinctions. I think it muddles these around the central commitment to Jesus Christ.

And so it's not that I orient myself over and against the social groups by drawing boundaries, but rather, I am oriented around the center and boundaries fall as they might, as they will.
And the difference ends up being much softer then, as I don't have to shore up the boundaries to be distinct; I can hold on to the center and it guarantees sufficiently my distinctness.

Wouldn't that make a big difference? Wouldn't that help us move away from the dominant view of the church and Christians as being against rather than being for something?

View the entire 8 minute video: Honor Everyone, which includes discussion of differences, being on the margins, honoring everyone, and clashes between religions and between the sacreds, etc.

See also Adam Ericksen's article about being secure in oneself rather than one's identity being found in hostility toward the other.

[a more personal look at prisoners]

Two interesting projects which help us to see prisoners as real people, and which present them with dignity and respect.

REFLECT: Convicts' Letters to Their Younger Selves

Boston-based photographer Trent Bell, whose work is well-known in the architectural and interior design realms, got involved in a more personal project after a childhood friend -- a man with a family and a successful career -- was convicted of a crime and sentenced to 36 years in jail.

The project involves large-scale portraits of prisoners with the words of letters they would write to "their younger selves" superimposed on the portrait.

To read the words, click on the photo for a larger version.
Read an article with four of the twelve portraits.

---

Parting Words: The Visual Story Of Death Row Prisoners' Last Words

California-based photographer Amy Elkins' project came out of corresponding with prisoners on death row. When one of these men was executed, she did more research online and came across extensive information about executions in Texas (which carries out over 1/3 of the executions in the U.S.) and about the prisoners who were executed.

Her project involves taking the mug shot and portions of their last words, and incorporating them into unique photographs.

To read the words, click on the photo at the right for a larger version.
View more photographs online.
Read more about this project and about the conditions of prisoners.
Read the Huffington Post article about her project.

close to my heart

dots and stars

We spend much of our time giving gold stars to people of whom we approve, who are doing the right thing and wearing the right clothes and believing the right beliefs. And we give grey dots to people who don't fit in, who are different, who make mistakes, who aren't as talented as everyone else.

God, on the other hand, is occupied with better things:

For a cool story book related to this, check out Max Lucado's book You are Special. (pics and summary).

[global morality gap]

A global morality gap.

I'd never heard of the term until I read a recent article in the Spectator. It suggests that there is a significant gap in morality between two parts of our world, and that this distinction may be as or more important than other distinctions (such as First World / Third World, developed / developing, etc.) that are more commonly talked about.

This gap is between the part of the world that has been enlightened, that believes in human rights and all that we can be, and the part that maintains strict moral codes, where men are not equal to men and women are definitely less, where might is right and non-heterosexual is wrong. The part of the world where police are not your friends, where citizens are ten to one hundred times more likely to be murdered than citizens of Europe, and other nightmares are commonplace.

The author suggests that the gap is only going to get wider. Whether that is true, I don't know. On one hand, many countries in Africa are currently enacting extreme laws especially in regard to gay people. On the other hand, Nigerian author Binyavanga Wainaina, who came out recently, is hopeful that though there will be a difficult time ahead, lgbt rights "have traction". And while the western world is very keen on human rights, there are extreme elements within it which would be happy to see many of those rights removed and a more fundamentalist control re-established.

Read the whole article and give it some thought.

Update: In late January 2014, thousands of French citizens marched in the streets of Paris yelling, "Jews get out of France" while giving Nazi salutes. (source). Around the same time, there were also extensive anti-gay protests related to the government legalizing same-sex marriage. Perhaps the gap is not as clear-cut as some think...

western decadence

Of course, it's not that simple, is it. The context of the cartoon, if you are not familiar with it, is the objection to "western decadence" that the Russian government has and which it is reacting against with its anti-gay laws.

While we might think of decadence as rich desserts or luxury handbags, Google defines decadence as "moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury." Moral decline is the operative part of this definition, and that is what is being objected to.

(The other context, for those who don't live in Canada or near shops selling President's Choice products, is that the President's Choice brand has an entire line of "Decadent" products, such as the Decadent Chocolate Chip cookies Obama is eating above).

two for one deal

As the Olympics approach and the torch is being carried across the country on the way to Sochi, Vladimir Putin is getting desperate...

[we are all insiders]

From an advertising perspective, I like the MEC's "We are all outsiders" ad campaign. It's kinda catchy in the way it twists the idea of "outsider" to mean someone who likes being outdoors.

MEC is playing on the reality that many in our world are really on the outside, on the margins. Are they hoping that giving being an outsider a positive spin will get them more sales? Or have they not thought beyond the double entendre?

The kingdom of God gives another spin to it all: everyone is an insider. Everyone is loved by God, Jesus spends a lot of time hanging out with outsiders, and the first shall be last.

doublespeak

Doublespeak is language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs, "servicing the target" for bombing [1]), in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning (for example, naming a state of war "peace"). In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth. Doublespeak is most closely associated with political language.

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak)

Here's some words of the pulpit that can be doublespeak:

Speaking about gay marriage, a well-known pastor recently said, “Don’t take a term and and make it something different. Orwell talked about doublespeak, where words mean the exact opposite of what they used to mean.”

He seems to be suggesting that the way gay people use the word "marriage" is the exact opposite of what marriage "really means" or used to mean. This handy chart shows that there are very few differences between the two, making me wonder who is really the one "doublespeaking":

comparison	traditional marriage	gay marriage
two people	yes	yes
life-long commitment	yes	yes
mutual relationship	yes	yes
love	yes	yes
one man and one woman	yes	no
traditionally based on ownership	yes	no

i'd rather be skiing

p.s. On February 20, 2014, about a month after this was posted, this cartoon was the #4 result on Google Images if you searched for "I'd rather be skiing".

Imagine that! The rest of the results were mostly shirts and buttons and such which said "I'd rather be skiing".

equality for all

If you haven't been keeping up with all the news, here are some disturbing items from the past few weeks:

India:
In 1861, the British instated a law that made non-heterosexual sex illegal.
In 2009, a lower court determined that this law was unconstitutional and overturned it.
In December 2013, the Supreme Court reversed the 2009 judgement, saying that "only Parliament can change that law" and thus recriminalizing homosexuality. The fine for gay sex is once again 10 years in prison.

Uganda:
An anti-homosexuality bill was proposed which would make homosexuality a capital offense. There was much support for this bill both from Ugandan Christians and from evangelicals in the west. Due to protests, the death penalty has been removed from the bill, and it was passed with life imprisonment for "repeat offenders."

Russia:
Along with legislation prohibiting "gay propaganda", there has been an increase in anti-gay violence. And then there's people like Ivan Okhlobystin, a popular actor who is also an Orthodox priest, who was applauded for recently saying (during a "Spiritual Talks" tour), "I myself would shove all live gays into furnaces. This is Sodom and Gomorrah, I as a believer in God can not treat this indifferently, this is a live threat to my kids!... I do not want my kids to think that faggots are normal. This is lavender fascism. If a person can not choose someone of an opposite sex for procreation - this is a overt sign of mental abnormality, so they should be denied of voting rights."

Ethiopia:
Seyoum Antonius, president of United for Life, a "western Evangelical Christian organization that receives funding from the west", "has made clear that he won't quit anti-gay advocacy until Ethiopia adopts the death penalty. One of his rallying cries is, 'Africa will become a graveyard for homosexuality!'" (source). The irony of such statements from an organization of such a name does not seem apparent to everyone. This is one small example of what is happening in Ethiopia (read the whole Newsweek article).

United States of America:
While things are getting better, there is still much legalized discrimination and injustice against sexual minorities in the U.S. For example, there are still 29 states in which a person can be fired from their job simply for being gay (source). This is slowly changing for the better, but there are still citizens who would be happy to see the laws become harsher as they are in other parts of the world.


Increasingly, Christians in North America are speaking out against such discrimination and injustice. We are tired of the dominant view of Christians being those who are bigoted and hateful. We are speaking up to say, being silent isn't good enough. We're raising our voices to say that standing by while lgbt people are put down is not good enough. We are proclaiming the good news that God loves everyone and his arms are open wide to all.

conflicted, or just double-thinking?

In a recent interview, a prominent evangelical pastor said the words in the first two panes. The words in the third pane logically followed for me, as his statements imply them.

But I then wondered what it must be like to believe in something and to also believe in someone who does not believe that same something. What options does this pastor have?

1. Give up his belief in equality and stick to his God.
2. Hold to his belief in equality and give up his God.
3. Live a conflicted life of struggle and cognitive dissonance due to believing two contradictory things.
4. Believe both parts simultaneously -- in other words, believe that you truly believe in equality, and believe in God. This is typically easier when a person is not verbalizing the fact that their God does not believe the same thing as they do.

I suspect that #4 happens quite commonly, that people believe they are good even while doing bad things, believe they are pro-life even while advocating the death penalty for murderers and lgbt people, believe they are tolerant even while they tolerate others only on their own terms, believe they are embracing of all even while they are excluding of some. And they do this without feeling any conflict about it.

Kinda like being against sweatshops, yet buying more cheap clothes produced in them. Or buying chocolate that's not fair trade, while objecting to child labour and human trafficking. Those are examples from my life. Perhaps you can think of your own examples....

Believing both parts simultaneously ties in with the term "doublethink", coined by George Orwell in 1949 and appearing in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four: 

"Doublethink is the act of ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts. Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy and neutrality. Somewhat related but almost the opposite is cognitive dissonance, where contradictory beliefs cause conflict in one's mind. Doublethink is notable due to a lack of cognitive dissonance — thus the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction."

 (from Wikipedia, emphasis added)

So what about that God I believe in who believes things I don't believe in? Is it time to reconsider whether God really does believe those things, or whether I am believing limited human interpretations that have become "gospel truth"?

the four arms of god

The four arms of God — two embracing the world, and two open to those whom we exclude when we say "for God so loved the world"....