the gospel and economic liberation
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I’ve been reading Miroslav Volf’s Work in the Spirit. Hard work to read (at least on the train), but interesting. One side point that stood out was this…
Economic alienation … often directly or indirectly causes alienation from God. We read in Exodus, for instance, that the oppressed and exploited Israelite slaves “did not listen to Moses on account of their … cruel bondage” (Exod 6:9). Economic alienation hindered their believing God and grasping the promise of liberation.
I found this fascinating and it brings out something that I’d never heard anywhere else. (Oh, I’m sure someone has covered it, probably in one of the books on my shelf, but I wasn’t paying attention…)
In the frequent discussions of the relationship between the gospel and social justice, I’ve seen few, if any, consider the possibility that social justice might, in some cases, be an important first step for people to hear the good news. We discuss whether social justice might be a significant consequence of the gospel or whether it provides some demonstration of God’s liberation, but we don’t consider that it might need to come first in some situations, that people might need to be helped at a more basic level before they can hear what we have to say.
But if we truly believe that life is not divided into the material/secular and the spiritual, is it so unreasonable that alienation in economics, work or daily life can make it hard for us to grasp the deeper ‘promise of liberation’?
And if we take serious what we see in the story of the Moses, then how should this affect our actions? Perhaps it should make us re-consider our attitude to third-world debt or fair trading or oppressive work environments…
Tags: justice, Miroslav Volf, work
Siedell on culture, Christianity and devotion
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I’ve just got around to reading Daniel Siedell’s post Great Culture (orginally an address to CIVA) Brilliant. Stop reading my blog and go and read his now. If you need some convincing, try this…
Let me suggest that neither “Christianity” nor “culture” per se make modern society uncomfortable. It is the self-sacrificial and uncompromising pursuit of greatness and quality in these practices, a life singularly devoted to them, which condemns the virtues of contemporary professional and personal life: compromise, mediocrity, and personal comfort that makes modern society uncomfortable.
…
Are we now too sophisticated, too enlightened, too iconoclastic to believe in the myths of great art, great culture, even the possibility of a great life devoted to Christ? We’re not humble. We’re cowards.
steam
Posted by Paul | Filed under photos
I’m not a particular steam train fan, but Thomas the Tank Engine has followers in my house. So, here are some photos from a recent steam-related family outing.
(The album was created with Apple iWeb and doesn’t seem to work with some older browsers. Let me know if you have problems.)
Tags: photos
good news for the ordinary
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I’m trying to think about how we can better help our finalist students, so today I’ve been listening to a talk on work by Mark Greene (of LICC): Vision for Workplace Ministry. Worth a listen. (It takes him about 20 minutes to get to the substantial bit, so don’t give up too soon.)
Given my last post here, this quote particularly stuck out for me:
[The key problem in discipleship & evangelism] is not that we can’t figure out a way to answer the tough questions. It’s that we can’t demonstrate to a watching world a way to live the gospel in a compelling manner in the ordinary, good news for the ordinary.
worldview and work
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I think my last post needs a corresponding observation from the other side.
When thinking ‘Christian Worldview’ it is easy to jump straight to the big questions. And this is important: develop a Christian view of politics — I will be grateful; show me how faith and art relate — I will enthusiastically read your book; construct a Christian philosophy of mathematics — my mathematician’s heart will rise up to kiss you. But, hang on, my average day sees only brief flashes of those big questions. What I also want is to know how my faith relates to office work or commuting or washing up or …
Steven Garber put it like this recently:
The [questions] I have spent the most time with over the years have always had something to do with relationships, with the yearning for love, for marriage, and of course with the meaning of sexuality. I have long believed that unless a person has confidence that the Christian vision has honest answers for these questions, these hopes, then it is awfully hard to believe that it is worth working out the meaning of my faith for politics, for economics, for the arts, for globalization (and an honest faith somehow, someday must address them at some point).
He’s probably hit the core, but I think we can expand the point further: we need honest answers to the questions lying around all the details of our lives, as much as the “big questions”. Perhaps more so…
students and vocation
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
Recently I’ve been think a lot about how we can help the students in church as they head out into careers. I’m particularly interested in how we can help them integrate the working side of their life with Sunday mornings. (You never know, I may get around to blogging about this more in the future.) One thing at the front of my mind is that they may only ever hear a handful of talks/sermons/etc. on work life. Considering this takes up a significant proportion of life it seems to be a major omission.
With this in mind, I was interested to read this post by Richard Mouw. After reporting on the vitality of Christian colleges in the US, he ends with the following comments:
What I do worry about in all of this is whether the evangelical churches are prepared to receive and nurture the students graduating from these colleges and universities. On many of these campuses, Lilly-funded programs on the importance of seeing one’s daily work as “vocation” have inspired students to see so-called “secular” occupations as Kingdom service. They are looking for the kind of preaching and sacramental life, as well as continuing education, to which they have become accustomed on their undergraduate campuses. If the evangelical churches fail to meet their expectations, they will go elsewhere. It will not likely be in the direction of liberal Protestantism—more likely they will move toward Anglicanism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Or maybe they will contribute to new forms of evangelical church life.
This brings up wider issues: Only a small proportion have even this sort of grounding. How do we serve those who do not so that they enter working life with some sense of “daily work as vocation”? And, equally important, how do we continue this by supporting and educating as part of church life?
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...