summer solstice and John the Baptist [Sel's Swift Sermon series]

It's just past Summer Solstice here in Sydney: three days to Christmas 2020.

Sydney is in the throes of a COVID resurgence with restrictions on gathering and travelling for everyone in the Greater Sydney area - right before Christmas. Jupiter and Saturn are converging in the skies of Earth, and yesterday was the Summer Solstice down here in the Southern Hemisphere. It was cloudy and rainy and really not very summery at all. And, unfortunately, my usual group of friends who celebrate the sun seasons with a garden gathering and food and friendship had to forgo our Solstice gathering because of the COVID resurgence taking place in Sydney. We'll pick it up later, during the holiday season or possibly January.

But the Summer Solstice always makes me think of John the Baptist.

In the northern hemisphere, Litha - the Summer Solstice - is traditionally the birthday feast of Saint John the Baptist. There's two reasons for this - John the Baptist, cousin to Jesus Christ through their mothers, was born six months earlier, and since the celebration of Jesus' birth - Christmas - is at the Winter Solstice, the feastday of John is at the Summer Solstice, six months earlier.

The other reason is John's purpose in life: to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah.

There's a moment in the gospels some time after John has baptised Jesus, when his disciples are watching people gather to Jesus now - a new and greater teacher to follow - and they're anxious and worried. But when they take their concerns to John, asking him to do something about the loss of disciples and his words are simply, "As He increases, so must I decrease."

John understood his place in the scheme of things. He understood transitions. He understood that he had to give up what scraps of pride or social standing he had gained, because he wasn't the Main Event, he was just the Warm-Up Act. Not the King, but merely the herald of one greater than himself, whose sandals he was not fit to tie.

And so, at the Summer Solstice, the days are the longest, and will slowly grow shorter and shorter, until we reach the longest night - Winter Solstice - when a dark world is lit up by the star of incarnation: deity become humanity, very nature God become very nature man.

As He increases, so must I decrease.

This can be harder to comprehend this in the Southern Hemisphere when our summer solstice is mere days away from our celebration of Christmas - or maybe easier - because the summer solstice also arrives before Christmas: heralding the coming of God. And the message has not changed over 2000 years.

Give up your old ways, make a public stand, trust in a God who came in human form - not to rule over us, not merely to bestow knowledge or a kinder way of living, but to serve us in love and the sacrifice of not only his life but his living for those he loved.

As He increases, so must we decrease.

It holds true for us, as much as for John the Baptist.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, a generous and bountiful solstice, and a Happy New Year to all of us.

assorted thoughts: failings of the western church

I wonder sometimes; do other Australian Christians see the faint echoes of themselves in the extreme of American Christianity? Or am I the only one?

Do they look at the well-worn warnings of "well, you can't trust the leftist, liberal media!" and not see that echoed in their dismissal of anything the ABC reports?

Do they look at the obsession with a leader who 'will take them to righteousness' and not see the echoes of "our Scott Morrison, defender of the Christian faith in (godless) Australia"?

Do they look at the obsession with our position, our standing, ourreputation, our freedoms and not see that echoed in the outrage that businesses can open and churches cannot, that children can have LGBTQIA explained to them in schools, that we can't functionally behave like nobody else's beliefs matter?

People are often bewildered by my interest in American politics.

The Americans are disdainful that anyone should care what they do; it's their country, they can do what they like! They have rights! Responsibility of leadership? Well, yes, they're leaders, but they don't do responsibility.

Australians, I think, side-eye me, because "well, they're just crazy in America". And yes, they are. I said once: "Hong Kong foams at the mouth; China foams in the brain." It was a Pterry reference, differentiating between 'mad' and 'insane'. These days, I'm more likely to think "China foams at the mouth, while America foams in the brain".

But America is our canary in the coal mine. Socially, politically, and, yes, spiritually. The faults and flaws of American Christianity are ones that we have in Australia - less dramatic, perhaps, but still there. Our reluctance to acknowledge racial divide, our unwillingness to concede our privilege, our inability to connect with people outside the faith in a spiritually meaningful way because we demand they come to us, on our ground - both physical ground of the church, and the spiritual ground of a Christian underpinning... These are all problems in the American churches and they are also problems in the Australian church, just in different dimensions.

The 'church of God' across the nations will survive this year, our lives, our family lines, our culture, and this earth. It may not survive it with the trappings of what we recognise as 'church' today - but how much would the Christians of the first and second centuries recognise our version of 'church', either?

I love my church and my church people, but I don't know how well we know how to 'reach' people outside our area. How to love them and let our love speak. And yes, we will eventually need to use words - when necessary - but I'm starting to think that the words should be employed later and later and only at a timely point.

I saw my cousin J last week while I was up visiting him in the NT. On his 40th birthday, we went to a couple of National Park pools and waterfalls and swam while a thunderstorm crackled overhead. It was amazing and awe-inspiring. And at one point, I turned to J and said, "You guys don't do church, do you? But do you remember that verse: The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim his works?" He remembered the hymn. I said it was a verse first, then added, "That's what I'm thinking of sitting here. The glory of God. Thanks for bringing me out here."

We turned the conversation after that, but a small dose of reminder was all I thought was needed at this time. I think his younger brother is still a believer, his older brother converted to Islam for his wife. And I have a vague memory that the younger brother castigated the older for converting. So the boys aren't close and there may be religious rifts. So I didn't think this was the right time.

We're still in the reconnection stage of things anyway: friendly and appreciated, but not close. Hopefully opportunities will come in future; I hope so.

abortion: a new way of thinking

I think late-term abortion needs to be legal.

Mostly because 90% of the situations in which late-term abortion would be considered necessary are already traumatic scenarios.

The baby was hoped for:

• carried for the majority of term - and then died in utero and needs to be removed from the uterus for medical reasons.
• something happend that impacted the safety of the mother and a medical procedure that risks the life of the child may be ncessary
• a medical condition to the child - both life threatening and 'merely inconvenient' - that means the parents no longer wish to have this child

Basically, the scenarios in which all but the most fervent anti-abortion proponents would say well, it's not the best situation, but maybe it's necessary are all ones in which there is already enough trauma. And then, onto this, the need to navigate the 'exceptions under which we will consider allowing an abortion' would be added - one more burden that serves no purpose except to make us believe that we've 'stopped evil'.

The legality of late-term abortions would mean that if someone truly doesn't want a pregnancy, they would have ended it much earlier. Because with the legality of abortion at any point in pregnancy comes improved contraception, improved health outcomes for women, less judgement of women facing hard life choices, fewer hurdles and therefore less anxiety when facing an uncertain pregnancy.

I'm not going into the 'she doesn't want the child anymore' option right here, because that's usually related to a serious change in circumstances - most usually relational/financial.

Both could be solved by financially and emotionally supporting mothers, particularly single ones, without qualification for whether they're the right colour or background or social status or personality. Just support mothers, nothing more. And local churches and Christians would be perfectly placed to provide the kind of community and support that such women need. An opportunity to show the love of Christ - and, perhaps (maybe, possibly, if the opportunity provides, but not as a requirement or precursor) share the gospel with her.

politics

Hitching ourselves to political power of any kind is a bad idea, but hitching ourselves to political power that enshrines Christianity as The Right Way To Live is a truly terrible idea. What we have - what we are - should be a choice, not an imperative. Civic Christianity is not at all radical, and while it is safe to hide behind civic religion, it guarantees neither devotion nor piety, merely slavish adherence to the show of things.

community: the modern evangelical's trip into Asia Minor to spread the gospel

I only thought of this comparison while writing the title to this post.

It was originally sparked by the news that Australians consider church authorities (generally) to be the least trustworthy of public leaders, with 75%+ of the general population distrusting church authorities. I wanted to say that we've been sitting in our comfortable enclaves, expecting others to come to us for the last half-century; now I think we're going to have to go out and meet society on its terms and wrestle with complicated living-it-out-in-love and not just back the safe this-is-what-the-bible-says-in-theory.

And it occurred to me that Paul went out of his comfort zone to tell the gospel. He didn't wait for non-Hebrew societies to beat down the doors of the believers in Jerusalem, he took the news out to other cities, dealt with people on their own turf, lived among them like they were worth his time and effort, and brought the gospel to them at the same time as his everyday living showed these people that they were valuable to him and valued by God - so much so that He sent His son.

It was the 'community of believers' that Paul created in each city: people with nothing more in common to each other than the grace of God. And they met and theologised over his writings and probably the Jewish teachings filtered through the lens of Jesus' ministry and the recountings of his teachings and actions, broke bread and prayed, and then went back out into their usual regular unbelieving communities, taking their 'gospel' with them.

I feel like this should have been the methodology of the modern Christian church, but it's kind of failed. Church events tend to require the community to come to us rather than us going out into the community. There are no church stalls

"If mission is the alerting of people to the reign of God through Christ, our mandate is to do whatever is required in the circumstances to both demonstrate and announce that kingship. We feed the hungry because in the world to come there will be no such thing as starvation. We share Christ because in the world to come there will be no such thing as unbelief. Both are the fashioning of foretastes of that world to come, none more or less valid or important than the other." - Michael Frost, Road to Missional - here -

politics in a time of COVID-19

The other day, I heard a friend voice what amounts to eugenics: "we can't let these old people, who've only a little while to live, dictate how our society goes foward!"

She's nice and white and middle class and conservative, and our politics are very much not aligned. In a nutshell, I think she represents the nice, well-intentioned yet oblivious surface of modern western Christianity.

It's like a comment I saw today in response to the discovery that the Melbourne/Victorian outbreaks may have been spurred by a hotel employee, not the security guard who had sex with a COVID-19 positive patient: "I see people calling for an apology to the Victorian Premier, but I don't think that he should be immune from criticism."

Criticism is one thing; dogpiling is another.

George Pell vs the media is dogpiling.

The Victorian Premier (centrist party, up against a conservative party with a 'Christian' leader) vs the media is "appropriate criticism".

I feel like Christians are so busy defending Scott Morrison from any bad press, that they're failing to understand just how bad is the press around their 'good Christian witness'. Nobody wants to just hear the gospel anymore - not when it's not accompanied by any other expression of love. So many Christians behave like not being able to talk about the gospel is a horrific thing. But what people want is to experience the love of God as shown through his people. They want to know that God loves them in all their broken misery - not that he's going to preach to them or tell them they're dirtybadwrong or their way or life is dirtybadwrong or that they need to improve and then God will love them...

And yes, what people hear with 'hate the sin, love the sinner' is that they and their lives are dirtybadwrong. Maybe it's technically correct, but in a society where you are what you eat and you are how you identify, WE NEED TO STOP USING THAT PHRASE OR WE'RE JUST SCREWING PEOPLE UP WHEN IT COMES TO FAITH.

"But eventually, you have to talk to them about the gospel!"

Yes. Yes, you do. But I wonder if Christians haven't gotten downright lazy once secular humanitarianism took over social justice, instead of thinking about what it meant to be 'made in the image of God' and what other things that might mean.

When Christians talk about social justice like it's dirty, when they back away into their spiritual enclaves in order to remain pure, when we're so busy pursuing political validity via our country's leadership - "Scott Morrison's doing such a good job! (offering marginal support and only to certain people, setting up a group to promote economic growth at the cost of social and environmental security, doing nothing to promote unity in leadership during the pandemic)" - that we can't really love our fellow people...

IDK. I'm just so tired. And sometimes I worry that sooner or later, the church I presently attend will no longer fit me when it comes to social justice concerns and facing outwards beyond the structures that we've become accustomed to as a church body and church culture.

Although we had a good talk about that at bible study the other week - largely related to Michael Frost's 'when you're alone at church' - I think we forget that loneliness is the expected separation from humanity, and while we can mitigate that in the church, sometimes becoming a clique isn't the answer.

gain the world; lose our soul

I honestly don't know if I'm completely in Denial or if my life really is just that good or if other people's lives are really just that Fucked.

I came online looking for things that I wasn't finding in real life. I didn't know I was looking for them, but I was. Geekiness, passion about creative endeavours, answers to questions I couldn't ask in my conservative upbringing and conservative church circles, and which I wasn't comfortable asking of my uni social group who always treated me like I was broken simply for coming from those circles.

I have never seen myself as broken. I just needed to know more than my circles were comfortable questioning. I like knowing what's circumscribed, the proscribed places, but then I want to see the proscribed places for myself.

Sometimes it feels like this isn't something that people understand - either online or offline. The people I know in 'meatspace' are happy where they are, okay not questioning, content with what they have, okay to presume that this is the way things should be for everyone because it works for them. The people I know online are discontented, frustrated, ground down - and with good reason to be so when you walk in their shoes.

And here I am, in the middle.

Okay with the system for me, not okay with it for the people who don't fit.

I'm way outside the comfort zone of my church friends in RL. Because if it works for us, then it should work for everyone! Don't you want it to work for everyone? (Yes, but it's not working for everyone, and a civic governance that can allow for difference - for diversity beyond traditional norms - makes society stronger. And, too, I think that in the absence of perceived cultural influence over our society, Christians seem to be reaching for political power in any form, even if it comes to them in a Christian guise and with Christian promises.

I'm way beyond the comprehension of people in fandom. Because don't I hate myself, what made me, the system, the situation? Don't I want to just escape it all by being something else? No. I don't want to be something else; I like what I am. And while it wasn't comfortable to get to where I am in many ways and I probably wouldn't do it willingly again, that experience is part of me.

But yes, I want to change the system so the people who didn't have the luck - yes, luck - to have the openings available that I could capitalise on (yes, I did work those opportunities when they came but the opportunities were available for me in the first place, which they aren't for so many others).

It's a difficult night tonight; a lot of job cuts, a lot of Murdochian lies, and a lot of casual and thoughtless cruelty, churches who seem to blindly praise and follow a leader who claims to be Christian and yet whose concern seems to be not about the poor or the widow or the fatherless, but about the glory of his government and the economic state of the country. Christians who are more concerned with love of Christian culture than they are with helping those whom no-one else will help.

It's not the valley of the shadow of death because I don't fear death.

I fear the hardening of our compassion, the closing of Christian hearts against 'the world' and the condemnation of everyone who doesn't agree precisely with us, and the society that has lost out as Christians greedily cling to political and temporal power to make up for our loss of cultural influence.

What does it help Christ's church to gain the whole world in politics and power but lose our tenderness of soul for those whom God loves?

godliness in epidemic

When the goverment announced that there would be eviction halts and rent freezes, a former friend from a former church EXPLODED on FB.

I use the term 'former' because she doesn't follow my journal. We don't interact. I don't think she's commented on my stuff once. Her posts come up and I read them because they're infrequent, but - like so many evangelical Christians - they're not actually a form of interaction, there to add a layer of contact and love, just another pulpit from which to preach.

She's very conservative, very evangelical, very judgemental. She thinks of things in the way that I was when I was 22 and everything was pure and clean and simple and obvious. I've since grown out of that perspective because...life, maturity, empathy, and the friendship of a lot of people whose experience comes up quite contrary to mine. And I feel like the social justice of God needs more emphasis right now than plain evangelism.

Everyone thinks they know what we're selling in Western culture. Most of them think it's snake oil. Why? Because a lot of people calling themselves Christians don't practice what they preach. Many of them are high up. Many of them are leaders. Many of us Christians in the trenches have made excusess for them and defended them and reclaimed them to positions of glory and authority once more 'because: grace'...and nonbelievers have decided that hypocrisy is just what the church is and does. They don't have an ear to hear, because we poured our own poison in there, and then demand that they hear the gospel while they're writhing in pain.

And no, they don't know the grace, but if what we do is 'grace' then they don't want any of it. Christians who are more concerned with making sure that their marriages are sacrosanct and their right to worship and proselytise is maintained and their middle-class morality is properly visited on everyone around them.

I quite frequently feel rather like the Scotsman who, upon discovering that his name wasn't down as one who loved God, asked for his name to be put down as the one who loved his fellow man.

Is this just me? That strain of: we love God by loving our fellow man - and yes, the gospel is in there, because I never spoke to an Evangelical who hastened to stress the importance of telling the gospel, as though that evangelistic streak wasn't ingrained into us - but the early church in the Roman empire loved the sick and the helpless and the dregs of society so well that the empire freaked out because people were coming to see that weird monotheism of the 'Jewish Christ' was a real thing, full of the kind of love and concern that was even accorded to slaves - bought goods and chattel, who these 'Christers' yet declared to be made in the image of the divine...

--

As I type (and hopefully post this), the general consensus is that Australia has been spared the worst of COVID-19 - at least in the first wave. We were lucky in timing, in our geography and isolation, in the lowered numbers of tourists thanks to the bushfires over summer. We also had a population who largely trusted their officials, who were well-informed, who are pragmatic about health practices and the need for them in a time of infection. And we had governments who took things seriously, who organised, who made responsible decisions regarding health.

At bible study tonight, we talked about 'survivor's guilt' - the idea that we prayed for succour and God gave it to Australia. But...what about the Christians of other countries, praying for a miracle? If the answer so far is 'yes' for Australia to be spared, why not for, say, China? For Brazil? Italy? The UK? The US? What makes us special? Why were we spared?

I posited that the question we should be asking is not "why were we spared" but "what do we do now that we have been spared?" We have been blessed - but it is through grace that we have been blessed, not through our own righteousness, it is the gift of God. And Christians should be asking themselves 'what do we do with this gift?'

My own perspective is one of a new society - yes, rooted in the value of all human beings, rooted in the value of the environment that God has given us to steward, rooted in the principles of justice and fairness, equality and righteousness. I envision a society and structure when people don't need to fear that they'll be left behind because they've fallen unexpectedly pregnant, and the bounty that we have in excess can be shared around to everyone who needs it. I want to see abundance and plenty, generosity and community, kindness and, yes, the understanding of God's grace upon all people.

No, I don't think that's going to happen.

As I noted in the earlier half of this post, I think part of that is because of our hard hearts - not just to the news of God's grace and justice and mercy, but our hearts hardened to the equality of our fellow man, and the inherent unfairness of our society which is dressed up in a false fairness: a self-righteous sense of entitlement. "We have all this because we deserve it," which even Christians think, when they should know otherwise.

The thing which changed the world of the Roman Empire was Christian love that expected no benefits, had no hope other than the return of Christ and the knowledge that to serve him meant serving those with no means of paying back. I feel like Western Christianity struggles deeply with anything even close to this graciousness: the idea that the people whom our sense of self-righteousness condemns might be turned through our love of our fellow man.

I don't know how this can be accomplished by the church. I don't know if it can be accomplished by "the church" or if it's something that individual Christians must work at, until the impression of 'the church' (the ecclesia, the body of Christ, the saints called to righteousness in the blood of Jesus) is not that of judgement for being less righteous, but simply the love of our Creator and Lord for his Creation.

On Justice: Social, Legal, Divine

There was a thread on someone's FB post, about how the power to protect 'our way of life' drives so many Christian voters with little thought of what our neighbours need from us in practical terms before they'll even think of listening to our proselytising.

I feel that a lot.

Reading the people who are all "but what about the millions unborn who die every year", I think "but do you care about the people who are living now? or just those who haven't yet been born? Could you prove it by your defence of them?" Reading the people who talk about "the right to teach Scripture in schools", I think, "Paul himself listed qualities like love and gentleness, faithfulness, kindness, self-control, and said against these things there is no such law; do these people know that you love them any other way apart from your insistence that they should be told the gospel"? Listening to my church friends talk about "people who haven't heard the gospel"...too often the people I know have listened to the gospel, heard it, but they don't want it for themselves, and logic and the witness of Christians provides no reason that they should.

We argue theoreticals of slippery slopes without ever noticing that those around us are shivering with cold while we have a pile of blankets at our feet. And yes, those blankets are formed from the threads of the good news of the love of Christ, but a hunk of thread isn't going to warm someone. Better to use that thread to make a blanket to warm our neighbour and, yes, cover their nakedness.

Maybe it's just that my family came out of China to the west - some Christians when they came, but some converted over here. We've always mourned for China's restrictions on practice of religion: yet their churches were never stronger than while under actual governmental persecution.

Maybe it's b/c I have no children to protect in a 'Christian way of life'. My friends worry about the world their kids will grow up in - that they might be disadvantaged because of their faith.

I'm more worried about the things let slide b/c they're not 'central' to our faith. Things like care for the poor, for the left behind, for the dismissed and derided and mocked. Protection for the abused and the betrayed and the shamed. Concern for and defence of the environment which the Lord our God left to us to manage shrewdly, and which we have squandered.

The early church had no power, no politics; but they humbled empires by caring for the ones empire wouldn't touch.

State-operated healthcare/support systems? Were instigated by Christians in the Roman empire, because the Roman authorities were worried that the Christians' love and devotion to the care of the unwanted was converting people to this bizarre monotheistic cult.

Every youth group I've ever known talks about hills to die on, but I feel that what Jesus's love calls us to do is flatten out the hills that our fellow human beings stumble upon: unfair work practices, bigotry and prejudice, inequality of opportunity.

In short: act justly & love mercy.

--

Ravi Zacharias died last week.

He did great things from all accounts; I'm sure that my teachers and people I respect have benefited from his work. But I'm also absolutely sure that he's hurt people along the way, perhaps even sinned in very deliberate and considered ways.

It raises a lot of questions in my head.

Including the question is how you deal with sin, repentance, and forgiveness in a culture where behaviour can be very performative. What does repentance actually involve? And 'cancel culture' is absolutely a thing within the church as well as without. Can someone who's fucked up ever do anything right again? And if not, what about redemptive grace? What about leaders who head up ministries: is the entire ministry to be 'cancelled' when the leader turns out to have been a sinner?

Do we have space to hold truths in conflict with each other: that someone did good works helping people and also did bad works hurting people? And if we don't, is there hope for any of us? Can you swear to me that you've never hurt another human being, intentionally or unintentionally? Can you say with a straight face that you don't benefit from stolen ground, stolen lives, stolen work, when we live in countries that were colonised in blood and bullets, built on the backs of slaves and criminals, and wear the clothing made piecemeal by those paid considerably less for making it than you paid to purchase it? There is no-one righteous, not even one.

And this is the problem with cancel culture; if we are true to the idea that hurt must be repaid or else all good be cancelled, we must also cancel ourselves and all that we have done or shall ever do. Because nothing can repay what has been taken from others by those who built the society that we now live in, and even benefit from.

No, it's not a nice, neat thought. But humanity and living is not nice and neat. Compromises have to be made, and I'm not sure that many people are capable of making those compromises anymore - at least, not making them for other people...just for ourselves.

--

I guess what both these thoughts tie into is the concept of justice. Social justice. Worldly justice. Divine justice.

There is no divine justice that Christ takes the consequences of my sins and I go free. Only divine grace.

There is no worldly justice that can make things right - most particularly not when my life is lived at the cost of others and I have no way to stop this without disenfranchising my opportunity to help others.

There is no social justice that can heal the ills of our society, but we can make a change for the betterment of situation for all people, instead of hoarding the good things for ourselves and people like us. Yes, wealthy societies are more likely to reject God, but wealth inequality in societies with freedom of religion only highlights the hypocrisy of the church and the people in it.

why we can and should try to change the world

I believe we live in a world that is presently at once already redeemed and in the process of being redeemed - that we are at once beloved of God and in the process of becoming 'beloved of God'. Maybe like a marriage (although I have no experience of such): where you love the person that you marry, but neither of you stay at that point if your marriage is going to survive. You continue to love each other, every day, every hour, every action-word-thought.

As such, I think that while Adam tilled the ground and it produced thistles and thorns and rocks, in this time of redemption, we have the tools and the knowledge to make that work easier, simpler, less consuming. It still needs to be done, it still takes effort, and there's plenty of failure along the way. But in the same way that freedom for slaves and voices for women and the idea that all people are equal only started being a thing after Christians rolled up their sleeves and started working for change at the ground level, learning easier ways to do things, tools that could be used for the benefit of many, even things like democracy and so forth - all that had to come once God had set the world to rights. Once God made it possible for us to help Him set the world to rights.

I think that we had to know redemption from Christ before we could start redeeming the world.

And no, it won't be done before Christ comes again; but that's no reason to sit back and say the world is doomed.

I guess it's a variant of social justice Christianity (and man, the number of times I've heard Christians talk about social justice like it's a dirty thing to want a better, fairer society in this world) - the idea that we can make things better for the vulnerable and fragile, and that we also should.

mysterious ways

Yesterday, I was scrolling through my insta, and lit on the account of some permies I know. And...I felt moved by the Spirit to pray for their oldest son who I know has drifted away from their lifestyle. I don't know why it struck then, I kind of wanted to ask but well, that's family stuff and not polite. So I prayed for them and the kid - that he'd be okay and they'd be okay. And then I cowarded out about telling her until this morning. (Because: weird, right?)

I messaged her this morning letting her know that I prayed.

Turns out yesterday was the first time in two years they've seen that son. And they saw him because he was in trouble.

So.

That's kind of freaking me out. It's not the faith tradition that I grew up with, it's not a faith expression that's customary for me, it's not a faith experience that I'm comfortable with.

I mean, not that my comfort matters in this.

I wasn't even asking for a sign! (I don't generally look for signs and wonders; again, not the way my faith operates.)

I guess God decided I needed a sign, though.

I'm still parsing that.

short thought

A letter to the UK from Italy: this is what we know about your future

The part that I found particularly pointed:

"Class, however, will make all the difference. Being locked up in a house with a pretty garden or in an overcrowded housing project will not be the same. Nor is being able to keep on working from home or seeing your job disappear. That boat in which you’ll be sailing in order to defeat the epidemic will not look the same to everyone nor is it actually the same for everyone: it never was."

As someone who has already experienced six months out of work and yet has only had to make marginal changes to their lifestyle, this speaks to me very eloquently. I am waaaaaay above the waterline compared to many of the people who've lost their work in the last two weeks, who will be desperate in another two. My experience of joblessness is not even close to the struggle that many people are going to experience. That is luck, or the grace of God - not His blessing, which is given with deliberation, but His grace - unearned, undeserved. There are doubtless people more worthy in much harder positions: I make no claim to being better or more righteous, just fortunate to have opportunities to have made good on the solid base I was given.

And it's not just 'class', but a whole set of privileges (yes, they are privileges) that gives And yes, this makes me think about how we can make opportunities for those who aren't so lucky to have a solid family of love, friends she can rely on, a godly community of God, no history of abuse, no major medical issues, the best education, in a society that at least legally counts her a person and equal to everyone else, however flawed it may be in the practice.

Christ and coronavirus

I'm not afraid of dying. I'm a little afraid of suffering.

I'm more afraid of having spread the virus to other people who might die.

I'm most afraid of not having done enough (or, really, anything) to bring people to Christ.

how to be 'church' in the midst of pandemic

'Reflections on community in the midst of pandemic'

A lot of churchgoers seem really worried that not meeting in person will somehow 'break' the church. Which...yes, community is at the heart of 'the church', but that community is not magically created by meeting together and it's not magically destroyed by ceasing to do so. It's the care and concern that can be communicated through phonecalls, requests and offers to pray or give aid, and loving acts that may be able to be done even when the recipient is not present.

Is it hard to have a worship service when everyone is in disparate locations? Yes, it rather is. But church? Church is the people of God working together towards His purpose. We can do that anywhere, anytime, not just in a church building at a worship service. It's just not 'church' the nice convenient way that we've become accustomed to doing it.

Change is not a bad thing, just a difficult one.

a continuum of sin: thought, word, and deed

Remember Hannah Clarke.

There's not Good Men and Bad Men, nor Christian Men and Ungodly Men.

It's not boxes that you're put in when you're born and you'll never end up in the other one.

There are only Men On A Continuum Of Gendered Violence. And yes, it's absolutely gendered violence, because the incidences of women abusing men in relationships is so small in comparison that it's like, say, Ghana taking on the USA in a financial throwdown. Yeah, it's there, but it's not even statistically significant.

The truth is that every man is somewhere between "has never gotten frustrated with his wife" and "sets his wife and kids on fire rather than let them walk away from him". Every man.

This is what I imagine Jesus meant when he said "to hate is as to murder". The first is the seed, the last is the full grown plant that harvests blood. It's not what goes into a person that makes them unclean, but what comes out of them: thought, word, and deed.

The man who gets angry with his wife and thinks that she's his property, that he should get to control her life and lifestyle, that she should submit to him...well, that's on the same continuum as the man who set his family on fire. Yes, it's a long way away from it, but even the trip of a thousand kilometres can be done by taking one small step at a time.

And, honestly sometimes I wonder: am I the only one who is terrified of the possibilities that live inside me?

I could soak the world in blood if I was given a reason and my conscience taken away. If I saw people as things or lesser, and didn't care about their feelings or their suffering.

Just about everyone who knows me will say that I'm a nice person. And it's not that I'm not. But I know the possibilities that live inside me, and they terrify me.

All I can think is "hoo boy, you have NO IDEA".

peculiar irony (also witness to the world)

Someone said something to me on the weekend; just a fragment right at the end of a social gathering. She mentioned my FB feed and how I posted interesting things on a Christian perspective: not just the standard Christian lines that are parroted by evangelical Christians (and, yes, misrepresented in a worldly context, but we exist in a worldly context), but Christians who are struggling with those grey areas that conservative evangelicals like to paint as black and white.

Women in ministry. Gays in the church. Abortion. You know, those things.

I wonder if 'the world' wants to see Christians struggling more with these questions. Publically struggling. Admitting they don't know the right/wrong of it, or even admitting that they have a right/wrong of it but being willing to let others make those decisions themselves, wrong though they might be.

Sometimes I wonder if our solidarity of belief as Christians isn't a deterrent as much, if not more than, our apparent behaviour. And not just coming to the easy blanket answer: "well of course slavery is okay, because Christians have owned slaves since the time of Paul, right? So it can't have been wrong..."

And, no, the media is not on our side. That doesn't mean they're always wrong about the ways that we're bull-headed and stupid. Just because Scott Morrison claims to be a Christian doesn't mean he's not also a complete shitwit with zero sensitivity and formulated compassion.

"Be cunning as serpents and innocent as doves," Jesus said. Naivete is not any kind of an excuse, and yet so often it seems to be the first Christian defence: "I didn't know."

We are to know the truth - the truth of the gospel, absolutely, but also the truth of ourselves and our world. To see the flaws in ourselves, admit to them, improve on them. No, it doesn't guarantee our salvation, but it pushes us slowly towards becoming made in the image of Jesus.

My mother's church friends told her that she was wrong to remarry, that she should wait and maybe God's direction for her life would become clear. She was okay to re-marry by our modern Christian mores (my father had been unfaithful to her which most modern ministers would say was okay because my father had broken the intimacy of the relationship and so she was free to remarry), but her husband-to-be was not because he and his wife had divorced for the modern "irreconcilable differences".

The church they went to would not let them get married in the building, so they left the church. All the church. For almost a decade.

Sometimes I think insisting we all toe the black and white and shaming people when they don't manage it does more damage than the admission that we're struggling with something, and trusting in God's grace in the meantime.

--

There are four women I was friends with a decade ago and more.

In the last three months, they have all turned up on my FB feed commenting on things that they disagree with (environmentalism), or things that they want to get 'woke points' for (not being racist).

The irony is that not one of these four women has extended an independent "Hi, how are you?" to me in that decade. They have made no overtures of friendship, asked no questions about my life - they haven't even hit LIKE on my FB posts. And, yes, I notice these things.

I notice the people who come by and comment on stuff - innocuous stuff, stuff that isn't Christian or political, which is just every day life. "I love your quilting work." "Ooh, nice garden!" "Are you okay?" These four women do not fall into the 'everyday friend' category - not even on FB.

They cannot be arsed to care about my life apart from when I post something that either makes them feel good about themselves, or which challenges their beliefs.

YES. I NOTICE.

And if I notice this about fellow "sisters in Christ", you can bet your blue, winged donkey that non-Christians notice this about the Christians who are intent on morally policing them.

High-up Christian leaders bemoan that people don't follow 'moral values' anymore, that the church is no longer a voice in the community.

Maybe - just maybe - this is because so few Christians are part of the community. And if Christians haven't done the hard yards of friendship, then non-Christians are not going to listen to them. That's the plain and simple truth.

Paul knew this - of course he did as one of a bare handful of Christians in a pantheistic society where worth was dictated by the gods, not by a declaration of human rights. To the Greeks, he became a Greek; to the Jews, he became a Jew.

And, no, a lot of people who we befriend are not going to listen to the gospel from Christian lips anymore. They've heard it all before and it's like the screech of nails down blackboard to their ears as high-profile leaders are shown to be abusers, to be bigots, to be willing to hitch their carts to the morally corrupt individuals in the name of political power.

What 'the world' will be willing to listen to is the language of love: an ear hearing their pain and sorrow and frustration, a voice crying out for justice for all people not just for the people who are like the voice crying out, a handhold - not even a 'hand-up or a hand-out' that our politicians like to dichotomise - someone to say "you are here, and maybe I can help by being here, too".

--

I saw a phrase via Michael Frost’s FB last year: ‘once born’ and ‘twice born’ Christians. ‘Once born’ Christians find their faith and never question it. God is there, he is holy, he is great, he is good. They hold to that all their life and it’s not difficult. ‘Twice born’ Christians find their faith, but they might struggle at some point, lose it, walk away, grieve, and in the end come back to the faith again. It’s not an easy journey, but it’s a faith rooted in trust in God and his promises, not in the reality of their lives.

I don't know that I've been twice born; I've never lost my faith, although I drifted away from the church. But I am very grateful for those years spent drifting, learning ways outside the traditions of my childhood, discovering people living on the fringes and the edges of the world that I was brought up in. I like to think it's given me compassion and understanding, and the ability to walk into greyscales that I don't think too many Christians are comfortable walking in - and as a result, they struggle to do anything but black and white the situation and other people's choices.

And maybe someday one of my non-Christian friends will be able to say, "Well, I don't know that I agreed with Sel, but she managed to love me in a way that made me feel valuable and said it was because of Jesus, so maybe I'll give Jesus a(nother) go..."

my world's on fire, how about yours?

Interesting dichotomy: living in the now but also living for the future. Not an easy transition to make as any Christian knows. The temptation to live in the now is nigh undeniable, but we can't just pretend that these things aren't happening. And we need to have a conversation about how we're going to avoid this in the future.

A bunch of links about the bushfires.

ABC News
Arson Is Not The Biggest Cause Of Australia's Fires
Are hazard reduction burns effective in managing bushfires? The answer is complicated

Climate Council
Explaining Bushfires and the link to Climate Change

Facebook posts
Jonathan Happold: Melanoma Country, a poem
Hazard Reduction of Backburn? A post by a fiery.

Sydney Morning Herald
This Is Not Normal: What's Different About The NSW Megafires - 2019-11-10
Experts Warn More Hazard Reduction Burns Are Not The Answer - 2020-01-07
A Seminal Moment In Climate Change Opinion - 2020-01-10

Sarah Wilson
Australians Are Angry At Scott Morrison And That's Okay - Jan 2020

Note: there's a temptation to defend Morrison simply because he claims to be a Christian. This is dangerous and short-sighted. Christians have done terrible things, in the name of power and in the name of God. They may not bear the punishment for sin for those things that they've done, thanks to grace, but those things were still not rightly done just because they were done by someone who has been saved by grace.

Also, this smacks of "defending Israel Folau because he agrees with conservative Christians on some points". No. Defend him for the matter of 'free speech' (and then bloody well acknowledge that he can say what he likes, but there may be consequences, even if he comes to it from a place of honesty).

Buzzfeed
A list of unverified and false information about the Australian bushfires 2020

summersongs: advent among the bushfire smoke

I haven't really ever followed Advent. Like Lent it's not a tradition I ever engaged in. I feel like I wouldn't mind the ritual of it, though - the pattern, the practice, the thoughtfulness and reflection.

The structure, I guess.

The world is fire in so many dimensions, the comforts that a generation has known are being taken away. There's a defiance to so many people: it's my life and I'll live as I want it - not just in terms of sin, but in terms of selfishness and social justice.

Today, Greta Thunberg was named TIME Person of the Year - the person who's been the most influential across the world. And considering nobody even knew her name last July while this year millions have marched in a protest she began with just one sign outside the Swedish Parliament, she deserves it.

As a general rule, my church doesn't like to talk about climate change. We're not those "social justice" kind of people. We believe in individual prayer and practice, not in systemic change. The political things that we believe in speaking up about in a church service are gay marriage, gender orientation, and scripture in schools. Yes, it's a very conservative church, and sometimes a rather uncomfortable one for someone like me who's out on the social fringes, with a liberal bent.

--

Four weeks later, and the new year has rung in - and with the last month of the year towns and houses and lives have gone up in flames.

But we still have a Christian leader in charge of our country, and he's about to legislate the legal right to tell gay people that they're dirtybadwrong so long as we do it from a place of honest belief, so it's not all bad, right? We get to be Christians in public without having to pay that price for following Christ that we love to talk about (except in the mainstream media which we know is full of godless sodomites and YAY we are hated by the world when really the world doesn't care about the message we have at all, because they firmly believe that we don't actually care about them. Telling them they're sinners and need God is not even close to 'caring': caring costs the carer time and energy and effort, and ain't no suburban Christan got time for that).

I haven't asked my friends what they believe as regards climate change. I'm scared of the answer. Cowardly, I know. I can do all things in Christ who gives me strength...but I'm not comfortable with making a social pariah of myself among my friends. Well, who is? But that doesn't make it right, does it? It just makes it common...

What can Christians do about the fires? Pray for rain, of course. But I think we need something a little more uncomfortable than merely the thoughts and prayers. We need petitions - not to God, but to our politicians who have been very bad at doing anything other than murmuring platitudes before the cameras and being utterly tone-deaf to anything but their donations base.

Look, at least in Sydney, three of the strongest conservative electorates are in the church-heavy suburbs of the north. They're not the 'hippie' beach suburbs of the northern beaches, or the 'chardonnay swilling elites' of the inner west; they're the bible belt of the city, full of conservative church members who just want everything to be the way they've gotten used to it being: from being able to use resources as they please and throw things away without feeling guilty, to speaking their mind, even if it's to keep asking a non-white woman where her family's from, but get offended when their answer to the return question is "Australian" and she asks what indigenous group they hail from.

We like our creature comforts.

Maybe it's time to be less comfortable - at least when it comes to prayers and actions.

We need to pussyfoot less around the people "protecting our Christian rights" and demand more action from them. Things like, oh, funding the RFS, ensuring that Centrelink beneficiaries who are fighting fires continue to get paid their benefits, having evacuation plans for all cities and towns, not selling our water rights away, insisting on the conservation of town water supplies in all towns and cities across the country, encouraging the uptake of both rainwater tanks and greywater systems...and these are the really conservative-friendly ones.

I haven't even gotten to the controversial topics like reducing our carbon footprint, offering tax breaks to companies that reuse recycled plastics, having a Coal Exit Plan in place and activating it sometime before we run out - and not moving promptly to Nuclear Will Save Everything Oh And Look, The Mining Companies Who Profited From Coal Can Switch Their Operations To Uranium Instead. (My stepfather went on at length about The Greens holding back Australian progress in the form of nuclear power because apparently nuclear power is 'clean' while solar panel making is pollutive.

There are no good choices in late-stage capitalism; but he won't believe that. He doesn't like The Greens - Rupert Murdoch has taught him that the Greens are Evil and trying to Obstruct The Path To The Future, and so he has learned his lesson well and will regurgitate it at every opportunity like it's the very gospel itself.

Yes, we pray, but sometimes God says 'no'.

If God says 'no', then what do we do?

We work with the 'no' He has given us. We act as though drought is going to be our persisting future, as though fire is going to be our endless summer, as though our world is temporary and we should do what we can to save it as long as possible. "Does grace mean we can sin as we please?" Paul asks the Ephesians (I think it's the Ephesians). "Certainly not! We seek to live grace-filled lives as a sign of the grace that we have, no longer thrashing about in the sin that we were steeped in."

We have environmentally sinned as we please for the last 150 years, but in this age we have been granted the vision of how sinful and fallen we are. We have the opportunity to live in grace - in the holding back of the inevitable by nothing less than an unexpected and undeserved wake-up call.

The question is whether we will?

It's too late for advent as I write this: the time of anticipation of God coming near has passed. He is not just near, but here.

The kingdom of God is at hand, the renewing of the world is not just spiritual but surely also in the temporal now. We are the agents of His work - those who brought health care to the Roman empire, those who decided to educate the uneducated so that they might better know and understand and comprehend the salvation of Christ, those who claimed the right of humanity for women and slaves who were made in the imago dei as surely as white male landowners, and so many more fights for justice through the ages.

Will there be Christians at the forefront of the grace of climate action?