love through relationships

I spent Saturday night in the midst of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, at a church that opened its gates and doors to the people going along, providing refreshments and space, in the name of Jesus and for the love of Him.

I was so glad to be out there as part of the body of Christ, offering assistance and space. And yeah, there were conversations had about faith and belief, but mostly just smiles and inquiries, offers of water, chai, pancakes, and sausage sangers.

There are people who will disdain this as "affirmation" and others who will sneer that it's "propaganda".

Is it affirmation to succour the humanity - hunger, thirst, exhaustion, sensory overload - of those we disagree with?

Is it propaganda to put our best foot forward when we have the resources and desire to?

I've wanted conservative churches in Sydney to put their actions where their teachings are for a while, particularly in a space that challenges us more than it comforts us. Not typical "evangelism" stuff but hospitality and kindness, "living lives of such generosity and love that even the pagans will see you are different and rejoice" as Paul once said.

I don't want the word of God to be used as a bludgeon. I want it to be living water, satisfying a thirst most people don't even realise they have. But you can't force it down their throats and expect them to be grateful. That's not how this works.

"How do you show Christian love if you aren't also judging them according to God's standards?"

It's a question that most Christians wrestle with in one form or another. Most of the people in my circles tend to fall on the side of "if you do anything with them without emphasising their sinfulness and their need for God, then you are failing them and failing God, and failing your Christian calling". In the extreme version, it means you don't have gay friends or trans friends. You don't eat with sinners. You don't break bread with the fallen and not-getting-up.

I mean, it's okay if they're socially "civilised": you know, they would fit into the church so long as they never opened their mouth or had to make a statement of faith.

On Saturday night at the 'open grounds' in the midst of the Mardi Gras, a young earnest Evangelical said she didn't want to ask people how they were enjoying the night because if they said 'yes' then she was enabling their sin and making it seem like it was okay for them to be sinning.

Which mostly leads me to the reminder that our version of 'sin' is entirely too small.

Fucking someone outside of wedlock? Sin!

Kissing someone of the same sex because of attraction? Sin!

Enjoying a celebration that's set up around a sinful lifestyle? Sin!

But...

Bitching at a family member before you left the house this morning? Not!Sin!

Ignoring the homeless person with their hand out when you walked past them on the way to work? Not!Sin!

Making snide comments about someone who doesn't have the ability to hit back? Not!Sin!

Our version of 'sin' is limited to the things we do, rather than the way we interact with people, rather than the way we interact with our fellow image-bearers, rather than our attitude to existence. It's a very small version of sin, which makes it easy to decry those things that other people do while ignoring the things that we do. And even those of us who know that sin is an attitude and not merely actions often forget and try to ensmallen sin so it excludes our own sinful acts and thoughts and omissions.

I've talked about this a lot on here before: the very distinct insistence that we have to tell people the gospel... And yes, we do. But picking the time and the moment, backing it up with a relationship, being about more than just the words? I think we have too many words and not enough of the other stuff. We live in a time of words and wordiness, of speeches and comments, of shortform videos and long bursts of information. People don't want our words anymore.

They want our love - our actions, our kindness.

Can we tell the truth kindly? Yes. But also, it requires first a relationship. God does all His best work through relationships.

Marty and the Matildas: a Christian perspective

Hey my brothers, Have you ever laughed with another men about how useless women are? About how silly their pursuits and interests are? How pointless it is to encourage them to stretch their wings, to be whatever they can be, to enjoy life and living?

Congratulations. You've just joined The Lot In Sodom Club!

For those of us not up with the passage, let us take a moment: Genesis 13. Lot lives in the city of Sodom, in an honour-shame culture. Sodom's not a nice town; it's the region where you don't want to live because, well, the people ain't neighbourly. And that's putting it nicely. (God has a whole bargaining sequence with Abraham where he's planning to destroy the city for it's inhospitality, and Abraham bargains God down to 5 good men in the city only to find there isn't even that many.)

A couple of messengers from God turn up at Lot's house, and he invites them in as guests. Then the men of the city gather around outside and want to shame these guests by raping them. (Reminder: rape is about power over, not about desire for. People do not commit rape because they so desperately desire the person, they commit rape because it's one of the most effective and devastating ways to show your power over someone.) Anyway, letting your guests be raped by your neighbours goes against the law of guesthood in this culture and Lot is against that. So instead…he offers his daughters for the locals to rape instead of the guests.

People often mistake the bible for a book of heroes; examples of what to do. Instead, it tends to be examples of people keeping from doing awful things and instead doing EVEN MORE AWFUL things - and the whole point is . And we see this here where Lot does something that is perfectly acceptable by his culture to prevent something that is unacceptable by his culture.

A side note that people may not realise: female rape may have been normative throughout the history of human society; that does not make it right in the eyes of God. There are plenty of things that have been normative through the history of human society - slavery, torture, slaughter of your enemies - that does not make it right in the eyes of God.

At this point in the narrative of Lot and his well-intentioned-but-spiritually-bereft-binary-decision-making-process, the messengers from God aren't having with this. They grab Lot and drag him inside and say, "right, what's your exit plan?" They get Lot and his family out of the city

What Sheargold said used to be perfectly acceptable in our culture. Make fun of the women, of their pursuits, of their attempts and failures, of their presence in areas that have often excluded them - through money, through laws, through social exclusion. It is normative throughout the history of human society; that does not make it right in the eyes of God.

So you've laughed at the "silly women" or dismissed something as "the ladies, lord help us". Gotten a laugh out of the guys, felt good in the moment. It's the Marty Sheargold moment of glory. Good laughs, good times, people who get it.

Apparently Mister Sheargold has a fifteen year old daughter. Now, maybe she doesn't have an interest in soccer, in the Matildas, in moving outside of whatever her perception of 'proper and appropriate for a woman' is. But in that moment when Marty likened grown women playing professional sport to the games of little girls, and dissed the watching of both? He did a "Lot of Sodom", metaphorically speaking. He shoved his daughter out the door of his house, into the street, at the mercy of anyone who wanted to take a passing swipe at a cunt - a slag at women, their skills, their discipline, their interests.

"Oh, hey, don't you think that comparison's a bit extreme?"

Well, so is tearing out your eyes to keep from lust, and Jesus Christ (of Nazareth, son of God, son of Man, Messiah, holy one, Prince of Peace, Lamb of God, Emmanuel - all those big and fancy names) said that bit. So maybe a bit extreme might be a helpful way to shock us out of what's socially acceptable so we think about what's spiritually acceptable.

When you're selling respect of your daughters/wife out, in order to feel good with the laughs of your fellow penis-haverers (yes, biological determinism in phrasing), isn't that also selling out…God's vision and version of humanity?

God who made all human beings in Their image ("let us make humanity in our image") and then makes a woman out of man (so…the man/humanity had 'woman' inside him from the start of creation before God creates male and female? Bonus question: if we take the literal reading of Genesis, the woman was already within man when 'man' was first created, does that make the initial Adam an androgyne?) whose people are instructed to give a day of rest to EVERYONE (including those whose work is not acknowledged, or is presumed - "you, your wives, your children, your male and female slaves") who provide examples of women being granted land on their own bloodline cognisation, whose first evangelists were female - a portion of society whose words weren't valid in court, that God's vision and version of humanity?

There's a lot of fuss over who's 'higher ranked' in the social order of gender before God. And not a lot of acknowledgement that this is just Sons oF Thunder And The Disciples Scrapping levels of insignificant before the majestic God - who is a they/them by trinitarian definition, just to tie a few knickers over.

Vine Church and the Sydney LGBTQIA+ Mardi Gras 2025

On Saturday night, during the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras I attended an 'open grounds' event in a church in Surry Hills. Every year, the church opens their grounds, offers food and drink, a place to rest and chill, and some easy music for people to take a break from the chaos of the Mardi Gras.

This is my first year volunteering, but I know a kid from my local church who's been going the last two years, and the open grounds itself has apparently been running in some form or another for twenty years. They've got it down to a fine art, including not only setting up teams for the various stations, but also getting volunteers from all over Sydney. The kid from my local church wasn't the only one, and I found myself herding a bunch of kids home at the end and giving one a lift home from the station.

I say 'kids' because they're the age of the children of my peers at church, but they're young adults, really. I think they thought I was maybe a decade or two younger than I am - still older, but not as old as I am.

The goal is not to proselytise, not to argue sexuality or gender politics. It's also not to affirm or deny what people are doing or to make a stand on one side or another of the line. Ultimately, the goal is to provide rest and respite in a space that wouldn't usually be associated with Mardi Gras. To provide a positive interaction with Christians and the church for people who wouldn't usually step into a church ground. And for Christians of Sydney to show love and kindness and compassion to people who we might not otherwise usually have the opportunity to minister to.

I liked that goal. I could get behind it. And when my sister sent me a link about signing up for it because her church (the 'cathedral' church of our denomination) asked for volunteers, I put my name in.

They take your name, ask you to sign a statement of belief, get you to put down a spiritual referee, have you choose two teams to join, and have an 'induction' day that people attend so they can make it clear what they're asking for. Then you turn up on the afternoon of Mardi Gras, there's setup, and prep, and an information session on how the night will go. If you're part of the 'conversations' team, then they'll give you some training on how to hold those conversations in gracious and graceful ways, with love and not confrontation.

I put my name down for 'conversations' and 'pancakes' teams. I have no idea why I put down conversations, and no memory of signing up for conversations, but when the email came in, that was where I was. And, to be honest, I guess God wanted me to both challenge and be challenged by the conversations I had that night.

Two shifts through the night, you're supposed to take at least one break and switch around in the middle. I was on 'conversations' to start with, then 'pancakes' later. They set me up outside in the entryway with some beads to make friendship bracelets.

I got into a conversation with a woman who had been raised at one of the Anglican-run private schools, so she'd learned all the typical stuff, but had ended up in a very Eastern Religions background - yoga, lots of "many roads lead to the right place', etc. She helped me out with the bracelet beading as we chatted, sorting beads into groups and laying out the letters so I could spell out 'L-O-V-E-D' on the bracelets.

My recommendations for the beading would be to have a bunch already made and ready for people to take. Try to work in phrases that don't use the letters L-O-V-E-D, because those are best for the ones that we make up on the spot. Also a needle or two for easier picking up of beads, and another set of scissors.

Have some 'stable tables' that the people beading outside could put on their thighs, and a sign to advertise what's going on and that people can get a friendship bracelet as they go in. (Conversations team can then link the bracelet with our purpose in opening the church to people.)

Some people will want to sit down and choose their own colours (there were not the right colours for a pride flag, although you could maybe do a trans flag if you were thoughtful about the choices) but I mostly directed people to just move up and down the colour ranges that were available in the box.

The second most meaningful conversation of the night was a guy who came from Ireland. His experience of the church and religion was 'Catholic guilt' so I talked to him about the joy of knowing Jesus, of being known, of being loved. He didn't sit, but crouched by me while his friends went inside. We talked for about ten minutes and I made a bracelet for him. I don't remember his name, but as I tied the bracelet around his wrist, I told him that when he woke up tomorrow, I wanted him to remember that he's loved by Jesus, that it's not guilt and shame, but love and freedom.

There are probably Christians who would feel this isn't enough. You have to TELL HIM THE GOSPEL right there and then, while he's listening. HAMMER IT HOME. That sort of thing.

Sometimes, I think the problem is that we're too busy hammering it home to realise we're bruising bent reeds. It takes an average of seven times for a woman to finally, fully walk out of an abusive relationship. And what is sin if not the epitome of abusive relationship?

There were a group of women in string-and-fabric dresses who paused for a few seconds, and exclaimed over the bracelets but weren't willing to stop and make ones themselves. (Need more of a table space for this, I think.)

Note to self: I think I might make a 'string and fabric' dress for next year, but in black as per the 'uniform' request, and designed to show off my tattoo. Also, longer hemlines and with a high cowlneck, maybe a more A-line skirt. The idea is to have something in the style, but less 'flesh on display'. Also, I'm not skinny anymore, so it's not much of a thing.

And there was a couple, she was South Korean, he was Thai, they made bracelets, but their English wasn't good enough to do more than hit the high points, and even then they were a bit vague. He did ask "Church? Why?" And I tried to convey, "Because Jesus love." Don't know if I did.

Every small interaction.

Anyway, I did the beading so long as there was light, but by the time the second shift hit, it was too dark for people to see what I was doing, and most people were led towards the light inside the church foyer, so they didn't need to be drawn further in. So I tidied up my beading stuff and went inside for a break. Got some water, took a breather and chatted with a few people on the team, then went out to see if the Pancakes team needed help.

Pancakes was pretty busy; they were outside, had a gas BBQ plate that was supposed to have two lines of gas heating, but really only had one that worked with any decent heat. Then there was the issue of the pancake mixes which needed to be made up but often tended to be lumpy or too liquid or too thick. I ended up helping flip pancakes, and chatting with the people in the line. A couple of light conversations (it's difficult to talk about life-changing things in the dark when you're trying not to let the stuff you're cooking burn), and one guy from Italy "Catholic" but doesn't really believe in anything - he didn't think there was anything in any religion, but he was impressed by the fact that the church was opening up its doors and space during Mardi Gras.

Then disaster struck: the BBQ plate we were using stopped working. We had to shut the pancake station down and turn people away (directing them inside for chai and a sausage sanger), and I went back inside and took another break, chatting with a few more team members.

I came out, wandered through the church 'proper' which had been set up as a 'quiet space' - a sensory null - so people could sit out of the chaos and let their energy wind down. There was beading happening there, but they didn't need me, so I went out to get a pancake and half bumped into a guy who stopped in the lobby and stared at the ping pong table. He looked kind of shocked, so I checked in with him (he was just taking a moment to recalibrate because the guys doing ping pong were SRS BSNS) and then I asked him about the night.

Turns out, he was the 'responsible adult' of his group this year. Someone else was the responsible adult last year, so they were responsibly adulting by taking turns being the responsible adult! He had some cool beads across his cheekbones which I asked where he'd gotten them from. His experience of the church and faith was typical English standard, which is to say 'Christmas and maybe Easter' but his stepmother was devout. However, he'd listened to Tom Holland's Dominion on audiobook just last week while driving down from Brisbane, and was in a very different place of spiritual questioning than he had been just a week ago.

We talked about sticking to your moral guns, about religiosity, about what to do when organisations didn't move as fast on matters as you thought they should. About moral authority and spiritual guidance. I probably could have asked more piercing questions than I did, but it was one of those conversations where you're not sure if they're going to keep talking or if they're going to spook. He kept talking, though, and it was good. I did mention that there was an Alpha course happening at the church in the coming weeks, and if he ever wanted to walk into the church on another Sunday and ask questions, there would almost certainly be someone who'd be willing to talk to him.

We closed up around 10pm, cleaned and tidied everything up, ate the last of the pancakes and then debriefed.

At least one person (maybe) came to an understanding of the gospel that night and gave his life to Christ, albeit in another language. But many others spoke of getting people to codify what they believed - asking them to 'get meta' about their thoughts around their worldview. There were a number of comments that indicated that people appreciated this kind of Christian love in the community, which, no, shouldn't be the endgame, but is a good and beneficial filip along the way.

And then we went home, with me shepherding a group of around six young people (well, we all shepherded each other) back to Central station from whence we went home. Encountering one of the other young people from our church - not one who'd been working with the Open Church - on the way!

It's the kind of thing I've been wanting to see 'the church' do more. Action without affirmation or approval. Kindness and love without condemnation.

Is it a fraught space, a delicate negotiation between "affirming" what people are doing that night and just providing hospitality? Yes. Doubtless there are people who think that even opening the church gates to the sinful without thundering condemnation of their lifestyle is approving what they're doing. But we are in a world that no longer accepts Christianity as the baseline of its moral code, and when it does promote Christian values, those values are more often used as a bludgeon to beat others into line than they are used to value and cherish and promote the thriving of humanity. We've left human rights to the rational humanists, and too many Christian movements are now trying to legislate morality instead - as though the kingdom can be brought with civil words and good behaviour.

At this point in time, with so many words and lies and liars and con-men out there making money out of mouthing piety and practising hypocrisy, we are better off shutting our mouths for the most part, only answering when people ask, "but why are you doing this when you're supposed to hate us?" with "because Jesus asked us to love you, and this is an expression of that love".

The 'conversations' training before we opened the gates was interesting: they gave us some hints and tips, a post-it note to write down what it is about Jesus that brings us joy, about why it is that it's good to know the Lord. They asked us to think of conversation openers and how to invite people into discussions. What stuck with me was one young woman who said she wasn't comfortable with asking how they were enjoying the evening, because they would probably say it was great and fun, and she wasn't okay with them enjoying what was sinful and/or affirming that enjoyment.

I'm trying to remember myself in my twenties, with that perspective and that view: if I had that view. And how I grew out of it in the end. Probably through contact with a lot of people from all walks of life, slowly changing over the course of twenty years. I still believe the core of what I believed then, but I'd phrase it very differently. In knowing God, in trusting Him, we become who we are meant to be. We are kites with an anchor, we are creatures basking in the glory of our Creator, children trusting in the love of a father who is both loving but also who sets and recognises boundaries.

In the end, the young woman was the one who spoke to the guy with the language barrier, and called a friend who spoke his language to bring him to Christ on the phone. So there's a lesson and teaching in there for me, too. :)

In all honesty, I resonate more with the "the goal is to get them to Jesus and let Him convict them of their lifestyle". Not to mention 'lifestyle' can be anything from sexuality, gender, to monetary practices, to treatment of women as co-heirs in Christ, to having a compassionate and active heart for the vulnerable in our society, or creating opportunity for those who otherwise have little to no hope of thriving. But I move among people who 'know of the gospel' but don't believe it means anything more than a good way to live. Like the yoga lady I first talked to, it's about what you do and the kindness you show and us all doing good for each other. That's a hard shell to break through, and at this point in time and history and society, we're only going to get little cracks at doing it. So take the little cracks where you can.

To me, it's about knowing who you are in Christ, being known through and through in that relationship, and being loved all the same, even as you grow and change and become who you're meant to be: a child of God, the apex of creation, made in His image, to give glory to Him.

the future of the church

My church had a meeting about a building project - improvement on the current buildings to incorporate a more 'traditional style auditorium' (one large enough for 400 people and better to have weddings in) - and it was...interesting.

I'm not going to talk about the money involved, but about where I see the future of The Church, not just the future of this church (although obviously the church I'm attending will also be mentioned and referenced as part of The Church).

The church I attend is 100 years old. At some point in the 60s, the 'traditional style church building' that the church must have been meeting in got rebuilt to a somewhat mid-century-modern A-frame building. In the mid-00s, with the church growing through the next gen of kidlets of the faithful, they rebuilt whatever building had been used out the back for a Sunday School and general education centre, and turned it into a centre specifically for education - high ceilings, divisible rooms, storage spaces all along the sides. There was a space for an early childhood learning centre downstairs and a small kitchenette and 'mothers' room' upstairs.

The current set of buildings served all four church services (8am traditional, 10am family, 5pm family modern, 7pm youth modern) up until COVID. Then there wasn't enough space in the old A-frame church building for everyone to fit in, and so 10am, 5pm, and 7pm set up in the 'education centre' with the dividing panels folded away. The kids programs are held in the various rooms and spaces around the church during 10am and 5pm, but 8pm refused to move from the A-frame, so they get set up every week special.

Some of the services are getting bigger. 10am is regularly running into 'overflow spaces', but 7pm is also bursting at the seams. And people don't want to move services and lose their congregational community. I understand that. I haven't been in a church service in months now and the weekly bible study groups and the occasional trivia night gatherings are very much keeping me connected.

I understand the reasons for the desire to build bigger, but some of the underpinnings of those reasons are not concepts that I accede to, or at least, not the way the church board does.

Firstly: the myth of unending growth. The last 40 years have seen unprecedental global, economic, and population growth, and up until about 10 years, an unthinkable social stability. But that can't continue forever; we're running out of oil, we're running out of resources. Our society - our communities - are fraying at the edges. Fearmongering, frustration, the internet, and the social media algorithm are wedging us into smaller and smaller groups.

That isn't going to get better. Not now, not in the next twenty years. Not so long as people cling to the idea that we can get back to the boom years (really, the Boomer years). We are going off-road, baby, and there ain't no maps into this land. Now is not a time to be building up, but to be reinforcing what we have and improving our social connections.

Modern western Christians have a bad habit of thinking that the 'ever onwards and upwards' is going to be a thing forever - most likely because we're steeped in modernity and western thinking and it's hard to step outside of that. We like to cite 'Judgement Day' or the day when time will stop and all things will be made new, but apart from general evangelistic fervour, we live (and vote) as though this world doesn't matter.

Secondly: the myth of church growth. Globally, Christianity across the world has held stable for the last 40 years. However, the number of people IDing as Christians in the west are decreasing while the number of people IDing as Christians in the Global South is increasing.

My church is Anglican. It's in the name. It's a Church of England church. Which means it does things a certain way. Holds certain views. Enshrines certain perspectives.

Those perspectives are not going to hold for the next 40 years. We are going to become a minority, which means - if we want to be effective in ministry - we should be spending money working out how to reach sectors of society which the Anglican church of Australia has been generally kind and loving towards but which is wary of them in authority and leadership.

Notably, the Sydney Diocese is current led by an Archbishop who is of Sri Lankan background, who started off Hindu before he converted. This is definitely a good start, but cross-cultural ministry absolutely needs to be more of a thing, not only in our mission statements but in where we put our money and our leadership authority.

At the meeting, I brought this point up. Perhaps a little baldly: "one does not send a man accustomed to harvesting wheat to harvest sugarcane". I got a few laughs, but I think I also made my point, albeit not as thoroughly as I wanted to.

In essence: we are an Anglican church. We are Anglicised in our manner and our practices. And while we say that the gospel is relevant to and needed across all nations, the points of emphasis and comprehension will adjust according to the culture's understanding. We see this in none other than biblical translation - when a woman, when a black African, when a black American, when a native Malaysian translates the bible, the things they see in the words of Christ shift in importance.

Our current bible is written to emphasise male leadership and authority and to de-emphasise female leadership and authority. The translation of the role of historical women of the church as 'assistants' or 'helpers' rather than 'disciples' or even 'apostles'. The reduction of 'I shall make a shieldmate for him' to 'I shall make a helper for him' in the Genesis account.

It's translated so that 'homosexuality' is the word used almost universally for a number of practices that had no correlation to modern same-sex attraction and marriage, and for which we have no modern equivalent.

Even terms that encapsulate concepts that we might argue haven't changed from then to now don't match the ancient world's perspective: 'marriage' as translated from the bible doesn't really have a concept of a woman joining to a man but still remaining her own person and legal individual, with rights to her property (and his) and to the children of her body. Women weren't people, and so – in the most basic form – marriage was the passing of property and inheritance with a person as the passage.

So my church - conservative, Anglicised, with a typically western way of thinking is most certainly not intrinsically equipped to deal with an increasingly unChristianised west, and an increasingly Christian Global South - unless we're going for a White Messiah complex.

TBH, I think at this point, the best thing Christians in the west can do is to shut up and do the work of bringing in the Kingdom in anything except words. Anything that doesn't involve offering proselytisation. If they ask, by all means. But we're going to have to be something really special for them to ask and we don't have it in us, not yet. Not when the changemakers of the world are largely atheists and agnostics and while your average Christian in the neighbourhood is too busy fighting for the status quo.

That's my thoughts anyway - they're not borne out by any research or any foreknowledge. Nothing from the last eighty years will back me up – although all the scientific evidence points to our world changing dramatically in almost every aspect of life - but the next eighty years of our society, our world, will be nothing like the eighty years before that and nothing like the hundreds before that.

We have to live with it. We have to learn to live in it. We have to learn to love in it.

The current Anglican church of Australia is not as ready for this as they think they are. What too many are still dreaming of is a Billy-Graham-esque conversion of thousands of westernised Australians to Christianity, with attendant social influence, ethics, mores, and morals. They dreamed this back in the late 90s, with a movement (from America, I think) called 'The Harvest', where we were going to reach 10% of the Sydney Diocese for Christ...

That movement failed; people went, but it wasn't what they wanted. That world they wanted was already shifting and changing. The people they thought they could reach had heard it all before and their hearts were hardened.

We're not going to get those soft hearts back.

I don't think we can rewrite the church-as-a-concept's role as a villain in contemporary society. Our society's memory via the lingering records of global technology is now too long for most people to trust us when the church leaders say "but trust us, we're the good guys sent on a mission from God!" The records might not show the majority experience, but those that were hurt by abuse or rigidity or "excommunication" do not forget how they were betrayed or left by the wayside, and they are not quiet.

What we can do is individually and in our local Christian collective (ie. "church") is rewrite how the people around us - the people we interact with and the secular communities we live among - see the church and Christians. And that might mean running counter to the expectations people have of the church when it comes to peripheral matters, whatever those expectations are.

A point was brought up by a guy I know about our church becoming what I'm going to term a "vampire church" (not the phrase he used): basically a big church that pulls believers from other churches, enriching itself at the cost of others. Which nobody wants, but which does tend to happen - the more resources, the more social energy, the more everything a church has, the more that other people's heads get turned and they come and want to stick around in The Church Where It Happens.

That's not something we want to be. It's not something that any minister wants but the risk is always there, particularly as the young ones go to churches where things are happening and end up staying there.

Basically, I don't know that they've convinced me to put my money towards this, and the one question that I'd like to know is not going to be either asked or answered: what would it take to stop this work from going ahead?

they can tak' our media but they'll never tak' our freeeedooooom!

There's a growing theme among Australian Christians, that our society is 'being taken from us'.

It manifests in the increasing attitudes of "well, you can't say anything godly at all anymore without someone coming in to cancel you". It manifests in the persisting belief that "Australia is a Christian nation (or at least a nation founded on Christian values) and we should keep it that way." It manifests in the insistence that "well, we've seen how feminism and wokeness and the modern sexuality has destroyed our society, so why don't we take it back to the old (Christian) ways?"

There's a desire for a simplistic narrative - a 'back to the basics' attitude. These are mostly voiced by older people, white guys, and people who haven't studied history, or use the term 'woke' as a pejorative.

There's also an exaggeration happening around Christian thought. Christians are increasingly using dramatic language to describe the response to the mores and morality expressions of our faith. It's also interesting that the Christians using dramatic language are frequently more invested in the morality expressions of our faith that are contradictory to those of the world - setting up worldly perspectives as an antagonist, rather than coming alongside them as a friend.

Possibly ironically, Sam Chan's Evangelism in a Modern World addresses the matter of coming alongside worldly perspectives as a friend to the person - not necessarily agreeing, but pushing our friends to think further and deeper about what they really believe.

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Listening to Majority 54 Podcast the other week - the episode release on the 21st April entitled Political Therapy with a conversation with an author, Monica Guzman whose book I Never Thought Of It That Way. The conversation was around a willingness to listen and understand where people are coming from. Ravi was talking about his older brother and how his older brother seems to have no interest in anything Ravi is doing or Ravi's thoughts on anything, and that he feels that sting quite keenly. Then, recently, he learned that his older brother feels like he already knows everything he needs to about his brother because their mom boasts about Ravi and what he's doing all the time.

One of the points that Monica made was that conservatives feel hemmed in by the media, there's nowhere that promotes a 'Christian perspective' anymore and that gets them on the back foot. They have no interest in the specific stories of individuals - liberals, progressives, non-Christians - because they already feel like they know it all and so they don't need to be told.

From a liberal vs conservative POV, without any faith in the mix, I can see that conservatives would be angry and defensive and just prefer to lump all liberals and progressives in together without seeing them individually: and yes, understanding where the specific person you love is coming from is one thing, thinking you understand where "liberals and progressives" are coming from is entirely another.

From a Christian perspective, though, I feel like Christians should be better listeners; better at tailoring our message and our interactions with the specific individual that we're trying to reach. Not just issuing a "TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN" notice.

I feel like this is what Sam Chan is getting at regarding how to evangelise, although the cynic in me would have called it "How to Evangelise When You Already Think You Know Everything You Need To Know". Hm. I wonder if I could write a book about that...

the Christian ethos of 'respect'

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I suspect what most Christian men using the "I want respect from my wife" line are saying, intentionally or unintentionally, is that they want to be an authority - they want to be "Christ to their church": unassailable, unquestionable, godlike.

Perhaps rather tellingly, though, I don't see 'treat a man as an authority' as a particularly Christian ethos. I mean, every man since Adam - be he Christian or not - wants to be the authority to the women in his life, whether he was a king with a thousand concubines or an indentured slave who was permitted to couple with a fellow slave (for the purposes of 'breeding stock').

Treating a woman as a person? As Jesus did to the women around him, not only teaching them (Martha) but challenging them (the woman at the well), declaring their faith beyond that of any man they'd met (the Syro-Phoenician woman) and sending them out as his missionaries (to proclaim his resurrection to the men around them)?

That is a unique Christian ethos; distinct in the history of the world before Christ and only existing since due to the influence of Christ on our society - divinity who sent femininity out to proclaim the comity of his resurrection.

the trauma of Susan Pevensie

People have a lot of trauma over Susan Pevensie.

A lot of trauma.

I just always figured that if Aslan let the young Calormen Tarkhan into The Everlasting Lands, then if Susan wanted to come, Aslan wouldn't stand in her way.

But Susan turns and walks away from Narnia off her own two feet - she doesn't even believe in Narnia anymore, so why would she want to come back - and everyone's on Aslan's case. (Or CS Lewis'.) Lipstick and nylons is the excuse she gives for walking away, not the reason that she was shut out: to Susan these things are more real to her than talking animals and a resurrected lion.

Did CS Lewis have issues with the 'lipstick and nylons' crowd? Sure. But even if Susan worked a perfectly boring job and was your standard 50s office drone, yet turned her back on Narnia, then she still wouldn't be interested in the everlasting lands.

For me, Susan's Choice is the simplest thing about The Last Battle. All the other stuff? The comparative metaphors of fake lions and donkeys and, oh, I can't even remember half of it all? The weird timelines? The stable and the dwarves trapped in their own minds? The talking creatures who ceased to talk? Actual Tash coming for the Calormene guy? That's the fucked up shit.

To me, it's not Susan Got Shut Out Of Narnia, Boohoo it's Susan Chose Something Else, That's Her Right. And Aslan respects that right. He doesn't go and drag Susan back to Narnia; he lets her make her own judgement and walk away from the door instead of stepping through it.

I mean, I have no obligation to leave a party invitation standing to someone who thinks I'm stupid and imaginary.

The other thing is that I'm not Aslan. Is the door still open for Susan? Maybe. But I think of all the times Aslan says "I am telling nobody's story but their own". Which is basically, "Mind your own biz, this is between me and the other person."

why we don't have room for anything they'd recognise as 'love'

There was a conversation over at MF's FB over the statement: "the church should be famous for its love".

And I noted

Where too often "LOVE" is translated a "you're dirty and awful and nasty and should be glad that the God of heaven cares for you (through the [self-]righteous mouthings of his people)..."

I've been wondering the last couple of years that maybe most of us Christians don't actually believe "in Christ alone". There's always a "and you must" clause.

"And you must prioritise the unborn, the nuclear family, the legality of the gospel, the rights of Christians and the church, the moral Christianising of the law, and your life must look like an western middle-class aspirational life...

Do all this in the name of Jesus Christ and you will surely inherit the kingdom of God!"

The bit that I didn't add was:

I am starting to wonder if it's a by-product "fear of losing their salvation by too-close association with The World"? Even (especially?) in certain Christian circles (*coughs*SydneyEvangelicalism*cough*), the implications have persisted that if you follow the "wrong" path on opinions of everything from homosexuality to abortion to transgenderism then your very salvation is imperilled. And yet at the same time, the leaders attempt to reassure me that "my hope is built on nothing less..."

If my salvation is in Christ's hands alone - if nothing I can do or think other than repudiation of His gift of grace will keep me from the love of God (in Jesus Christ) - then I have no fear of walking out into The World and dispensing the love and support that God has graced me with no matter to whom, or even whether it enables further sinfulness in those I love in my actions. His grace is sufficient for me, and also for them, and I trust in that as I witness to others in ways that 'The Church' may not generally approve.

However, if I feel like my salvation (and, indeed, my church acceptance) is based on my reputation within the church, on the way I vote, on my policy opinions regarding hotbutton culture topics, on my association with the right kind of people in a world of sinners...then, yes, I will not just reject the worldview of the world, but reject the people of the world because they represent my likely rivening from the grace of God.

do we hate sin more than we love other people?

A person who took the lives of women in some part because he had learned to hate sexual sin to such a degree that he believed killing other women vs working on his understanding of those issues within himself was a good plan…

His faith community told him to hate sin more than he loved other people.

I am reminded of a story - a medieval murder mystery - where the local priest of a village is found dead in the river. The man had been chosen by the abbot of the nearby monastery as a man upright in all things, knowledgeable and educated, and more than fit to teach the parishoners all they needed to know of the things of God.

More than suitable, right?

Well, a newborn was birthed and considered sickly, and they ran for the priest to baptise it, but he was at his devotions and wouldn't rouse from them, even for this. He came afterwards, but the baby was already dead. And because it wasn't baptised, in the tradition of his faith, he wouldn't allow it to be buried in consecrated ground.

A mentally deficient young woman would sleep with any man who cozened her, and ended up giving birth to a child out of wedlock. But when she tried to return to the church, the priest told her she was an unrepentant sinner and excommunicated her. In grief, she went and drowned herself.

Yardage between the priest's allotment and a local man's plot was considered 'flexible', and the local man had used it to drive his cattle acrosss with the blessing of the previous priest. But now the new priest demanded that it be tilled for his usage all the way to the edge, cutting off the local man.

A freeman born operated a piece of ground that was traditional serf-held, and the priest required that the freeman prove his status or else he would be held bound to the land. The town elders held the freeman's freedom and the priest backed down, but claimed he had done nothing wrong.

The priest was theologically sound, legally within his rights, morally correct... But he had no heart for people. For 'sheep without a shepherd' as we are taught Jesus looked upon the crowds.

I did a little questionnaire about men's mental health this morning - teenaged son of the pastor of our church - and while I know the stereotypes of masculinity that tend to be bruited about, I also know that I follow a faith that grounds itself in a God - divinity, authority, power - who clothed himself in fragile mortal flesh, endured the little twinges of human existence, wept, grieved, submitted to brutality, and is still considered the lynchpin of our faith. Like, the Jesus of the gospels - whose harshest words were for those who led others astray with religiosity, whose most brutal action is against the bleed-em-til-they're-dry monetary systems of the day, who refused to take up arms against armed soldiers who came looking for him - is everything humanity should be, and he embodies so few of the 'masculine' traits that a group of kids would probably pick if you asked them to choose.

But back to having a heart for people - not just 'the lost', as churches like to phrase it, but people. Even those who have cast Christianity away. Do we still love them? How capable are we really of hating the sin and loving the sinner?

Because I think that, in our Sydney Evangelical context we hate the sin far more than we love the sinners. And this is a big problem going forward.

Sin is something to be wary of - absolutely. But one of the tensions of human existence is where it is better to restrain sin or sinfulness and where it is wiser to show love. And Jesus walked it perfectly - mostly by showing love to the 'sheep without a shepherd'. We can't hope to match it perfectly, but I think we should try to follow in love more than in hatred of sin.

platforms and pulpits and 'free speech'

I am getting the feeling that a lot of the Australian Christian response to Twitter dumping the US Prez's personal account is anchored in a fear of our own deplatforming on account of "saying things that are true but which lefty liberals don't like to hear".

Are we aware that our 'Christian platform' isn't Twitter or Facebook or Parler? Our 'Christian platform' isn't even the pulpit or our church services or our Christian events.

Our 'platform' is our lives - the intimate struggle of day in, day out that our neighbours and regular interactions bear witness to. That argument you had with your kids last night with the screen door open? Platform! That frown you always wear when you pick up your coffee in the morning? Platform! Picking up your neigbour's bin and refilling it after the teenaged vandals in the area spilled it? Platform! Offering eggs when the neighbour hasn't had breakfast? Platform! Growing a verge garden for people to freely pick from? Platform!

I mean, it's just living, and not as exciting as the thrill of knowing hundreds, nay, thousands, nay millions of people are hanging breathlessly on your every character. But a handful of people who love your character? Ask Paul how loving the people who were around him worked for 'platform'.

We don't *need* social media. We don't need to boycott it if we haven't been banned - it's not an either/or proposition. We just don't *need* it to continue to live lives of love and care and thoughtfulness to our society and people.

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.

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

uncomfortable and complicated

Sarah Bessey wrote an essay on the ‘deconversion’ of assorted famous(ish) Christians who've lately made the news. It’s part of her subscribers-only section, and she talks about how she’s tempted to filter their stories of ‘deconversion’ through her own lens of experience, which was to walk away from the faith community she’d begun in - but not to walk away from Jesus, and to rediscover Jesus before finding a community among whom they could worship. In the essay, she acknowledges that this may not be the experience of the people who are confessing their ‘deconversion’, and she can’t cast it in terms of her own experience because she is not them and the experiences that have formed them as people and Christians are not her experiences.

In the last twenty years, I’ve come to understand just how...messy...humanity is. And Christianity with it because the heart of Christianity is all about the heart of humans and the heart of God and how they relate to each other. At this point in life, I feel like there must be nuance because we live in a world of uncomfortable grey zones and life and existence and chaos-entropy-sin gets in the way even as we strive to do the perfectly right thing...

I don’t know if I always succeed.

I do know that I’m not always comfortable with it. I know that my faith is a journey and there are rocky stretches. And I know that insofar as being someone who other people would trust with their faith journeys – as comforter and friend and possibly guide and acolyte – requires me to be more loving than correct – particularly among the groups that I feel more called to minister among: people who have turned their backs on the church and their faith community - and to trust in grace. I like to think of it as a connection that won’t be severed on my end – that’s open for them if they want it to be, that can be a personal connection to Christianity rather than the big amorphous conservative-face-of-Christianity that is mostly depicted in hardline opposition to something. That’s very uncomfortable. And discomfiting. And complicated.

In this, I’m enjoying Pete Enn’s The Sin Of Certainty and Rachel Held Evans’ Inspired to remember that the divinity of God’s revelation can still shine through our flawed humanity, but that we have to be careful about assigning divinity to one category or another of human action.

Yet God has extended grace to me – I don’t have to be right or better or correct – I can just be loving. And sometimes that loving will include words specific to the God who has extended grace to me, and sometimes that loving will involve shutting up and letting care be my words.

Not all answers are neat. A divine God crucified in bloody sacrifice to display the seriousness of our ‘fuck you’ to Him while simultaneously paying the consequences of that ‘fuck you’? Was messy. So, so incredibly messy. And yet God was willing to come and be messy with us in the now.

--

Lately I feel very much like I’m not a good fit in Evangelical churches. But I’m pretty sure I’m not a good fit in Pentecostal ones either. And I’m not a good fit in the ‘usual run’ of Uniting churches – more about social good than the good news of God wanting us to be with him. So maybe I’m just not a good fit anywhere in the church?

Does that mean I’m not a good fit for God?

I certainly don’t believe that.

Maybe I’m not the only one who feels this, or maybe it’s a function of my life stage. Maybe this is the swinging pendulum of intimacy and emotion that carries me from feeling like I’m an accepted part of a community to hearing the message of “we don’t like your thoughts here, take them and your questions somewhere else, because we only want righteous certainty here” in the space of six months.

But I'm not willing to let go of God and His word has assured me that He's never going to let go of me so...

I guess it’s the messy and uncomfortable and complicated for me.