Mene Mene is an amazing project in Leeds to distribute the words of Jesus in public spaces in intriguing ways.
Thanks to Dave Walker at The Cartoon Blog for the link.
Pope Benedict XVI And The Renunciation Of Power
Ekklesia News reports a powerful address by the new Pope in which he calls Christians to renounce power and wealth in favour of serving others. The article ends with this comment:
‘But some are likely to point to the apparent contradiction of it coming from the head of one of the world’s richest and most powerful institutions.’
Quite. But that shouldn’t stop the rest of us engaging in some serious self-examination, should it?
Pope Benedict XVI And The Renunciation Of Power
Ekklesia News reports a powerful address by the new Pope in which he calls Christians to renounce power and wealth in favour of serving others. The article ends with this comment:
‘But some are likely to point to the apparent contradiction of it coming from the head of one of the world’s richest and most powerful institutions.’
Quite. But that shouldn’t stop the rest of us engaging in some serious self-examination, should it?
The Urgent Need To Distinguish Evangelicalism And Bible Teaching From Fundamentalism
Maggi Dawn has today posted an extract from one of Keith Ward’s books on this subject. Ward isn’t a natural ally of my theological thinking these days, but this post calls out a ‘Hallelujah’ from me. Someone, somewhere, understands the differences between thoughtful evangelicalism and harsh fundamentalism. Now if only our media understood that.
George MacDonald – correction
Quick correction – I mistakenly typed twentieth century when he was nineteenth!
George MacDonald
Amazing article about George MacDonald, the twentieth century Christian novelist, at the Christian History subsite within Christianity Today. His thinking was way ahead of what has been coming out of the ’emerging church’ about the presence of God throughout life and within culture.
Here are a couple of extracts:
“Life and religion are one, or neither is anything,” he insisted. Incensed by seeing professing Christians intellectually assent to Christian doctrine while still adhering to secular attitudes and patterns of life, he dedicated his ministry to demonstrating that Christian truth is at the very heart of life. Life itself is constantly trying to teach that unity. “The same God who is in us … also is all about us—inside, the Spirit; outside, the Word,” he remarked, “and the two are ever trying to meet in us.” That is, every aspect of the created universe and of human experience comes from God. Rightly received, all of life is a vehicle of grace.
Stories, MacDonald discovered, are an ideal means for showing people the sacramental character of life. A prolific writer, he composed poetry, novels, and fairy tales for both children and adults, as well as sermons, essays, and works of literary criticism—over 50 books in all. A shrewd and discerning student of his own life’s experiences, both those of joy and those of grief, he portrayed the truths he discovered in his large gallery of characters. He was careful to teach nothing that his own life did not exemplify.
The Gospel According to eBay
We’re getting ready to move house soon, and have lots of stuff to sell. Much of it is going on eBay. Today I had an email from them, congratulating me on getting my fifth positive feedback. ‘Only five more to go,’ they say, ‘and you’ll have your first Feedback Star!’ (Mmm, can’t wait.)
Then comes the theology. Yes: theology. ‘Your Feedback reinforces the eBay value that ‘People are basically good.”
My Christian ears pricked up at this, and so I looked up the values. They’re very positive:
We believe people are basically good.
We believe everyone has something to contribute.
We believe that an honest, open environment can bring out the best in people.
We recognise and respect everyone as a unique individual.
We encourage you to treat others the way you want to be treated.
In reverse order, they’re pretty Christian. Treat others how you want to be treated sounds pretty Christlike. Respecting everyone as an unique individual for me comes from humans being created ‘in the image of God’. An open, honest environment reminds me of Paul’s words about ‘speaking the truth in love’. Everyone having something to contribute is redolent of the idea that all have gifts.
The difficult one for many Christians is the first one, where I came in: ‘People are basically good’. Classically we’ve said ‘People are basically bad’. But as one of the characters in Brian McLaren’s novel ‘The Last Word And The Word After That’ says,
“I’m not denying the old doctrine of original sin, but it can be abused in a way that shifts the focus away from human injsutice, oppression, and suffering on Planet Earth. It shifts the focus to getting your hiundquarters into heaven after you leave Planet Earth. So it makes you worry less about how bad humanity is and more about how mad the deity is.”
So there has been a shift in more postmodern thinkers to a creation-centred spirituality, but which runs the equal and opposite danger of under-estimating the human capacity for evil. Just how do we keep the two in tension? It’s one of those paradoxes with which Christians always need to live.
