Here’s something I heard at a conference I was at on Friday:
“the treatments we prescribe in weight loss for fat people are the same unhealthy problems that we are diagnosing in thin (anorexic, bulimic) people…”
Quite profound me thinks, especially as I note the Biggest Loser finale on TV at the moment…
There’s sometime wrong…
Someone read me this quote from a book recently, maybe one day I’ll read it myself…
“… I’ve always said, you know, that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there is a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward… how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believed beyond a shadow of doubt that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe it, and that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that…”
— Penn Gillette, (of Penn and Teller), atheist, quoted in Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine
I was recently informed of a young girl passing away who I had known from a long time ago. It got me thinking.
Firstly, I thought again how I hate death; just hate it with a passion. I know that as a Christian I can look forward to something far better than this world, but still, I just can’t handle death. Hate it.
I knew the girl from primary school, well I knew of her more than I knew her, she was 24 so a bit younger than me, but her mum, my mum and a bunch of other mums would wait, while chatting, at the back gate of our school for us to come out. Then after we got out of school would continue to have their chats so we played for a while, sometimes only minutes, sometimes a lot longer.
I already knew back then that she had struggled with her health for all her life and to hear that she only made it to 24 just made me cry. I hate death, especially death at a young age.
It made me think too about how life changes, how we all go through stages which either you never even think about how they may change, or maybe you do acknowledge that will or could but hope so much they won’t. We go through other stages where you hope they will change, but I guess that’s another blog altogether.
I may be wrong, and I haven’t asked mum, but I think that would have been a great time in life. Those mums hanging out at the back gate of school, at first they wouldn’t haven’t known each other, the first few days and weeks may have been awkward, but as the years went by would have become closer. They would share in good times chatting, they would share concerns about the school, and then actually act on those concerns, whether it be at a P&C meeting or something else, as they were the sort of mums who were involved in the school and cared.
And now due to circumstances they’ve drifted apart, but they still care, if on the grape vine (which always has it’s way of working among mums even if it hasn’t been used in a while) they find out of something happening to one of the others or their family which requires action or support they’ll contact each other and help out anyway they can.
My mum is especially great at caring, it blows me away sometimes. Nothing is too hard, if you need money, food or anything else she’ll be there, she isn’t rich or anything, but even before she became a Christian I could see how incredibly generous she was. I love the love she has for others and her giving heart. And she’s quiet about it, she wants no praise, praise actually makes her a little awkward, she just wants you to be ok. I want to be like her when I grow up.
And Dad’s the same, he loves to help, he loves to give, and he really gets stuck into the things that he feels he can do. They both hate being in the limelight but love to help behind the scenes. It’s been like that all my life too, just one example of many is how is how when we grew up my brothers and I played Aussie Rules and they would always be there with the other early birds on a Saturday morning setting up the fields and dragging out the canteen which was a caravan and then setting it up and getting everything going and be there most the day. They did all this because they cared, about us, about the footy club and the people in it.
I don’t know where I’m going with this blog, but I suppose a few points are:
I was privy to know that the Bible Society had applied for a “Jesus. All about life” stall at this year’s Easter show but heard on Friday that the application was rejected! No Jesus at the Easter show! (Read about it here)
It’s quite a wonder to behold… No Muhammad at the Ramadan festival?
So, i think we can finally say what we had suspected to be the case for quite some time… it really is a show AT Easter rather than an Easter show.
However, It has prompted me to recognise that most Aussies probably view Easter and Christmas the way I view the the Queen’s Birthday in June. The similarities with Christmas especially are really very profound… QB: celebrates the birth of a sovereign with a public holiday on the date that isn’t actually the real birthday… Christmas, the same… But if somebody wanted to tell me the real reason for my June long weekend was because the queen was born and she is the head of the country I live in and that I should pay her homage on her birthday, I wouldost likely tell them I didn’t care. As far as I’m concerned this is my public holiday regardless of what it stands for…
Sound familar?
Here’s something for all you theologisers out there! What are your thoughts on this?
A healthy church is a gathering where everyone gets what they don’t want.
What I mean by that is, church should not be be tailored to everyone’s liking. There should be hymns for people who don’t like hymns, kid’s talks for people who don’t like kid’s talks, long prayer times for people who don’t like long prayers and vis versa… There should be people and personalities there that don’t naturally connect – this is a healthy church.
Discuss.
Let myself quote myself…
We must be wary of any belief system that gives people a license to behave as they would naturally behave anyway.
But… the christian belief system grates against our natural inclinations to serve our own selfish desires.
Being a leisurely Sunday with no youth group on, I decided to take a newspaper with me to the can and do a bit of reading under the impression that the can might be a place conducive for that sort of thing… but it’s terrible!
I don’t know how people read on the can… The cold freckle and the hard plastic impression on the my bum cheeks was enough to finish me off… No sir. Reading is for the lounge, the hammock or the comfy chair. The lou reading for me.
Incidently, how many words are there for anus? Freckle, Jaxi, Date, Bunghole, Clacker…?
Or, even, how many words are there for toilet? Lou, Can, Dunny…?
So I was reading and discussing 1 Corinthians 12 with Bazz yesterday (because he’s preaching on that this Sunday in our 1 Corinthians series) and we’re talking about Spiritual gifts and what makes a Spiritual gift different from a skill or natural ability?
Then it hit me. Surely a gift is only a Spiritual gift when it used for the common good of God’s people, the church – his body (12:8). So somebody may be gifted naturally in playing piano (which ultimately is a gift from God) but is only a Spiritual gift when used in service for the common good of God’s people.
Contrary to the christian tradition I was raised in (Church of Christ) I’m all for infant baptism. I myself was baptised as an 11 year old and not as an infant, and “believer’s baptism” – as it is sometimes called – was my default position. But things change…
I guess there’s been a combination of reasons for the change… I’ve studied the Bible and Christian theology in more depth, and I’m sure being part of an Anglican church (which baptises infants) has helped some…
But really the big thing for me has been understanding covenantal theology. As a basic summary (and I mean basic) covenantal theology is about God’s covenant with the family which is the pattern of how God relates with Israel in the OT. God gives the symbol of circumcision to Abraham (Genesis 17) and requires that all the males in his family, and his servants etc be circumcised and the custom is to go generation after generation as a sign of the covenant that God has made with Abraham. And it’s not as if a male was to be circumcised as an adult when they have the faculty and reason to declare whether they want to be in relationship with Yahweh or not (although new adult males converted to Judaism are circumcised) but the male child is to circumcised on the 8th day while they are an infant (Genesis 21:4). The basis of the infant circumcision is the faith relationship and covenant that the family has with Yahweh not the infants confession.
Skip forward to the New Testament – Colossians 2:9-15…
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your sinful nature was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
The apostle Paul draws a comparison between the sign of circumcision and that of baptism. if the parents of a newborn are in a family covenant with Jesus then their newborn is in that covenant too. The newborn child is reliant on their parents for everything, their food, their clothes, their shelter, their care, their hygiene, everything… including their faith. Children receive everything because they have nothing, and Jesus even says we need to receive the kingdom of God like a child, ie. with complete dependance and faith.
There’s even more to covenantal theology than I can be bothered to blog about here, but the point is that I find this convincing and I’m completely for the baptism of infants (if their parents or parent is Christian) and I reached this conclusion before Evie came along, and now Evie’s here I’ve got to put my money where my mouth is…
But I perceive a problem… It’s not with infant baptism or covenantal theology, it’s with confirmation.
You see, because infant baptism requires that parents make promises on behalf of the child, there comes a time when the child must make their own decision to either continue in the faith and covenant with Yahweh they have grown up with or reject that covenant and faith. So the rite of confirmation was created in church tradition to provide opportunity for people to confirm the covenant with Jesus they have grown up with. I am all for this rite and the principles that stand behind it.
But I am not for the arbitrary laws that are attached with the rite of confirmation in the Anglican tradition. Particularly that confirmation may only be performed by a bishop and only after the age of 14.
What if I get Evie baptised as an infant and she wants to confirm her faith at age 11 like I did? Do I tell her she’s too young to make that decision wait 3 more years…? i don’t want to do that. Confirmation is made for people, not people for confirmation. Confirmation should be performed when the person involved wants to confirm their faith. Not only this, but having a minimum age has encouraged a form of ritualism associated with Confirmation that turns it into a human tradition and a vain worship without the heart (Mark 7), so that when a person turns 14 “hey! its time to get confirmed!”. I’d rather avoid that danger.
To my mind, having the rite performed only by a bishop is also restricting. It means that confirmation may only be done at the bishop’s convenience, and it seems to me that this also will add a ritualistic dimension to the rite, so that packs of people will be confirmed all at once and out of those, surely some will be rushed to meet the set date when the bishop will be in church instead perhaps being given a couple of weeks longer for them to cement their decision.
For me it seems best that Evie be baptised when she wants to confirm her faith in Jesus. She will be able to pick the time when she wants to confirm her faith and will be able to be baptised by the local minister whether 11, 14, 21 years old or whatever. We will raise her and treat her as a Christian who is a member of our family covenant with Jesus, and we will encourage her to confirm her faith in Jesus by public baptism when she wants to own that faith for herself.
I’ve toiled over this decision ever since Evie has been born (9 months ago) and it is only now that I’ve come to this conclusion. Perhaps there might be other reasons for me to change my mind… But at this moment in time “here I stand”.