the same but different...but the same...but different

While at dinner with Pete and Becca (that I talked about in my last post), Becca raised a really interesting conundrum that I've often puzzled over. She works in a job where she can't share her faith with her "clients" (she works to help troubled kids integrate from primary to secondary school). She went on a week away with the kids she works with, as well as another Christian guy from her organisation and his kids and a bunch of workers that aren't Christian from another organisation.

What she found on that camp was that in the absence of being able to share her faith, she contributed nothing more to these kids and in no different way to the guys who weren't Christians. In her words "she was effectively just administering a government program". Which is fine if that's your calling, but clearly she feels it's not hers. She spends a year with these kids, then on one day at the end has to end all contact with them. She is not allowed to continue a relationship in any intentional way with them.

Which begs the question: if you have no ability to differentiate yourself as a Christian in your work, should you move on and do something where you can?

Now the conventional answer goes something like: well if you're really a Christian, just the way you act and think will rub off on the people around you whether you're express about your beliefs or not. I don't agree. As Becca said, the guys who weren't Christians cared just as much about the kids and that they have a bright future and often had a longer fuse than she did when they were being brats. There was no way those kids could discern a difference between her and the others.

Then of course the inevitable argument is one of dualism: that that thought process doesn't allow any room for understanding that God may move through people who don't know him. But even if God is working through them both, surely the only way to influence them in a way for God is to communicate that God is behind that love? Otherwise you're an endless stream of love but provide no connection in their mind between God's love exhibited naturally through you, and God. So they know his love, but not him or a way to live the life he wants for them.

I struggle with this because I think what she's doing is vital, I think why she is doing it is pure (which I think is most important to God), but she has no scope to influence these kids life with Jesus. And if that's our mission in life, do we not need to seek somewhere we can?

I know there are a hundred ways to take this argument and none will lead to a solution that sits perfectly well. As Pete said at one point [paraphrased here], "We constantly live in the tension of wanting to do better and do more, but working within the context we have which limits our ability to do it. So in the meantime do we throw our hands up and stop work, or do we just keep doing what we are able to do?" I think this is a valid point too.

I guess I share Pete's philosophy but/and Becca's frustration and confusion on this one.

it must be for real, cos now i can feel

Jane and I spent last night at friends' place. By way of background, he (Pete) is British (in his own words, "kind of from South London, but more posh than that really") and she (Becca) is American but moved here when Pete and her got married a year or so ago. I'll have to post again on that night, because we had some interesting conversations.

After dinner, we got chatting about music and Jane got our ipod out to find a song she was trying to think of. Next thing you know, Becca is flicking through our ipod putting on old songs that she used to love.

Most of the songs she put on were 90's stuff from when we were all teenagers. Many of them were from that all important 1995-1997 period (i.e. years 10-12 for me). What surprised me was the number of songs that were important to Becca in that time, that were also important to me. Songs like Perfect Drug by Nine Inch Nails (for no particular reason for me), Glycerine (Bush) and Goldfinger (Ash).

Becca grew up mostly in California, so as an Aussie male it is quite weird to think that someone from the opposite sex in another country and context, found the same songs important at the same point (though completely different situations) in their life. As Becca said, "they evoke strong memories, but quite often their not good ones". I could definitely relate to that.

In the words of Harvey Danger: "Fingertips have memories".
In the words of Arundhati Roy: "Smells have memories."
In the words of myself (and the whole premise of Nick Hornby's book, High Fidelity): "Music has memories."

Music has the ability to take you (well me anyway) to a place and time in a very real way. I can remember ways of thinking, friends, fears, likes, dislikes just by listening to a song. It is a powerful thing, but as Becca alluded to, they're not always positive. For her, she actually avoids listening to a whole lot of music alone as it can make her introspective in a bad way. Music has a range of effects on me from taking me to great places, to getting me quite down depending on my mood, the song and the memory (if any) it evokes.

I guess the point of the post is that kind of common ground you can have with someone from a different world, just because you both identify so strongly with the same stimulus. So thankyou Alannis Morrissette, Nine Inch Nails, Ash, Bush et.al. for reaching a male teenage boy in Melbourne at the same time but in a completely different way as you reached a female teenage girl in California. It made for a fun night of "awww, I love this song" 's and memories that would otherwise fade to grey.

dispelling the door-bitch myth

I've just finished reading a great book by Brian McLaren called A New Kind of Christian: a tale of two friends on a Spiritual Journey. I highly recommend reading it, particularly if you've ever questioned some of the stuff you've been taught on Christianity. It clarified some things for me very well.

Anyway, one point McLaren makes is that we have rammed home that Jesus is "the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by me (Jesus)." The way I've interpreted this from how people have talked about it is that unless you get the ok by Jesus, you don't go to heaven. I don't know who goes to heaven and who doesn't (anyone who says they do is deluded), but this didn't seem consistent with the God I knew. It seemed almost like a tick-the-box exercise where if you get Jesus, you get saved and you get heaven.

McLaren says that we have misinterpreted this important passage and that when Jesus said "by me", what he meant was not in a door-bitch (a person who stands guard at a nightclub door and randomly refuses entry to people. Generally considered nasty people) sense, not in the sense that you walk up to him, he checks you out, and either lets you in or refuses you entry. "By" can mean "Up to and beyond; past" or it can mean "With the use or help of; through". Same word, big difference in meaning.

This latter meaning makes a lot more sense and I find it far more consistent with Jesus' character. Jesus isn't standing at a doorway letting some in and refusing entry to others. Jesus is the path. You have communion with the Father by walking with Jesus (if you'll excuse the top 10 "most commonly used phrase"). This also links up with something our church pastor says all the time and that is that God's plan for our lives isn't good deeds or living a life worthy of getting into heaven. Jesus came "that we might have life, and have it to its fullest". God's desire is to make us fully human, enjoying human life in its purest expression. This involves an intimate link with our God, our creator. It involves modelling ourselves on the one guy who has had this "full human expression of life" as we can in order that we and others may experience the same. So in modelling ourselves on him and communicating with him, Jesus is our path, our model of how to live a pure human life and that life involves communion with God the Father. So Jesus is our path to the Father, not the door-bitch letting some in and refusing entry to others.

That sounds a lot more like the God I know. You could almost call it good news...

entitlement

A lot of what follows I was thinking on my walk home from the tube to my house last night. I've been thinking quite a bit about Jesus and entitlement given my devotion (hey, it's on my google homepage) to reading the inspiral blog (http://inspiral.org.au/WordPress/) and the mr jones and me blog (http://smoyle.blogspot.com/). Simon has posted recently on entitlement and the fact that Jesus shed many of his entitlements and to truly follow him, we should consider doing the same (hope I precise'd ok Sime).

I walk past a church on my way home every day and notice that often there are two black, shiny Mercs out the front. I don't know whose they are, but given how often they're there, I surmise they may owned by the pastors or staff of the church. Regardless of whose they are, it got me thinking about middle/upper middle-class Christianity and in particular attitudes I've heard and see lived regarding money. The most prevalent attitude I've heard and seen goes like this: "money's not a bad thing, it's how you use it." The practical interpretation/application of this is almost always "as long as I tithe, it's ok that I buy a new Merc/Commodore/whatever car every 2 years (as is common with many people I know)." To be clear, I don't just mean cars, I mean "stuff" and "things" generally.

One point Arundhati Roy made on Andrew Denton's "Enough Rope" last year (I'm stealing from the Mr Jones blog here) is that one person being paid masses of money is a symptom of something wrong with the world. With so many having so little (many having so little they can't survive), how can we justify one person being paid an amount that could solve 3rd world poverty? Or even a village's poverty?

I'm not sure if I feel it is wrong to buy a new car every year (or 2 or 3 years) [yes, a car is still a metaphor for "stuff" and "things]. However, there are two things I'm ready to stand on:

1) Our view of "masses of money" is awry. I don't believe "masses of money" is a north of $100,000 pay packet or a $1m house. Masses of money is a surplus to your need. I wouldn't want to put a figure on that as we all have different needs, but I think our concept of masses of money is being skewed by
a) the media (which shows us Paris Hilton and Richard Branson as monetary role models) and
b) by an inflated concept of need. Maybe I'll expand another time on those.

2) As is usually the case when society loses the plot, it's not that we have the answer to the question wrong, it's that we've been asking the wrong question. The question we ask is "how can I justify the money/stuff/things I have". To which we quote the Bible "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's" and then we draw a straight line to the Old Testament concept of tithing (giving a tenth of your salary). I think the question is less about justifying what you have, and more one of "Here's what I earn. Here's what I have. My contract with my employer/my parent's will/company's profits legally entitle me to this money. But what will I do with that entitlement?"

Before this post turns itself into a book, let me explain point 2. What do we do with our worldly entitlement to surplus money? First of all I would say that it is exactly that, a worldly entitlement. I'm not sure that Godly principles go into drawing up employment contracts/wills. In fact I've signed a few now and I can tell you they don't. Second of all, we have a choice. Do we grasp that entitlement, or do we forego it for others' benefit? This is an open question worth the asking I believe. It's one I'm asking myself at a time when I'm madly saving for travel, arguably a selfish indulgence, and also thinking about going home to a potentially well paying job.

We are metaphorically the glass at the top of a champagne fountain. The bottle is continually pouring and when we are full, we simply buy a bigger glass. But what if we settled for a smaller glass and when we overflowed the champagne flowed down to the empty glasses, which in turn did the same, until all the empty glasses were full? Or even better, what if we pricked a hole in the bottom of our glass so that the champagne flowed out before we were full?