Category: Basics

Here comes the sun

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes

SunriseI welcomed the chance recently to dig around and ask the question  “what (actually) is the Kingdom of God?” If you had to answer a quiz about it, what would you say? Here are five things.

  1. It’s wrapped up with the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus and him sending the Holy Spirit. His death fixed things up between us and God. His resurrection was the first drop of new wine into the old wineskins of the world, and it broke a tomb. His Ascension was his coronation. Sending the Spirit to revolutionize human lives was his first act in office.
  2. It’s now and not yet.  It’s breaking in among but this is just the first installment. The rest is yet to come. So we enjoy peace now which is an appetizer for the peace that will break over the whole world at the end the age.
  3. It’s internal and external. It’s about transformed hearts and revolutionizing society. It weaves together the quietist and the activist strands of the Christian faith.
  4. It grows. Like a mustard seed or yeast, tiny but resolute, it can be poisoned, stamped out, wiped out, set back, but it keeps coming.
  5. It comes in and through weakness. Hence the Beatitudes: ‘Happy are you who are spiritually bankrupt.’

Rowing a boat alone across a lake

Behold the terror and the joy

 

Lonely BoatingImagine rowing a boat on your own across a lake. The fears and joys are yours alone.

We are always alone. People may sit by our fireplaces–as it were–over many wonderful evenings and years. They may hug us and hold us, accepting each other as completely as two humans can.

But no-one knows us quite fully or quite truthfully. There are always veils. We are not entirely as we present ourselves, even to those we love the most.

Thanks to faith in Christ, though, I’ve discovered I’m never alone.

When I’m rowing alone across a lake, also known as living, Christ knows with me all the terror and the joy. Other loves may kindly watch, from the shore or other boats. Other loves may cheer and blow kisses. But he knows it all and we share it together.

 

O come, O come, Emmanuel

Recently I spent two weeks reading through 900 pages of the prayer handbook Operation World. (I was preparing the text for conversion to a phone app: exciting project.)

Operation World is basically the most gigantic prayer list every compiled. Prayer points are suggested for each country and there are thousands of them.

Reading Operation World over just a few days is an exhausting experience. So much need. So many places and points for prayer.

Many countries and peoples are still owed the gospel, and we in the church have been slow coming up with the goods.

A few countries, have, if anything been punched drunk by repeated visits of short-term missionary teams; not exactly over-evangelized but at a certain level exploited.

Corruption, power seeking, divisions? Apathy, defeat, retreat? Immorality? Idolatry? Take your pick. It seems to be everywhere. Everywhere needs good teaching, disciples being formed, the Spirit stirring. Everywhere needs leadership training and student work and children’s work.

It’s exhausting.

How to make sense of it, this spraying, kicking hosepipe of need? I was puzzling over this when I remembered the prayer at the very end of the Bible, which is also perhaps the simplest prayer in the Bible.

Come, Lord Jesus. Into every situation. Into every heart. One day, in power to usher in a new world. O come, O come, Emmanuel.

(This title is an edited and occasionally updated version of the 2010 version, with about 600 fewer pages, which–full disclosure–I helped edit.)

A touch of the hand-done

Creation is a bit bodged together

A biologist friend of mine, a Christian, was telling me that what he saw through his microscope was … well … a bit ramshackle. It was a challenge, he said, to the idea of a Creator.

You would think a Creator would do something altogether more slick and wonderful. And of course, many biologists peer down their microscopes and do see shades of the beautiful and even the elegant. Perhaps biology is both wonderful … and a bit Heath-Robinson.

My friend and I were talking in our local Anglican church.  And when I think of the words “bodged together” and “still a bit wonderful” the words “Church of England” follow quite naturally. The C of E did not spring, intricate, interlocking, gently humming with purpose, from its Maker’s hand, like an expensive watch. Nor, it appears, did Life.

We serve the God of cuckoo clocks.

Day #3: KerPlunk marble tube and CD dominoes

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Here’s my comic novel Paradise, which takes the themes of “redemption” and “ramshackle” to new heights, or possibly, depths. Free on Kindle as a gateway drug to the next ones in the series.

On following the money

Channel your inner Yorkshireman. You know it’s good for you

UntitledMy late accountant friend, a fine Christian, used to work out the health of things by ‘following the money’. It sounded a bit mercenery to me, but I’ve come round to liking it a lot for its diagnostic power.

If the money isn’t working, your vocation, ministry, organization is not in good health. (Discuss.)

Last night I went through in my head the stories of several friends who followed a Christian vocation or a business idea and just couldn’t make the money work. They tried for a long time. Often, others told them it wasn’t going to work. All suffered quite a bit. In the end each had to give up and do something else. I’m not saying they were wrong to try, but the subsequent let-down wasn’t painless.

Interestingly, of all them changed direction and got jobs that paid and that were also a toned-down version of their original dream. They found a middle way that included earning a living as well as being fruitful and happy.

Our men’s breakfast group at church was looking at this the other week, and we were surprised how emphatically the Bible came down on the side of common sense — channelling, as it were, its inner Yorkshireman. Follow your dreams by all means, but first make the money work.

This is difficult!  In pursuit of vocation, dream, calling, or business idea, many of us have to face opposition, shortage, severe financial hardship. So how do you know if your current-financial-hardship-in-pursuit-of-dream is

(a) a merely necessary stage in your eventual success or

(b) a sign from God that you have located the wrong tree. (Good effort for barking up it but, wrong tree.)

Some common sense surely helps here. Living an indebted life isn’t good. Failing to look after your family definitely isn’t good. And finally and definitively running out of money is sometimes a great mercy.

12 rules for giving to charity

It’s an art, and a science, and a gift.

Feeding birds

  1. Give. It’s just good.  Even if you haven’t much money. Even if you’re not sure it’s being spent well. It’s a way of saying ‘thanks, I’m alive’. It’s about being human — not just a recipient, not just a barely-manager, a giver. One tenth of our income is a principle that many have found life-giving, not as a rule, but as an opportunity or an aspiration, even if we are very poor or on benefits.
  2. Don’t be stupid. There is a bit of a line here. It’s not automatically stupid to give most or all of your possessions away sometimes. But I don’t think giving should be pushing you into debt, and shouldn’t make you dependent on others, and you need to look after your loved ones. Wise advice might help here, clear your head.
  3. Even in debt, you can give something. Giving away money, even just your 10%, might not be wise in those circumstances. But you can still give something–practical help maybe, a smile, a meal, whatever-and your generous heart will help heal both your struggles and the other person’s.
  4. Get organizations to give. Your company; your sports club; your church; your nation. You have a voice here, however small. Argue for generosity and humanity. It isn’t all about us.
  5. Plan most of your giving. Find some causes you like and believe in, and give to them steadily, year after year. It doesn’t have to be much, or showy. Just get stuck in. Do it at the beginning of the month or the end of the week, before the cash drains from you.
  6. Index-link your giving. If your income goes up, so can your giving. If it goes down, so can your giving.
  7. Get good value. It isn’t enough for a charity to have a heart-rending appeal. How efficient are they? What do they spend their money on? How much do they pay their chief executive? Do they mention that in their publicity? Charities range from fine to terrible. Orphanages, for example, aren’t brilliant. They are easy to set up in some countries, can be unaccountable, aren’t necessarily full of orphans and at the worst can be places of abuse. Our responsibility doesn’t end if we give to a charity just because it’s a charity. We have to think about value, or give to things we trust.
  8. Keep some money aside for spontaneous, one-off, gifts. Some kid you know wants sponsoring. Somebody’s rattling a tin in your face for some good cause.  Not your cause, not really your kid. Still, you’d be pretty hard-hearted if you didn’t set aside something for this kind of thing.
  9. Review every so often. Maybe other causes have caught your eye. Maybe your interests have changed. Maybe one of your current recipients doesn’t seem to be spending its money so well any more. Move on. Keep it fresh.
  10. Beware creating dependency in the people the charity is for. Are your gifts helping people grow, making them more like you, or are they dooming them always to be the needy person while you are the generous benefactor? None of this is easy and many charities struggle with it internally. But we have to try. (This is also why I don’t give money to homeless people on the streets in the UK.)
  11. Beware of creating dependency in the charities themselves. Don’t respond to charity appeals. Honestly. Or hardly ever. It just encourages charities to make more appeals. They become dependent on sending out ever more gruesome descriptions of need, a race to the bottom. Don’t let them do it to you. Give steadily, regularly, whether or not there’s been an earthquake. There’ll be another one tomorrow.
  12. Be a bit light-hearted. Giving is beautiful, as beautiful as great art or great science. Unlike art and science, however, it’s within the reach of all of us. It’s a kind of gift.

How to give to charity (1)

The fundraising industry and charities can become co-dependent

moneyA while ago I looked at  an American site called Charity Navigator.1 A charity itself,  it looks at the financial efficiency, governance and transparency of charities in the USA, providing a star rating and all kinds of information. What a good idea. It highlights total clunkers. For example, the Cancer Survivors’ Fund which spends just 8.1% of its income on its programs; 89.2% on its fundraising. It must be congratulated on giving professional fundraisers a new purpose and meaning in life.

However, try the ’10 best charities everyone has heard of’ list and take a bow, Samaritan’s Purse.  Samaritan’s Purse puts 88% of every dollar it receives into its charitable programs. (Though it still manages to pay Franklin Graham a to my mind eye-popping annual salary of $443,000. Compassion International’s CEO Santiago H Mellado scrapes by on $130,000 less. Compassion turns over half as much again as Samaritan’s Purse ($0.8bn compared with $0.5bn) and hands over 83% of its income to the poor.)

Others are still good but not quite so good: Oxfam America burns through nearly 14% of its income in fundraising and pays its CEO nearly  half a million dollars a year. Its turnover is a mere $90m.

A very few charities– fewer than 1%–get perfect scores on Charity Navigator for their financial policies and their accountability, openness and integrity. Most are small. In the evangelical missions space, just one manages it: step forward The Outreach Foundation which ‘seeks to engage Presbyterians in Christ-centered evangelistic mission for the salvation of humankind.’ Expect Presbyterians to be good with with accountancy and souls.

Here in the UK I know of no similar charity. Does anyone? Instead, we are assailed by various groups in various ways with no very easy way to figure out whether we are dealing with the gruesome UK equivalent of the Cancer Survivor’s Fund or the more uplifting examples like Samaritan’s Purse or The Outreach Foundation.

How things between men and women are very inefficient but that’s the way it is

I am reading a book whose title I just couldn’t resist: Chasing Slow by the blogger and interiors-stylist Erin Loechner. It’s gorgeously designed book and often beautifully written and due to be released in February. (I’m seeing an advanced review copy.) At one point she writes something like this:

What I said:

  • I hate my job
  • I hate Los Angeles
  • I hate this house

What I meant:

  • Are we going to be OK here?

I quoted this to my wife and we had the following conversation:

Me: How is anybody supposed to understand that?

Cordelia: How can anybody not understand that?

Me: If she’s worried about whether or not they’re going to be OK, wouldn’t it be better to say something like, I don’t know, just to pluck a random example out of the air, ‘Are we going to be OK?’ I mean, wouldn’t that be a bit clearer?

Me: (continued, expanding on the theme as, on rare occasions, I have been known to do) Her poor husband is probably already scanning the jobs pages, or the house listings. On the grounds that she’s just said she hates her current ones.

Cordelia (sighing) : Because it’s a kind of dance.

Me: What is?

Cordelia: Conversation.

I’ve been married for 27 years. I’m never going to get this.

 

 

The Netflix ‘chaos monkey’ and the problem of evil

Monkey business

Here’s a thing.

Netflix’s software engineers put into Netflix a program called the ‘chaos monkey.’ Its job is to go through Netflix’s servers, randomly wreaking havoc.
09-monkeys
Why do they do this? Because they wanted to be ‘constantly testing our ability to succeed despite failure.‘ Chaos monkey taught them to build programmes that continue to work with bad stuff happening all around. The random, mindless destructivity leads to better systems.

Enter Thomas Aquinas (13th century theological alpha male). He quotes and then adds to Augustine, (fourth century theological alpha male) 1:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Augustine (by Lewis Comfort Tiffany)

Aquinas by Carlo_Crivelli
Aquinas by Carlo_Crivelli

As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): “Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.” This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.

Evil is God’s chaos monkey, and the world is better for it.

Maybe.

 

God. Hiding. But not all that well.

He’s too big to find anything to hide behind.

This is cool but complicated and involves mathematics.

I have been paddling in the magisterial physics textbook The Road to Reality by (Sir) Roger Penrose. He claims:

  • When mathematicians make discoveries, they generally feel they are not making up something new. They are exploring an existing thing.
  • This thing–mathematical truth–exists objectively, and it is not restricted to space or time.
  • Down at the dawn of philosophy, Plato taught this — and every subsequent philosopher (as is widely suggested) has only ever written footnotes to his work.

Plato also taught there were two other absolutes that objectively exist and are unrestricted by space and time: Good and Beauty.

Truth, the Good, and Beauty — each infinite, omnipresent, unchanging, eternal, objectively real and underpinning the Universe as we perceive it. Necessary, even. 1

God might be hiding but, yup, we can see him.