iGod

Life Version 2.0

(My article reproduced from Community News)

I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I love it when it makes my life easier, but absolutely hate it when it interferes with my routine and it becomes the master, not the servant.

Quite unabashed, I have been an Apple Mac user ever since my second year at ‘vicar factory’ back in the early 90s. Before then I kindly borrowed someone’s Toshiba Portable MS DOS computer, which in truth wasn’t that portable. Not only was it heavy and left dents in my knees, but the battery life was shorter than a queue to the Crazy Paving Appreciation Society’s Annual Lecture.

Nowadays, alongside my lighter laptop, I also have my mobile or should I say ‘smart phone’, but as I discovered recently this has not been without its problems.

I attempted to upgrade my phone software to the latest whizzy-whiz, faster, better-than-ever-before version. Also known as iOS 5. In truth, I was not unhappy with how things were before, but the thought of something better and free, well…it was simply an offer I couldn’t refuse.

So on a quiet weeknight I hit the download button to let technology do its best. Unfortunately it decided to do its worst. With a big gasp I watched my entire set of emails, calendars and contacts disappear before my eyes. (And, no, my emails weren’t backed up!) If ever there was a time to find a grown man crying in a corner it was then. The promise of a better-connected life had let me down.

It has made me think how we can often put a lot of blind faith in things that are not necessarily proven, but given enough hype can accept anything as truth. We want to believe that something will make our lives better.

It is natural to want to upgrade the standard of our lives. We can look at the current version and think, “This just sucks! Maybe something has to stopped functioning in our life or we see something in someone else’s and want what they have.

The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple said famously in a university plenary speech:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

The immensely successful and talented Steve Jobs recognised his products were not ultimately enough in them self. That is quite something, isn’t it?

Life has a spiritual profundity that modern science still struggles with any integrity to make redundant. There remains this longing in us all to be known, loved and accepted for who we are, not for what we have achieved. Many Christian commentators have called this a God-shaped hole wanting to be filled by himself through his Son Jesus Christ.

If the promises of God are true and Jesus is who he says he is, it requires a full upgrade to a new way of seeing and experiencing life. The old version will never do.

St Augustine, the early church father said rather wryly:

“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: ‘Come to me all you that labour and are heavy burdened.’” [quoting Jesus]

Is God’s Life Version any better than the modern alternatives around?

I give the last word to Paul the low-tec Apostle who said this about the great iPriest, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"

ASD

'Red Rev' Giles Fraser?

Just reflecting about the resigination of the Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, Rev Dr Giles Fraser. While left-leaning The Guardian fetes the man, I hear, maybe not surprisingly, the Daily Telegraph takes another view.

Whatever side you take, he typifies the need for the Christian to speak up and get involved in politics and injustice, even when it doesn't always make you universally popular with your own peers.

US Christian activist Shane Clairborne says:

"Theologian Karl Barth said, 'We have to read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other.' For too long we Christians have used our faith as a ticket out of this world rather than fuel to engage it.

"In his parables, Jesus wasn’t offering pie-in-the-sky theology… he was talking about the real stuff of earth. He talks about wages, debt, widows and orphans, unjust business owners and bad politicians. In fact Woody Guthrie breaks it all down in his song “Jesus Christ.” The song ends with Woody singing, “This song was written in New York City. If Jesus were to preach what he preached in Galilee, they would lay him in his grave again.”

"The more I read the Gospels, the more they seem to confront the very patterns of the world we live in. At one point Mary, pregnant with Jesus cries out: “God casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly… God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty…”. You can’t help but think if she were alive in contemporary America some folks would try to accuse the Virgin Mother of being Marxist or promoting class warfare. But all through Scripture we see this–over 2000 verses about how God cares for the poor and most vulnerable.

"What would Jesus say about Wall Street?"

 What would Jesus say about the Square MIle?

Would he be for locking up St Paul's Catherdral or for an open air church service?

The thing I am taking away is that if we want our message to be heard we have to first hear what culture is saying. This is not so much about wanting to sound populist like a politician, but to help us avoid sounding pompous like an old fogey.

May God grant us wisdom and courage in these times!

ASD

Christians volunteer more than others - Survey

In the spirit of, you could say, the Big Society, The Department for Culture, Media and Sport have pulled together some interesting statistics on volunteering. They show how Christians consistently volunteer more than others.

The data is based on opinion polling, and although the question wasn't asked in 2009, it is clear that every year it has been asked for the past six years Christians shown higher levels of volunteering that others.

BRIN point out that this is in line with other studies, including the British Social Attitudes Survey and the Citizenship Survey.

It has been mooted that perhaps part of the reason why Christian motivation is figure high is because the [traditional] Church has a greying older demographic, which therefore tends to be more community-spirited per se.

Undoubtedly there is more than an element of truth that when you retire you will have more time to volunteer than someone bringing up a young family, working all hours under the sun to provide for them. However, I want to throw some doubt over that conclusion.

In my own tribe, the Vineyard movement, our demographic is much younger, which inevitably has to do with being a young movement. Yet I have to say almost all of our regulars are involved in a voluntary ministry in church life, which, if you think about it is pretty impressive. Well, I am impressed!

This is because we see volunteering as 'serving', as it falls out of our relational worship with God. Our giving of our time is an important and central manifestation of our sacrificial offering to God. It is an act of thanksgiving. It is so much more more than being community-spirited. In short, the two are inseparable in the Kingdom of God. 

Deut 4:6 says that emphatically that we are to love God and love others. Volunteering is a outward response to an invisible grace.

Therefore, as it is impossible to separate serving the community to serving the Lord, maybe we should argue more confidently that our motivation has more going for it than merely being down to an ageing benevolent congregation.

ASD

 

Mourinho and Meteorites

Well it had to happen, didn’t it? Jose Mourinho quits Chelsea. The only surprise is that it didn’t come earlier. I guess for Chelsea fans, like myself, it feels like an almighty meteorite has crashed to earth causing mass emotional devastation. “The Special One”, will be sorely missed.

And talking of meteorites, I was reading about a place in Peru called Carancas who witnessed a fiery ball come crashing down last weekend. Apparently, more than 150 residents have suffered headaches, irritated skin and vomiting brought on by a “strange odour”, according to a local official.

Tales of toxic fumes arising from the crater is not helping the community avoid hysteria. It does start sounding like some apocalyptic picture or some bad Hollywood film starring Nicholas Cage. The local mayor admits that “there is a certain psychological fear in the community.”

More poignantly, it might seem like a passage from the Bible when Moses threatened Pharaoh with certain plagues.

For centuries, meteorites have been seen as gifts from the angels or portents of doom. Joshua wrote of how “the Lord cast down great stones from heaven” while the book of Revelation recorded a falling star that poisoned the waters: “many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

Reports of sickness are rare, although many of the meteorites fallen have sparked some kind of superstition. Even scientists get in on the act with their theory of a massive meteorite falling on earth causing the Ice Age begin thousands of years ago.

God and nature are, of course, inextricably linked. The Bible is full of instances where nature is used by God to make a solemn point?

I think, though, one has to be careful before giving the interpretation that the Peruvian peril was an act of God to punish people. But what if it was? What if the Peruvian villagers had done something regrettable? Does this sound like a modern God for a sophisticated Christian?  Am I being superstitious or am I simply going along with the same God of Moses and Joshua?

Would God still use the same tools of the job that he did all those years ago?

Natural disasters, however unpleasant, may not be meant to hurt us, but they do serve as a reminder that elements, like meteorites, tempestuous seas and earthquakes, are more powerful than us, reflecting the creator.

As the Psalmist astutely said, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it”. Whether the departure of Jose Mourinho can be seen as a natural disaster too I very much doubt. Ho hum!

ASD