Leeanne and I are having a discussion at the moment. In many ways it is the same discussion we have had for 18 years.

Basically it boils down to: Can God be trusted?

Leeanne and I decided to have Matthew 6:33 ( But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well) engraved on our wedding rings and said that is what we wanted our marriage to be about.  Sometimes I think that might have been a dumb idea.

For us one of the areas we chose to live like this was with our personal finances. Neither of us receives a wage, and we wrestle is to try to work out what God is asking of us, assuming Matthew 6:33 to be true.

As I look back on the last 18 years, there is no doubting that God has looked after us, and not just financially. So many times there seemed no way forward and yet something happened…

That said, it doesn’t mean the last 18 years have been easy. When you choose to try to live your life on the basis that God exists, has a will and can be trusted, you basically commit yourself to a constant battle with yourself and with God.

God doesn’t always do things the way I think he should. Bad things still happen, you still get hurt and you don’t always have the ability to do what you think is right to do. Read the rest of this entry »

For the last time I will post some of my Auntie Anne’s notes from her reading of Life Together by Deitrich Bonhoeffer.

Todays reflection is a bit longer and again has language that is a bit out of date, but if you can take the time to read it, I hope you find it as helpful as I have.

Life Together is quite a short book and one I would recommend that anyone seriously interested in fellowship and community read.

Breakthrough to the Cross

In confession occurs the breakthrough to the Cross.  The root of all sin is pride…I want to be my own law. It is in his wickedness that a man wants to be as God.  Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride. To stand there before a brother as a sinner is an ignominy that is almost unbearable. In the confession of concrete sins the old man dies a painful, shameful death before the eyes of a brother.  Because this humiliation is so hard we continually scheme to evade confessing to a brother. Our eyes are so blind that they don’t see the promise and the glory in such abasement. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I posted some of my Auntie Anne’s notes from Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. He was focusing on the impact of sin and confession in community.

Because some of his insights are so helpful, and also unfortunately, revolutionary, in terms of what is normal amongst most of us, I thought I would post a little bit more today.

Some of the language is now a little dated, but see if you can catch the heart of what he is trying to say.

Bonhoeffer says that anybody who lives beneath the Cross and who has discerned in the Cross of Jesus the utter wickedness of all men and of his own heart will find there is no sin that can ever be alien to him. Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother. Read the rest of this entry »

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a very special person. Earlier this year I read his “Life Together” reflection on community and wrote a couple of reflections about it. My Auntie Anne has also been reading it and copied out some of the bits that really stood out in a fresh way to her. She sent them to me and as I read over them again I thought they might be useful to post for you to reflect on.

The connection Bonhoeffer makes between community, sin and confession is very important, not surprisingly, often avoided….

He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone.  Christians, not withstanding corporate worship, prayer and fellowship may still be left to their loneliness.

The final breakthrough to fellowship does not come because though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, the sinners.

The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner.  So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship.  Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that  all are sinners. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking about my own mortality lately. That has partly been brought on by the fact my grandmother is nearing the end of her life and one of my favorite parts of the days is when Leeanne and I stroll across the road for a cuppa with her and whoever else happens to be there at the time (usually either my Mum and Dad or Auntie Anne).

My mum has worked with my Grandmother on the story of her life, complete with photos. It is fascinating to see my grandmother as a small child, a teenager and a young married woman. Now 95, Mema has seen so many things change in her lifetime. As a child in rural Tasmania she grew up without electricity, much less the radio and now she sees her grandchildren and great grandchildren with gadgets that would have been the stuff of science fiction only 20 years ago.

My grandmother has had a good life. She has loved and been loved by many, many people and now many of the people she grew up with are no longer with us, including her husband, Gordon (Pa).

It is tempting to think that life will never end, but it does. At some point all the people we know and love will no longer walk the face of the planet, and before long it is highly probable that people will not even know that you ever existed.

Part of me wants to protest at that truth, thinking that somehow I am too important to ever be forgotten, but chances are I will. Read the rest of this entry »

I hate pain. I hate feeling like something is not right and it is beyond my power to do anything about it.

At a lot of levels the last two and a half years have been the most painful in my life, but the truth is that they have also been the time when I have most clearly grown as a person, and I’m still growing.

I can understand where the ideas behind prosperity theology come from. It is so tempting to want to believe in a God who is really a fairy godmother, a faith that makes you happy by giving you lots of stuff. I also bet its tempting for people with lots of stuff to believe they have it all because somehow they have done something right, there is less guilt associated with a theology like that.

I just don’t know how you can maintain prosperity theology and read the bible, the two seem quite incompatible to me. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the questions that Leeanne and I have been talking about is how we live our life.

My kids are not used to having me around as much as I am at the moment, and when I took my first overnight trip to Sydney last week, it wasn’t hard to detect a sense of “here we go again”, from them.

As Leeanne and I talk about our 18 years of marriage, there is a sadness for me that I was so busy that I didn’t really understand what life was like for her with four energetic little kids. I think if I had my time over I would probably do less work and spend more time at home.

The question of getting the balance right is one that is guaranteed to induce strong feelings in most parents. Its something we know we need to do, but something that seems impossible.

I was encouraged in reading John Ortberg’s The Life you’ve always wanted – spiritual disciplines for ordinary people. He indicates that reaching for balance in your life may actually be reaching for the wrong thing. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t normally do this, but one of my regular readers, Jim Van Ommen, wrote a comment on a recent post about wealth today and I found it so thought provoking that I decided to post it separately so people don’t miss it…..

People from wealthy backgrounds are more likely than poorer people to break laws while driving, take lollies from children, and lie for financial gain, a United States study says”, Read the rest of this entry »

I am sitting at Sydney airport after a flying visit to catch up with a friend.

I have a lot on my mind at the moment, finding myself in a real wrestle to understand what God is up to.

I am finding that God seems to bring me books I need when I need them  which is helping with the wrestle. A friend has given me N.T. Wright’s big three volumes on theology which I have found very helpful.

Another book I am finding suprisingly helpful is “church unique” by Will Mancini.

There are a number of ideas that resonate with me. One of them is the danger of strategic planning. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great challenges with being part of a community is that people are painful.

I love the quote from Henri Nouwen:

Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives.

Sometimes that person can be me. I can be a real mongrel sometimes.

Other times though, it is other people who are being the mongrel and what do you do?

I’ve had a few disagreements lately so I’ve been thinking a bit about the best ways to manage it.

Fortunately Jesus knows we are all mongrels and actually lays out a step by step plan for what to do when you think someone has wronged you: Read the rest of this entry »

I finished teaching the book of Ecclesiastes today.

As usual, it has left me with much to think about. I really think Ecclesiastes is one of the most important, and yet misunderstood books in the bible.

As I was saying in my previous post, Solomon “tries on” a whole lot of different worldviews in the search for what life is actually about.

It’s interesting when he looks at how the economy works…

He says in 4:4

And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

In many ways he is right. Our whole economic system is based on envy, on the desire to have more. Read the rest of this entry »

Again I find myself teaching the book to Fusion’s Certificate IV students at a time when I think I need to be hearing what the book is saying.

I love the courage of Ecclesiastes, Solomon (I go with the author the bible wants me to think it is, despite all the discussion about authorship), dares to ask the very scary question does life have any meaning at all?

I came across a quote that I think captures a bit of the importance of the book:

I’ve been thinking a bit about economics lately.

There is something at the heart of our capitalist system that makes me feel a bit uneasy.

I really enjoyed hearing from Dr. Ian Harper at the last arrow residential conference.  He is one of Australia’s most respected economists, and also a Christian.

I asked him a question that I had been thinking about for a while: “Doesn’t capitalism mean the rich will always get richer and the poor will always get poorer”?

His answer? Yes. He also pointed out though that despite a continual polarisation in our economy, the standard of living for the poor has been maintained over the last 20 years through our social security system, so net standard of living hasn’t in fact changed.

I was surprised at his answer but it made sense. Every year Centrelink hands out more and more money to more and more people.

It raises an obvious question: How long will that last? How long will the rich be o.k. with subsidizing the poor? Read the rest of this entry »

I have a dilemma.

For 20 years I have been working with Fusion trying to do Christianity differently, but the more I live with it the more I see the problem is not what we do, its  the way we see things.

I am wading through N.T. Wright’s “Jesus and the Victory of God” and finding it a very helpful theological overview. I was hit by one page, which was meant to be more of a building block in a bigger argument than an insight in its own right.

Wright very simply unpacks how we look at things.

He says:

Worldviews are the lenses through which a society looks at the world, the grid upon which are plotted the multiple experiences of life. Worldviews may be studied in terms of four features: characteristic stories; fundamental symbols; habitual praxis; and a set of questions and answers (who are we? where are we? what’s wrong? what’s the solution? and what time is it?).  Read the rest of this entry »

Our week away came to an end yesterday and as we tidied the holiday house the kids sat down to watch the Super Bowl. I was fascinated as I came in and out of the room to see what a remarkable production it all was.

One one of the things that stood out to me was the adulation that the quarterbacks and senior coaches were afforded. Every move was dissected and past greats were referenced with hushed tones.

I was left thinking how good Americans are at shaping myth.

The whole event reaffirmed what it meant to be American and much of the time was taken up telling and re-telling stories about mythical heroes.

Americans do heroes well. Their sporting stars, movie stars, political stars and even religious heroes are all larger than life, something more than human.

One of the things l loved about the television showThe West Wing, was the way the President was so deeply respected and almost revered. That really isn’t how we treat our Prime Minister.
Read the rest of this entry »