Storing up treasure

I don't often find that my doodlings here cross paths with my professional life. But a recent post in an information security blog pointed me to the rather remarkable "You've Been Left Behind" Services website. For a modest fee, they will store for you emails and messages to be sent to loved ones after the Rapture has taken place.

The quote appears to run like this:

"The unsaved will be 'left behind' on earth to go through the 'tribulation period' after the "Rapture".... We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You will also be able to give them some help in living out their remaining time. In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys' (you won't be needing them any more, and the gift will drive home the message of love). There won't be any bodies, so probate court will take 7 years to clear your assets to your next of Kin. 7 years of course is all the time that will be left. So, basically the Government of the AntiChrist gets your stuff, unless you make it available in another way."

Now, I can't find this on the site anywhere. It certainly would be a great way to mount an identity theft operation: most people who lodged details there would almost certainly forget about it after a little while. Maybe they've taken down that particular suggestion for now.

The world is always slightly more odd than you expected it to be, it seems to me.

My Walk to Work

Today, I thought I'd try something different. I have a lovely walk to work. It is beautiful and serene. I'm not sure this timelapse video does it justice. I thought it would be easier than uploading lots of still photographs.

Review - Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

Review
Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture
Michael Frost


This book has had pretty good reviews all round, so I had to read it. If truth be told, it's been on my "current reading" list for some months. It went all the way to Australia with me, and back. Only now do I discover that while I was there, I was driving right past Morling College daily - I could have called in to see the author! He's doing a tour of the UK later in 2008, so I rather hope I can go to hear him speak anyway.

And I think that would be worth doing. Certainly some of the sections of the book are sit-up-and-take-notice-good. The central theme of the book is well-expressed by the title: that Christians - specifically, those of us living in Western society - are like exiles in the culture which surrounds us, cut adrift from the Christendom we once called home. Christians are called in the New Testament to live as aliens and strangers in the world, but the present position of the church vis-a-vis the rest of society is something we haven't experienced in well over a millennium.

So we get passages like this:

The experience that faced the Jewish exiles mirrors the church's experience today. In fact, the biblical metaphor that best suits our current times and faith situation is that of exile. Just like the Jewish exiles, the church today is grieving its loss and is struggling with humiliation. ... The passing of Christendom might be compared to the fall of Jerusalem, and there is no going back.

Such talk is at once refreshing - we don't often dare say such things - and challenging. If we admit that there's no foreseeable return to the way faith was practiced a century ago, say, then we have to reconsider, maybe, just what we are here for, and how to do it. I guess that is what the remainder of the book is about.

And that's where some of it seems to unravel. Much of it is a great re-imagining of what church ought to be about, or could be about. But that's inter-mixed with some frankly bizarre sections telling me how to improve my diet ("drink more water"; "don't overdo carbohydrates"; "eat more protein"...), and be good to the planet ("recycle plastics"; "replace ordinary lightbulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs" ...), and some half-baked economic theory. The principle is sound - I'm sure that missional living must impact how we shop and run our households, as well, as what we claim to believe - but the detail seems somehow ... small.

So, like Punch's Curates Egg, I'd have to offer the review "Good in parts". If you can get past the atrocious page design and font choice, the slight academic verbosity, and the curiously nit-picking social science norms for citation and referencing (frankly I don't care that the author referenced a particular web page on the 21st February 2006), this is an excellent and thought-provoking read.

Theological Quiz

Ok, thanks to Chris Case, I found an interesting quiz, with enough questions to give a reasonable measure. I'm a bit surprised by the result: I know I've never been terribly reformed, but I suspect most people who met me would have me down as a moderately conservative evangelical right now. Or maybe not. Note to self: theology is one thing; action is another.

What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this. Emergent/Postmodern 93% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 71% Modern Liberal 61% Neo orthodox 57% Classical Liberal 46% Roman Catholic 39% Charismatic/Pentecostal 39% Reformed Evangelical 32% Fundamentalist 11%

Ouch!

Peter Rollins' writing is always thought-provoking. I don't understand it all, but I find it by turns confusing, exciting, provocative, thrilling, and many other things beside.

His post this week (Treating church as a fetish) certainly fits those categories. Sometimes, I feel quite at one with those he describes in the first paragraph (though I would hesitate to describe my fellowship as "dogmatic"), but far from all the time. The post is, however, quite close to the mark. Not that I fully understand the last part of it. The ensuing comments make for an interesting discussion, as does his promise that more thoughts on the same subject are yet to come.

I appreciate most of his sentiments, and yet, I wonder. Is it really a given that we are eventually happiest when we throw off the social charades? The pursuit of truth is downright important, but some ways of doing so cause more pain than others. For me, evolutionary change usually beats revolutionary change.

The Ethical Cross-Road

On which topic is the vast majority of (Western) Christianity at odds with wider society most vocally? Something central to Jesus' teaching perhaps? Or a key Pauline doctrine on how to live in a world tainted by sin? Or at least, something the law of Moses dwells on? Or a topic from one of the catholic creeds? Or something that would feature in the "basis of faith" or "doctrinal statement" of most of our churches and para-church movements?

Arguably none of those (though therein lies part of the argument). No, one thing where there's a huge amount of friction is biomedical ethics, and specifically the issues around reproduction. The British Parliament is currently debating a bill on the subject, and has already voted to allow human-animal hybrid embryos (though precisely what that means is ill-explored in the press); to allow the creation of "saviour siblings" (engineered to provide genetically-suitable material to be a doner to a sick brother or sister); to remove the presumption in IVF that the child to be created should have a father figure; and, as I write, probably to retain the present term limits on abortion.

All this is taking place against the backdrop of arguments - largely from believing people - that these things are bad, unethical, and calling down judgement upon the land and/or the people. Of course, the lines are not perfectly drawn, and there are believers and unbelievers on both sides, but the voice of opposition seems to come largely from the Catholics and the Evangelicals.

Have we got it right? Of course, there's no a priori reason why society has to have got it right: indeed, there are many reasons to suppose, on many issues, that society has not. And yet, those promoting the measures described above (and embryonic stem cell research, and much else beside) do so not from a hedonistic desire to promote sexual licence or infidelity, but from a genuine wish to advance medical science, to allow as wide a cross-section of the community as possible to enjoy family life, and to avoid the terror of a return to "back-street abortions". These are all good motivations.

It would be naive to say that because the motivation is good, therefore the measures and the consequences must also be morally worthwhile. But, on the issues at hand, at least, that seems to be the direction of travel for our society. And it has much to commend it.

Man made in the image of God might well expect to wield the creative power of God. I find it hard to approve of selective breeding but disapprove of DNA manipulation. "You shall do no murder" is a plain enough command, but there is a legitimate debate about when life begins.

I have this fear of Christians painting themselves into a corner, rather as some have over creationism; rather as the JWs have over blood transfusions; rather as the Amish have over the trappings of modern life. In 50 years' time, there will be a staggering range of treatments on offer. Many will, in all probability, have had their genesis in, say, embryonic stem cells - whether as a one-off kick-start, or as an ongoing part of the treatment. Will there be a rump of Christians who refuse to have anything to do with those treatments? Will that be a large or a small rump? How will that impact telling people about God's love and the gospel of the kingdom?

It strikes me that we stand at a cross-roads. Our society is choosing to take its bus off down a particular route. We choose that route or another at our peril. But I think the time is running out for that choice.

Emerging politics/economics

Something that's quite striking about the emerging conversation (or whatever you want to call it) is the fairly overtly political (or economic; the two being very closely linked) stance often involved. That seems entirely reasonable: the gospel is about transforming ourselves and our community according to kingdom principles, surely.

And yet, that too is a reason why it's silly to try and say "emerging church people believe X", because the context in which politics is being done varies so much from place to place. I'm very struck, for example, by the way in which both Democrat candidates for the US presidency are surely (on most analyses) somewhere to the right of the British Conservative Party (not that "left" and "right" work so well as political categories these days). Emerging church as a protest against the alignment of evangelicals with the American Right has no obvious counterpart in Britain.

Which is why Josh Brown's Indian Taxi Fund is intriguing: it's a plan to raise money for Amit, a church planting guy in India. But it's constructed as a loan scheme, along the lines of Kiva, but more relational. So, folks from the blogosphere hand over cash to help get a business going for Amit (it was going to be a taxi; now it looks as if it will be a shop), and later the money will be paid back. Now, that sounds like a very right wing way of thinking about aid to me - but to Josh and others (I'm guessing here, but with some confidence) it probably seems radical and subversive.

Perhaps this blog is just a thinly-veiled way of suggesting that you, gentle reader, might want to participate in the fund. That would be a most excellent thing to do. Perhaps, too, it is a plea to anyone who wants to put the conversation (or whatever you want to call it) into a box and claim to understand the full extent of the motivation of all the participants. It's all a bit too complex for that.