We will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I have tried to write one blog per month. You will probably have noticed that over the past few months this pace as slackened.

This not because I have lost interest in the topic. Actually, it is the other way around. I have been reading and working on a rich seam of theological thought which is taking a bit of effort to work through.

Therefore until your regular program is restored may I suggest some reading and listening.

First, I have recently been listening to some podcasts by

http://www.gospelconversations.com/

There is great stuff there, including discussions with Edwin Judge a notable historian of 1^st century culture.

I highly recommend the 3 talks by Mark Strom:

http://www.gospelconversations.com/mark-strom-paul-and-the-open-cosmos/

http://www.gospelconversations.com/mark-strom-paul-and-the-open-society/

http://www.gospelconversations.com/mark-strom-paul-and-the-open-heart-2

They are all good. But the open Cosmos talk is simply exceptional.

I have also be reading some writings by Brian Edgar

http://brianedgar.seedbed.com/category/blog/

..... It just possible that what is accepted theology by a number of writers on technology could have large holes it....

Merry Christmas

Brian.

Twitter from a Christian perspective

A growing problem over the last 40 years or more has been the privatisation of religion. It is okay to believe just don't talk about it at work or in public - outside of family and church that is. Talking about neutral subjects like the kids etc is fine but don't be divisive. And so there was and is a growing gap between private and professional lives.

Os Guinness called it the private zoo in the gravedigger file summarised here.

“Privately engaging, socially irrelevant.”  This phrase succinctly summarizes what the Assistant Director calls “the private-zoo factor.”  It is a form of dualism that restricts religion to the personal lives of believers and prevents the Christian faith from invading “public life with integrity.” ....

 Unfortunately, many Christians—perhaps most—have come to accept this sort of dualism as normal.  Things of faith are “specialized” to their personal spiritual lives.  Faith must be left at the door, along with hats and coats, in the everyday world of work—all nicely summarized by the Assistant Director. 

Has social media made much difference - no not really.
Facebook - most people sensibly in my opinion try to separate there family life from their work life. In this data age having family and real friends and bosses / teachers etc all together in the same social media space is not a generally a good idea.

Blogging - this was an interesting development but its still non-integrative. If you blog the readers of that blog will be readers because of the topic and because you are a good writer. Its like reading a book - not reading the person.

Then along came Twitter.

Take a randomly look around the Twitterverse and there is a curious phenomena taking shape. More and more people it seems acknowledge their diverse private lives. They may follow a sports team, be a father, mother, potter or like a particular TV show. Its all there. Follow someone and you'll often see a little bit of their private and professional passions on display. Not interested ignore it.

With Twitter you follow a person an individual - their work and other interests. It may only be 140 characters and thus Twitter may seem an unlikely hero to re-unite private and public and make space for religion in the public square but I think that is actually happening to a limited degree.

Twitter has the opportunity to link the 2 worlds of 'private' and 'public'and so for Christians Twitter actually offers some very interesting creative possibilities.

However, I think that generally, Christians have been so tamed by the private zoo factor already that they do use it creatively enough. There is still too much where Twitter is is still just used as a single channel communication. Pastors tweet God stuff and other Christians just tweet work related stuff. We need to integrate our lives and reintroduce genuine faith and God stuff back into the public square. Twitter offers a rather unique vehicle to do that.

So go tweet.

Technology is not neutral: I (almost) don't care!

Essentially, anyone who knows about technology will tell you technology is not neutral. From which technologies get developed, which make it to market, which succeed and why - there are always bigger issues at stake. Technologies are affected by and in turn affect the socio-economic ecologies they exist within. Although some downplay this tech non-neutrality it is such a truism that anybody who thinks tech is a neutral tool for either good or bad uses is simply mistaken. Defining the good and bad is problem enough let alone saying the way I use it is only good. But from there it gets way more complicated.

For Christians who wish to use technology uncritically I want to shake them up but for those that use the concept of non-neutrality as some kind of talisman I want to scream 'stop it!'. Search the internet and you will find plenty of examples.

The non-neutrality comes to us largely from the philosophical schools and history of technology writings nothing wrong with that - good academic analysis. But what annoys me is that Christians often take this and keep repeating it, just to support an argument usually that in some way some technology is bad. My problem is we as Christians should understand that NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING is neutral. Sex, technology, food, building temples, not building temples, giving money not giving money, burning offerings not burning offerings, it is all non-neutral in our relationship with God.

Technology is not some special case. If you want to say technology is not neutral then go on and make a decent point. Can I say it anymore clearly.

Besides the point that what we put in our mouths has consequences for our health so we can use this example...

Paul in 1 Corinthians 8 New International Version (NIV) [biblegateway.com]

Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. 2 Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. 3 But whoever loves God is known by God.[a] 4 So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” 5 For even if there are so-called gods,whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”),6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. 7 But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. 8 But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. 9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? 11 So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.

or another example

God ordered Solomon to build a temple and even gave him essentially all the plans and when it wasn't rebuilt after the sojourn in Babylon we get Haggai 1.

1 In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jozadak,[a] the high priest: 2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’”3 Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: 4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” 5 Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 6 You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” 7 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 8 Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the Lord. 

and yet, and yet as Oz Guinness points out...

 it is sobering to realize the lengths of God's iconoclasm. As the Scriptures show, God is not only against the idolizing of alien gods, God is against His own gifts when idolized. The fate of the tabernacle and the temple are both a warning ... from here 

Technology is not neutral - of course it isn't, but nothing is. It is working out what that means is where the real heavy lifting starts. It is no easy task and over what time frame do you want to consider the impacts. Take the example of the plough, adopted in Mesopotamia in the 5th Century BC. Aside from the fact that the plough was adopted in climates and bio-regions where grains were available and possible to farm (which have improved our health), researchers have found that ...

Women descended from plough-users are less likely to work outside the home, to be elected to parliament or to run businesses than their counterparts in countries at similar levels of development who happen to be descended from hoe-users. The research reinforces the ideas of Ester Boserup, an economist who argued in the 1970s that cultural norms about the economic roles of the sexes can be traced back to traditional farming practices. ... Despite a host of changes over the subsequent centuries—such as industrialisation and higher overall rates of female participation in the workforce—the economists find that variations between countries in the fraction of adult women who work outside the home can be explained rather well by the farming practices of their ancestors. This variation is huge. From the Economist in 2011.

Now that is one heck of a long lived non-neutral decision.... Do you have gender stereotypes - where do they come from?

Summer bonus articles: Drone pilots suffer

According to The Economist Drone Pilots suffer like other soldiers of war.

“People assume these pilots have been desensitised, like they’re playing a video game,” says Nancy Cooke, a professor at Arizona State University who has studied the cognitive effect of remote warfare. “The opposite is true.” Drone pilots experience mental-health problems at the same rate as fighter pilots deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a 2013 study by researchers for the Pentagon.

So why the mental health problems.

Whereas fighter pilots drop a bomb and fly away, drone pilots may spend weeks monitoring a village or convoy, sussing out patterns and getting to know their enemies. This odd intimacy makes the act of killing more personal, particularly as these pilots are forced to witness the fallout. Afterwards, instead of bonding with fellow servicemen at a base, drone warriors go home, where they must keep their daily exploits a secret. Unsurprisingly, the air force has trouble attracting and keeping drone pilots, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an official watchdog. In December 2013 it had only 85% of the number it needed, which puts pressure on serving pilots. Many complain of long hours (nearly 60% say they work more than 50 hours a week), long commutes, open-ended assignments and few opportunities for promotion. Some say they were trained to fly manned aircraft, but were shunted to the “chair force” with empty promises that it would be temporary. A typical air-force stint is three to four years; some drone pilots have been serving for over six.

Even the enemy can become a person when watched close enough.

Rather than the strange belief that killing is costless, and that PTSD is somehow an oddity maybe we should change our worldview to expect that it is generally psychologically a problem for humans. Being made in the image of God has implications.


Ref link. http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21604608-stressful-lives-chair-force-dilbert-war

One thing to change about church: Getting the big picture

I am increasing disconcerted by the level of 'theological' discussion of technology. Take this one on the Internet at the Many Horizons blog. I am sorry to say superficially it sounds okay but almost by simply doing a search and replace I could write a blog on why the car has made us ungodly or why modern housing or whatever you like is ungodly. But what really frustrates me is this:

The primary moral logic of the Internet and mobile technology is the confidence that human relationships can be technologically mediated for personal satisfaction without cost.

Really, that's it. The internet has many functions one of which is this one. But so often the criticism of social media, cell phones etc resorts to its destroying personal face to face relationships. As if in changing the nature of such relationships there is some presumption that this is the totality of Christian life. Curiously, with this blog mostly written, yesterday I cam across this comment quite by accident.

One illustration of technologically induced human isolation: when I go to work in the morning I often meet a neighbour and her ten year old daughter. Every day they walk side by side to the bus stop, each plugged into her own walkman, isolated from each other and the rest of the world. Such is the real world of technology. Ursula Franklin 'The Real World of Technology 1990 p51.

So pre-internet culture also promoted isolation. We are so quick to judge others on their appearance. We no nothing of the quality or intimacy of the relationship between this mother and daughter, yet because they wear their walkmans to the bus stop we are told they are isolated. We don't even know what they are listening to.

So that blog on ungodliness got me thinking, how have we impoverished the Christian life to this miniscule vision. How did we get there and how do we improve the situation?

I have been a member of a number of different churches, attending since I was a kid - spanning 3 denominations, 4 cities  and two countries. Church has many purposes, it is community, it is a time to worship our creator and redeemer and it is also a little time each week to try and wrap our heads around the Message of the Messenger.

But there is one thing that has struck me wherever I have been, there is a fragmentation of the perspective. Because we hear church in small doses and because the plot is so vast - all time and space, it is difficult to develop a road map to Christian life. I have counted a number of church Pastors as personal friends and this is not a criticism of them, in many ways I understand the pressures on them - the pressure to speak every week. So read this with empathy and a critical look at ourselves, how do we as the body re-envision things.

So much of what we do at church is like Australian Aboriginal art. By no means all Aboriginal art, is dot art but it represents a substantial tradition. So think of each Sunday's sermon as a dot.

(c) Noel Doyle. (I own an original painting).

But at this range its not possible to tell what this segment of the painting is all about is it? Well I think it is the same with church - each Sunday another dot. But unless occasionally we stand back and ensure that it is organised then it might as well be painting with a straw.

It might be pretty but its not that helpful. We might accumulate so coherent ideas and then again the framework we build out of the dots might be wrong. Is the picture above a spear?

We tend to focus on either the gifts of the Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited,provoking and envying each other. (Galatians 5)

or on vague applications for each sermon but then each sermon has a different application, so that is not terribly helpful.


What are the big picture issues at stake for Christians. Well of course it is Schaeffer's question How Then Shall We Live. We can create some different layers which have different questions and topics. 

What are the most important big picture directions and priorities for Christians 

at the top layer perhaps the following:

1. witnessing and 'mission'
2. justice
3. caring for the poor
4. creation care
5. peace making
6. living well (making a living, feeding yourself and your family, donating money, volunteering etc).
7. relationships
8. ...

• Which do we prioritise, which deserves our time?
• We can't do them all, do we make one of them our 'thing'?
• What are the consequences for those around us when we push one thing?
• On the other hand, we often need a focus a thing to give us purpose, indeed God, I believe, still calls people for particular jobs, tasks activities.

So then, where from there? Robert Banks in a very nice little book has some interesting discussions.

Banks focuses his discussion below the layer pointed to above. His book is really just aimed at what I called living well bove. He makes the point Christian could fruitfully discuss:

Social pressures

• busyness
• mobility
• debt
• social conformity

Routine life

• commuting
• shopping
• sleeping
• eating and drinking
• dress
• hospitality
• hobbies
• gardening

Work & leisure

• getting having or not having paid work
• re-creation

Central features of modern life

• society everyday beliefs and values - which obviously affect Christians
• communicating and relating (technology mediated and otherwise)
• social rituals
• secular religions (the car, the home, the ....
• materialism and consumerism.

Over time we grope our ways towards workable answers to all these questions that work for us - ones that meet our standards of Christian living and help us live day to day. But it is difficult to travel without some sort of map.

So lets use politics as an example - we tend to steer clear from overt discussions of politics in Church for fear of creating divisions. In the absence of discussion people build their own perspectives based on everything but sound theology sometimes. But we are making two mistakes. The first is not discussing it and the second is we confuse goals and means.

Politics is based on the idea that there can be different goals but even when there is the same goal there are different routes to those goals. So if we can agree that caring for the poor is a critical Christian issue then we can discuss how we do that - different people may support different means but we can at least discuss that it should be a high priority and leaving it aside is a bad idea. So one example for western governments might be the choice between accepting refugees or having a serious aid program - it is a not option to choose neither.

So onto a technological example.

If you decide that creation care is really important to you then that is just the first choice, there will be political (protests) and ethical choices (who to buy from) but that choice alone does not choose your level of technology.

In a pluralistic view of what is a valid expression of Christian faith, there is not a perspective we can promote as the 'Christian society'. Each of us needs to make our own choices while respecting others. But we can only do this if we can start talking about the big picture of what Christian life looks like in the 21st century.

Juggling all of the priorities

So lets return to the imagery. We can now see a little more of the painting. Its not the whole picture we could never expect that, but we can see its a plant now.

So with church, is there a way of moving beyond the weekly dots?

May Micro Blog: Technology, just start the conversation

Blog writing feels a bit like what the newspaper 'men of the past must of felt like, you write, the words go out, but is there anyway to effect change? Well today I have a message, I want you to do something.

I teach Sunday School at our church for grades 5-7. It has its frustrations and challenges but occasionally there are amazing moments. Recently I taught a a series of classes on using the internet. You say really they are bit young aren't they. No Way! 9 out of 9 had electronic devices. Five of the nine could independently connect to the internet with no adult supervision. But that wasn't where the idea for the class started. That came about because after some conversation which I won't detail here, I asked whether they get taught anything about using the internet at school. Oh yes, but the lessons are lame - they don't know what they are talking about was the response. I get the impression its all about how to 'use' and nothing about the wider understanding of it.

So you adults out there - just think - the common joke for years has been that the best person to program the VCR (xyz machine) is to get the closest 12 year old. So the equivalent is we now have technologically illiterate teachers trying to talk to kids about the internet - just think about that for a moment. These kids live and breathe the net, they are the digital natives but they are still pre-teen they have no idea of what they are playing with. I'd be the same as putting them out on the savannah and seeing if they survive.

The fun bit is that if you know a little of the technology - the Bible speaks into their lives like a bell chiming.

Passages like Colossians 3 come so alive because they see what is going around them (I won't fill in the gory details but you read the news and the kids see stuff all the time).

12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility,gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Really if you start with their world and specifically technology, then often the Bible isn't hard to talk about at all. Finishing within the alotted time is more the problem once the conversations get really going. And the cool thing, its kids who aren't from a Christian background whose eyes go widest at what we are discussing - its relevant, useful and they want more.

So I urge you start the conversation! Just start it. Its not too hard. We need to have lots of conversations around technology at church but at least if you do nothing else talk to the kids. it will go in weird directions I am sure of it but go with it, I am sure it will be rewarding for you and them!

May Micro Blog: Sola Scriptura

The Protestant Reformation adopted a fivefold saying.

1. Sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone")
2. Sola fide ("by faith alone")
3. Sola gratia ("by grace alone")
4. Solus Christus or Solo Christo ("Christ alone" or "through Christ alone")
5. Soli Deo gloria ("glory to God alone")

Often the first of these by Scripture alone has been interpreted as the book – the ‘device’ printed words on a page. Now increasingly, we are aware that early churches without the printing press had to hand copy the text and read it out loud for people to hear it. Churches have always read the scriptures during a service but I have been in a number of Churches where there is an increased emphasis on this for example reading a large slab of text before a new series starts. I for one love this. 

There is increasing commentary (easily found on the web) about the changing paradigm of the text from oral to printed book and to electronic. Okay boring so far.

However, last week I attended a seminar at which Bruxy Cavey spoke. He put a spin on this that was truly fascinating, one that I have not heard quite this way before and it is, I thought worth sharing. The scriptures are not solely the text or even if you want to spin it differently the Word made flesh – Jesus. One way in to think about it is that in NT to 'read' the scriptures, it would have had to been read for you and then because of the what that entails it would be in a group setting - the community together. You gather together to hear the words read. You couldn't hear the words outside of a group setting. Now the printing press changed that - individuals could read it for themselves it private, which has had important advantages but that wasn't the NT worldview.

It is a worthwhile point - the device, the printed book or electronic media may matter less than the continued act of meeting together. The Church - the body - needs to be together sharing space and time in a place. Sharing food is seems to be important as well which just a bonus. Do other things if you like but be physically together with others as well.