What would Vivid be if not for Babel? 9:19 PM

Looking up at the buildings of a modern, well-developed city, it's hard not to wonder how things may have turned out if Babel had not happened. This thought also crosses my mind when I spend time with those of other language groups and feel the pain of strained and stunted relationship when we try to communicate.

But that's another story.

Considering that the contemporary state of affairs is what we have come to experience based on God thwarting our languages and scattering us, what would cities have looked like if the world still "had one language and the same words" as Genesis puts it.

A thesis that is developed anecdotally - yet would probably have statistical weight if one had time to look it up - is that the wealthier and more "impressive" a civilisation is, the more it collectively turns its back on God. The reason for this, probably, is that as we gaze up at our monuments of success and achievement, our architectural heights, our hearts gasp exclaiming: 'My my. Look what we have done. This is what we are.'

Sydney, where I live, each year runs a festival of light called Vivid which promotes such gasping. It is as if we have seen our city in all its radiance by night and said: 'Let's get you into costume.' And we project coloured lights onto every possible surface and walk around gushing over our city, making newspaper lift outs for it, and generally getting warm-cheeked.

I don't mind it myself. It's not a terrible night out in winter. But coupled with our general beauty, luxury, and towering sexiness, Vivid may help us down a track away from the God of light and into a dark world indeed.

But then, I don't think that would be Vivid's fault on its own.

As usual, when it comes to God, it is our internal views as projected in our external behaviours that matter most.

It is the wanting to "make a name for ourselves" that Genesis suggests is at stake. It was that the pride of a building would only be the "beginning" of what man would do says God. It is, adds God, that "nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them".

So how are we to look upon our glistening skyscrapers? Well, we need to see God 'in' them. We must not say, like the people of old, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly," or "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens...".

We must look at those bricks as they are: made from the materials of the earth that God formed with his voice. And the mortar too we must recognise is made by the water that once fell from heaven, unannounced, unasked for, and pooled into lakes and streams, and was extracted with tools also fashioned with materials unasked for from the hands and imagination of God?

Only when we see our buildings and cities like this - as primarily earthy creations made from the materials of The Creation - can we see them properly: also given, not deserved, and constructed not for "ourselves" but for Him from whose hand they came to us.

Jesus wants us to be ambitious 4:27 PM

It is sometimes presumed, I think, that to be a follower of Jesus we must rid ourselves of all desire for "greatness".

There is no doubt that in our God-given humanity we have a natural inclination towards achievement, productivity and excellence. Just look at the career ambitions of children and notice how irregularly "sweatshop labourer" is mentioned to prove the point. Our natural propensity toward wanting greatness is seen in the mother of the sons of Zebedee who hopes her boys will be great in the kingdom of Jesus.

Yet notice that she is not rebuked for the ambition she possesses. What Jesus does take issue with is the means by which she seeks it and the means by which the other disciples take her to task.

Referring to the Gentile world with its power structures, Jesus suggests in Matthew 20:26f: "It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant,
and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Thus Jesus presumes his disciples - like all mankind - would like to achieve the first place on the podium. But he indicates a very upside-down way they will need to go about their hunger for the top.

And here is the great paradox of the Kingdom of Heaven. In achieving an exalted position in the kingdom, one must become low. In thirsting for first place, one must go last.

But when - in the same way that Jesus himself gave up his life as a ransom for us - we do choose the last position, the life of service and servitude of others, we achieve greatness in the eyes of other members of the kingdom.

It is not that our desire for greatness evaporates in this process. It is that our definition of greatness changes as we take the strange path of selfless service of others and in doing so find true greatness: Christ-like greatness.

What is this kind of greatness like? I think it is better experienced than discussed.

So it is not wrong to be ambitious to achieve wonderful things, it seems. But our method must be thoroughly different to the world's.

When I look around and see churches and Christians with all the trappings of Gentile power structures, I wonder why this teaching of Jesus has been neglected.

A youth group leader I interviewed recently said he felt youth groups often had the message of the gospel well worked out and not the method of the gospel worked out. He suggested we needed both, or else generations of children would continue to shun Jesus Christ.

It is no good if we talk about the ransom Jesus offered to all mankind and display no such humility in ourselves. And notice how Jesus' rebuke is in this direction and not the other. Yes there are those who are full of humility and yet miss the definition of Christ's own ransom. But Jesus' rebuke is to those who are not living out, in their actions, the humility which is part of the message of the gospel.

I don't believe the message of Christ's ransom can be proclaimed in any true sense unless it is embodied by the preacher.

As such this passage must be heeded for those of us who claim to know the message of Christ's ransom. Can that, in any sense, be true unless we also walk beneath the weight of the cross of self-denial, in service of others, and painful sacrifice - far beyond the realms of what the Gentile power structures suggest are reasonable?

The Atheist Convention is no Good Friday 8:37 PM

April harbours two related, but very different, events in Australia. They are Easter and the Global Atheist Convention. While Easter has been celebrated for hundreds of years, the Global Atheist Convention enters its second year. While the Atheist Convention will bring several thousand well-educated men and women to Melbourne, Easter will gather millions of Christians the world over, rich and poor, for Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday celebrations.

It would be easy to forget that Christianity - like the Global Atheist Convention - had humble beginnings. After it was reported that Jesus died, rose and ascended to heaven, a small group of his dedicated followers met to pray, share food and support one another. Before long these early believers grew in boldness and began sharing a message about Jesus in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and as the book of Acts puts it "to the ends of the earth". Over the years something bizarre happened. Jesus' followers increased. People believed a Jewish man from Nazareth was not just a man, but God in human flesh. They believed he was no longer dead but alive. And they devoted themselves to him, literally making him the foundation of their existence.

All movements start small. So just because the contemporary atheists are a minority at the moment, doesn't mean they won't grow. It all depends on whether their message resonates with people's lives.

As someone who has been deeply persuaded that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh, the atheists don't have much traction in my life, nor do they have much influence in the lives of my Christian friends. Even their best moral musings just don't compare with what Jesus stood for.

For example, take Sam Harris - a headlining speaker at the Global Atheist Convention who has written extensively on morality. In his essay Lying, he offers such gems as, "To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication" and "To lie is to recoil from relationship". He goes as far as to suggest that those who lie compulsively are seen as "creatures of fiction". "Such people are often quietly shunned, for reasons they probably can never understand." And who can argue with him?

But compare Harris to Jesus who approaches dishonesty in two ways. On the one hand he teaches: "Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil." But he also expresses love to people who lie. Matthew, a tax collector and one of his original disciples, was a first-century equivalent of a "creature of fiction". But when criticised for hanging out at Matthew's house Jesus replies: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." He acknowledges Matthew is flawed, but he reaches out to him. It's a repeated motif in Jesus' life. He extends compassion to those who cannot meet his own moral standard. He gives them a fresh chance. Yet Sam Harris stops short of this extension of compassion. He offers a description of how things are, and then an ideal. Simple as that.

Or take the example of Richard Dawkins, the English-speaking world's most famous atheist, also a headline act at the Global Atheist Convention. One YouTube clip shows him sitting by his fire, laptop open, reading vitriolic, anything-but-Christian emails from those purporting to know God. As Dawkins reads one disturbing message after another - and they are really quite terrible - he takes them in his stride, hamming them up by assuming an indignant tone of voice. Dawkins' friends in the room can't contain their laughter, and neither can he. He smirks and, though it is understandable, clearly thinks himself superior to his enemies.

Again compare Dawkins with Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus offers: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..." It would be an easy thing to proclaim if Jesus didn't also live it out. But at Easter, Christians celebrate Jesus' love for his enemies, namely: us. As he was spat upon, punched, crowned with thorns, and attached to a wooden cross, Jesus had every right to claim superiority. But instead he proclaims forgiveness. Looking down from the cross he says: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus' words are altogether ridiculous. Why would anyone be so idealistic in the face of death, unless he was the wildest kind of lunatic, the worst kind of liar, or the loving Creator of all things?

Dawkins, Harris and the contemporary atheists are human which is what they've always claimed to be. But what so many millions have found in Jesus Christ is someone other than human. While the normal way of our world is to write others off as "creatures of fiction" or to claim superiority over them, if we are to be given hope, we need access to another way. In Jesus Christ, we glimpse something different, something unique, something found nowhere else. With Jesus we receive something the contemporary atheists do not intend to offer: redemption from ourselves. For an educated elite, the Global Atheist Convention may be appealing. But for so many around the world, from all walks of life, Jesus has proved irresistible. Where else can people like us, in a world like ours, turn for hope?

Refuting the notion that humans approach God without pre-conceptions 5:46 PM

Pre-conceived ideas, if they are wrong, can kill.

For example: someone is bitten by a snake. They need immediate attention to avert the spread of the deadly poison through their bloodstream. And any number of incorrect pre-conceived ideas can lead to their swift departure from this planet. Imagine their companions have one or many of the following pre-conceived notions including:
"This species of snake will not harm you."
"We are too far from civilisation to receive medical assistance here."
"You need to exert yourself in order to sweat the venom out."
"Anti-venom injections are a myth invented by corrupt governments."

When it comes to questions of God's reality and ability to be known by humanity, similar pre-conceived concepts prevail.

Far from approaching the question of God with objectivity, humans generally approach God with any number of pre-conceived ideas. At worst this is as simple as, "God does not exist."

But when we are being more subtle, we have other, seemingly cleverer, pre-conceived ideas. These often relate to aspects of how the God of the Bible claims to make himself known. They include notions such as:
"God would not make himself known through a book."
"If God really existed, he would make a personal appearance to every human being."
"Since there is unspeakable evil in the world, God must not exist."
"I have never seen him."

And so on.

But really, if God is real, if he is there, these pre-conceived notions tell us lots about ourselves and nothing of God himself. It all depends on our pre-conceived ideas. So if we pre-suppose God is not really alive, then we arrive with the same conclusion.

To approach God honestly, humans need to presume he is real and is really revealed to the world in the historical man Jesus Christ. If, in that frame of mind, with all our pre-conceived ideas suspended momentarily, we find: the world makes no sense, reality does not fit together, history doesn't add up, the Bible does not resonate with us in any way, that God appears less-real than other realities in life, that there remains no possibility of God's existence - then perhaps we have arrived at a more honest investigation.

But the God of the Bible, does not allow us to approach him as if he was not real. He begins his sentences with "I am the LORD your God...". As such he presumes his own existence. It is self evident. As he speaks, as he interacts with the world, as he acts powerfully, he is shown to be: God.

If God is there, our notions of whether he does or does not exist, do not matter. They are simply that: our notions. They may be correct or incorrect. However if they are wrong they could prove as dangerous as the advice given by the friends of the snake-bite victim. Especially if God, as the Scriptures say, is not the divine equivalent of a child's teddy bear.

To approach God with any integrity, our pre-conceived ideas must be suspended. We must take on the pre-conceived ideas that God, in the Bible, wants us to take on. Only then can we begin to approach him honestly.

Kony2012 2:11 PM

The Kony 2012 campaign that took over your Facebook wall.

We have no idea 5:31 AM

Revelations that mobile application providers are nicking people's contact lists - without users knowing - adds only to a string of evidence that we have no idea what we're doing.

No one reads the fine print of privacy documents. Few of us know what it means that Facebook owns our information. And we don't think it strange that both our most personal and important secrets are locked away in email accounts that we frequently don't download to our hard drives. If someone had all that data, all that information, they'd know almost everything about us. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

If world war three is fought anywhere it will probably be online. Imagine, say, that a country wants to invade Australia. Why not just storm the offices of Google, hack our email accounts and steal all our bank details?

A similar worry exists for the future of reading. Jonathan Franzen raised concerns about e-readers the other day suggesting they lack the permanence of physical books. How can we trust them? At least with a real book on your dresser you know its words haven't changed overnight. Given how little any of us know about the technology we use so freely, can we make the same bold assertions about it? What if the book was hacked by a virus say? Or another version uploaded with different text?

I'm not being alarmist or smug here. I am writing this on a tablet and have been enjoying using my kindle app lately. But the limited amount I know about my rights online astounds me. Yet I write a blog post anyway.

When it comes to questions of privacy online, I don't believe putting less of ourselves "out there" is the answer. That's not really possible and the majority of us are already too heavily invested to worry. If we're going to be done over, well, we will be. Instead, we need to care more than ever who we actually are. If the real us was revealed would we be happy with who that person was?

There's probably only common sense and common grace holding much of our private information from the public realm at the moment. But there's no reason for this to remain the case forever, or even for much longer. If that is ever the case and our information is leaked, we won't be able to stop the leaks, but one thing is certain: we would be shown for who we really are. The great challenge is to be people who would be comfortable with being shown for what we are, people with nothing to hide.

When it comes to the permanence of information, Franzen's comments raise some interesting questions about how we can know what is trustworthy in a digital environment. When the laws of nature - i.e. that paper and ink of your favorite book will not rearrange during the night as it sits on your bedside table - no longer apply, we are left in the hands of humans again: especially those who create the devices and the programs with the fine print we don't read.

Perhaps we should read that fine print and perhaps we shouldn't. Either way, the old saying that the object of our faith matters more than the quality of our faith, applies. So, how much do we know about what we are trusting?

The Cat's Table 4:15 AM

From the inspection of class divisions to the unresolved threads of personal history, there is much to appreciate in Michael Ondaatje's latest novel The Cat's Table. Though for me most beautiful aspect was reading a prolonged meditation on childhood through the eyes of the main character Michael and his two young friends Cassius and Ramadhin.

While the novel is not supposed to be autobiographical, Ondaatje clearly draws on his own experience as a child emigrating from Sri Lanka to Britain. Michael - the 11 year old first person main character voice - is making a three week journey from Colombo to England to resettle with his mother. The ship taking him is the massive Oronsay.

For a novel, it is deeply poetic. Written mostly in short chapters - often just two or three pages long - even the book's form is fragmented and reminiscent of the twists and distractions of a child's life.

I loved that about it.

Of course in hindsight it's hard to know exactly what childhood was about. It's difficult even to remember what we felt a month ago, so one's formative years are hard to pin down. But Ondaatje goes there.

The ever inquisitive natures of Michael, Cassius and Ramadhin sung the novel to life. Their narrow-focussed naivety reminded me of my own. "Because, our greatest pleasure was when one hundred spoons were flung by a steward into the pool and Cassius and I dived in with competitors to collect as many as we could in our small hands ... And if I had been asked to choose a career then, or at any time during those twenty-one days, I would have said I desired to be a diver in some similar competition for the rest of my life." (p. 86)

A fixation on new things - mattering not whether "high" or "low" culturally - is another great aspect of Michael, Cassius and Ramadhin's adventurous spirits. Like the familiar story of the child who plays with the cardboard box rather than with the expensive gift inside, Ondaatje's three musketeers care little for what doesn't grab their immediate intrigue. But they have noses for what's important.

For them it is not dining at a dinner table further up the social chain that matters (the Cat's Table in the title refers to the humble seating position of the three boys) but the simple fact that they are on a boat for a long time, going a long way, with endless interesting people to keep them busy and awake at night. That is the blinding beauty of childhood in general, and The Cat's Table.

Near the start of the journey is a passage demonstrating the lack of "down time" and endless mischief the boys occupy themselves with. "It was almost midnight and the three of us were smoking twigs broken off from a cane chair that we lit and sucked at. Because of his asthma Ramadhin was not enthusiastic about this, but Cassius was eager that we should try to smoke the whole chair before the end of the journey ... We slid quietly into the swimming pool, relit our twigs and floated on our backs. Silent as corpses we looked at the stars. We felt we were swimming in the sea, rather than a walled in pool in the middle of the ocean." (p. 20-21)

It's a grand image. I can feel the silence and awe of the three souls, suspended there, caring nothing for the world at large, but only what they were seeing, smelling, smoking. And most profound is the amazing clarity - beyond learning, experience and the adult world - that they possess in that moment.