Micah 6:8

Blog Update

I've decided for the time being that I'm going to put regular blogging aside and shift some of my energy to face to face ministry. I'm planning to still occasionally blog on the group blog, Radical Reversal. I plan to leave the content of this blog intact but I've disabled comments.

Worship

You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.Deut 12:31

This is interesting instruction that Moses gave to the Israelites just before they were to head into the promised land. The promised land was full of people that worshipped all sorts of different idols and God knew that these idols would be appealing to them. Not only were the Israelites instructed not to worship their idols but they were also instructed to not try to worship the Lord in the ways in which the pagans worshipped their idols. God was picky. He had certain ways in which he thought that he should be honoured.

While we are under a different covenant we can still know from this verse and similar verses that God has expectations about how he is to be worshipped. We need to be careful not to look at the world around us and see how they are living and then try to do their things in a worshipful sort of way. Seeking the things of this world with thanksgiving to God in our hearts is not the same as giving up our worldly pleasures for the sake of his kingdom. One is acceptable worship of God and the other is not. Watching movies with lusty scenes with the pretence of being in the world is not the same as being without a hint of sexual immorality. God has standards for our worship and it requires substantial life change and sacrifice. Christians can not just change their attitude by which they do things and expect their worship to be pleasing to God. The actual things that you do must be different then the things that non-Christians do. We can not imitate the world in our worship of God. We must turn to the Bible and see how God would have us worship and honour him.

Ha ha

ht: Persecuted Church Weblog

Updates and Frugality

Sorry that I haven't been blogging too much lately. We're getting ready to move out of town and so I haven't had the mental space to think of things that would be interesting for strangers to read. There seem to be so many blogs out there where people write about their cats or their new favourite nail polish colour. I've really tried to make my blog about important topics like world poverty and justice.

While my site is slow you might be interested in an interesting dialogue going on over at Challies.com. They're discussing the Christian responsibility of stewardship in relation to frugality. I've put my two cents in as well. While you're on that topic if you haven't already done so please check out Radical Frugality. It's a site that I put together in order to teach Christians how they can be better stewards of their money in order to have more money to give to those in need.

Don't Buy Things You Cannot Afford

My dream

Every once in awhile I have dreams that are so interesting that I wonder if they might be from God. Here's one from last night that that I not sure how to interpret. There are some obvious symbols in there but I don't quite know how to piece it all together, if that's even possible.

I had a dream last night that I was in a large city in South Africa. I was there on some trip and was staying in a fancy hotel. In my touring I came upon a begging woman. She had black sunken eyes and that what she really wanted was water so that she could nurse her baby. I tried to bring her water from my hotel room in a dixie cup but spilled the water before I got to her. Then I talked to the front desk woman about buying some water. She let me fill a dixie cup with milk but I spilled that as well. Why I was trying to get her something to drink her baby died. After this happened I went with her to see her home. She lived in squaller. I met her husband. She explained that her room did have a tap but that her landlord wouldn't turn them on unless he had financial incentive to do so. Instead of water he would give them soap, which of course they couldn't use without water. She told me that most days she could manage to bring home for herself about 1/2L and she would try to make do with that. I told her about how where I am from water is in abundance. That every home has running water, no one is really poor. I even told her about how I had a rain barrel in my yard full of water and that people would actually complain about the rain as though it were not precious. After visiting we went for a walk back to my hotel. We passed a bus that was picking up people to take to different prisons around the world. In particular I remember Vancouver and Pitsburg. I mused with this woman over whether she could do anything that would send her to these place but she sighed and said that even that was hopeless; they would just send her to the prisons there, which were worse. While we were walking back to my hotel I realized that I could get her some water in my water bottle instead of a dixie cup. When we got there she noticed the front desk woman step away for a moment and decided that that would be her opportunity to see what she could steal from the hotel. I told her that I wouldn't endorse that but that I would still try to get her some water. At that point I woke up.

The People formerly known as The Congregation

I found a great article by Bill Kinnon about the trend of people leaving the institutional church because they have become jaded by the corporate success model that so many churches are driven by. There are some great comments and links that follow the article that are also worth reading. The iMonk also has his own insightful comments on the article as well.

I'm not sure why it is that so many people are becoming jaded by institutional churches. I suspect that partly it has to do with the fact that our society has shifted to be less specialist focused. As more people have access to more knowledge our need to depend on specialists has decreased substantially. I think that this has led us to be less trusting of people that claim to be specialists. We're more sceptical of our doctors, researchers, counsellors, teachers, politicians and pastors. The guise of expert is crumbling. Now like never before are people starting to question everything that is around them and ask why we are doing things the way that we are. This is a good thing even if it is scary for the "experts". There really are no expert Christians. Yes, some are called to be pastors, teachers, preachers, apostles and prophets but that should be five people and not one. If we can do away with the idea that one man is the head of a congregation, realize that our job is to love one another, and not to put on Sunday services, then maybe we can see a church where everyone puts in as much as they can and see themselves as responsible for their church as they really are.

Oh how I long to see a more beautiful bride...

Meat and Charity

For a long time I've known that regular meat consumption in our western diets causes inflation of world grain prices. Each pound of meat that we eat requires several pounds of grain to be put into the feeding of that animal. Consequently this puts a huge demand on the demand for grain in the world market causing prices to rise leaving the poorest people without access to necessary staples. While I don't know how much good having our family minimize our meat consumption that is what we have done in order to be an example and to stand out apart from our culture of waste.

Recently I read an article written by an alert-net blogger, Tim Large, on how meat production also takes many times more water then agricultural production. I hadn't thought about that before. For me I don't think that it's such a big deal since water is in abundance over here on the wet coast of Canada and is not very practical to ship to where it is needed. For other people who live where water is more scarce this should cause some thought. If we truly care about our fellow brothers and sisters around us shouldn't we be willing to sacrifice a little meat on their behalf? If you live in a wet climate please consider cutting back significantly on meat in order to do your part in lower world grain prices for the poor. Also consider fasting for awhile in solidarity with the world poor.

While Jesus' call was primarily evangelistic our transformation into godliness should make us more compassionate towards the poor and marginalized. True holiness is inseparable from active love and generosity on behalf of those that are suffering. Too often the western church turns a blind eye on poverty and gives a pittance if anything towards charity. Here is what God has to say: "Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world." (James 1:27 NET) Let us commit to do better.

Noteworthy sites

World Mapper is a cool site that takes different data about the world and distorts maps based on the figures to give you a visual image of the state of the world. You can choose from many different sets of statistics to get a view of the disparity that exists in the world between the rich and the poor countries.

Gap Minder is a google tool that shows statistical trends with moving circles on a graph. It's a bit difficult to explain but is pretty straight forward to understand when you play around with it a little.

Slavery

Ahmit (L) and Rahul (R) worked in sweat-shops producing zaris

When it is mentioned we tend to think of people, almost always black people; degraded, abused and bound in chains, and we tend to think of such images, and the word slavery itself, as belonging to another era.

We do not see slavery as belonging to our world, not as something which is still happening today.

Yet the truth is that if William Wilberforce were alive today and he travelled to different parts of the world - not just in Africa, but also in large parts of Asia, the Middle East, South America and even parts of Europe - he would find children living in conditions and circumstances which Wilberforce would understand and which I am sure he would describe as slavery.

It is believed there are nearly nine million children around the world today who are enslaved.

BBC news is currently doing a series on the present state of slavery in the world. The quote above is from the first article that that I linked to below. Please try to read some of these article and let your heart go out to these people and to pray to God that he would come soon and bring justice to this world. Please also consider giving to organizations that are working to relieve the suffering of slaves and speaking up in advocacy. Below are links to several articles about child slavery which I find particularly grievous.

The world of modern child slavery
The child slaves of Saudi Arabia
My life as a child prostitute
Haiti's hidden 'child slaves'
Slave Children with Rageh Omaar
The magnitude of the problem
Sex slavery widespread in England

Fair Trade

Here's a neat article about how fair trade products are leaving the niche market in England and are becoming more mainstream. I think that the take home message is that we can make a difference if we take a stand and encourage others to do so as well.

International Adoption

Here is an interesting AlertNet blog entry on some of the ethical dilemmas surrounding international adoption. Joel and I have wanted to adopt needy children for several years now. A couple of years back we seriously looked into adopting a child from Liberia. We ended up giving up on the idea after we ran into quite a few moral considerations that we had not thought of before. Our main problem was that we realized that because of the way adoption is done there is always going to be uncertainty that you are actually doing the best thing for the child that you are adopting. Depending on the country that you adopt from there is either an expected donation for the orphanage our a fee that goes to the orphanage above and beyond the cost of the adoption. We realized that while the orphanage managers may really care about their children, when they receive money for the orphanage from the adoption they may over look local options for the care of the child that is placed for adoption. They may even have pure motives. They may just be realizing that if they don't encourage extended family to take in the child and they just give up the child for adoption then they will receive money that can be used for the care of other children in the orphanage. Unfortunately in international adoption you can't generally guarantee the situation is as they say it is. Even if you trust the foreign agency it's very difficult to trust that they will make wise decisions about which children should be given up for adoption. We just couldn't tolerate the thought of adopting a child and by doing so cut off all possibility for reconciliation with their biological family. I think that these issues should be given closer examination by Christians that want to help children.

Isn't This Special

I got a good laugh today when I read saw this blog post on Ochuk's blog. The pictures remind me of feminine hygiene commercials. The comments are even better the pictures. Why are so many woman sucked into this stuff? I know that it not just in the marketing world because I often find woman's websites to be just as gaggy.

The internet monk, Michael Spencer, has some good comments on the role that woman end up with in the evangelical world. He correctly points out that most evangelical discussion seems to be by men and for men. There seems to be little consideration for the fact that woman may be significant contributers as well and not afraid of tackling difficult topics. I’ve thought of using a gender neutral pseudonym when making blog posts on my favorite blogs so that I might be taken more seriously. I definitely have seen that there are different interests between men and woman but they are complimentary and necessary. There are serious woman and serious men just as there are flaky woman and there are flaky men. We might pick different serious topics to discuss or maybe we won’t. We also don’t all cry at the first sign of conflict. Some of us thrive on it. This is definitely something that should be mulled over more.

Missionaries and Evangelism

I found an interesting blog today. I absolutely love missionary blogs especially ones like this one from missionaries that have gained a real perspective on what Christianity is really about. They give me such encouragement. One day we hope to end up in the developing world as long term medical missionaries, hopefully healing the body and soul. In the meantime I'll have to get my fill from blogging missionaries. If you know of any good ones please let me know.

One particularly interesting blog post on Kevin from South America's blog, entitled, "On Being Light" was quite challenging to me. My heart longs to go out into the streets here and spread the light like Kevin did in a slum of a mega-city in South America. I know that what he did there could just as easily be done here. I don't need to go overseas to share the gospel. Honestly, I'm afraid. I don't know how to approach people and start conversations. I'm bursting at the seems to share the wonderful gospel with people but I don't know how to start. Do any of you have experience with this sort of evangelism?

Great post on the vice of materialism

Michael Spencer, aka the Internet Monk, has a great post on his blog about the trap of materialism and how it's often ignored in our culture. He follows up with some challenging question that are worth asking yourself. Here is a preview of what he has to say.

What interests me is how Americans Christians have largely exempted an equally corrupting common set of sins from these same kinds of evangelical efforts at mutual sanctification. Where are the vows and communities aimed at helping us live free from the corrosion of materialism? Where is the peer pressure for what Piper calls “wartime living and giving?” Where is the recognition that Jesus taught many explicit and unmistakable things about possessions, money and materialism?

Free books and a good quote

I found a wonderful gem. I've never read much by John Piper before. I discovered this evening that he has several of his books online. Most of them can be found at desiringgod.org. For the rest of them follow this ink and find Piper's name on the list. I absolutely love when authors put their books online. It shows me that they desire to teach others more then they desire to make money. Anyways, while I was exploring these books I noticed that Piper's book Desiring God had a chapter on money. Out of curiosity I read through the chapter. Here is my favorite section from that chapter. He clearly illustrates something the point that we need to be giving our resource up for God's kingdom. Very nice.

The mention of"war" is not merely rhetorical. What is specifically called for today is a "wartime lifestyle." I have used the phrase "simple necessities of life" earlier in this chapter because Paul said in 1 Timothy 6:8, "If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content." But this idea of simplicity can be very misleading. I mean it to refer to a style of life that is unencumbered with nonessentials-and the criterion for "essential" should not be primitive "simplicity," but wartime effectiveness.

Ralph Winter illustrates this idea of a wartime lifestyle:

The Queen Mary, lying in repose in the harbor at Long Beach, California, is a fascinating museum of the past. Used both as a luxury liner in peacetime and a troop transport during the Second World War, its present status as a museum the length of three football fields affords a stunning contrast between the lifestyles appropriate in peace and war. On one side of a partition you see the dining room reconstructed to depict the peacetime table setting that was appropriate to the wealthy patrons of high culture for whom a dazzling array of knives and forks and spoons held no mysteries. On the other side of the partition the evidences of wartime austerities are in sharp contrast. One metal tray with indentations replaces fifteen plates and saucers. Bunks, not just double but eight tiers high, explain why the peacetime complement of 3000 gave way to 15,000 people on board in wartime. How repugnant to the peacetime masters this transformation must have been! To do it took a national emergency, of course. The survival of a nation depended upon it. The essence of the Great Commission today is that the survival of many millions of people depends on its fulfillment.5

There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriantly "as a child of the King" in this atmosphere sounds hollow-especially since the King himself is stripped for battle. It is more helpful to think of a "wartime" lifestyle than a merely "simple" lifestyle. Simplicity can be very inward directed, and may benefit no one else. A wartime lifestyle implies that there is a great and worthy cause for which to spend and be spent (2 Corinthians 12:15).

Winter continues:

America today is a save-yourself society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice. Laborsaving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family, and as a result our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves.

How hard have we tried to save others? Consider the fact that the U.S. evangelical slogan, "Pray, give, or go" allows people merely to pray, if that iS their choice! By contrast the Friends Missionary Prayer Band of South India numbers 8000 people in their prayer bands and supports 80 full-time missionaries in North India. If my denomination (with its unbelievably greater wealth per person) were to do that well, we would not be sending 500 missionaries, but 26,000. In spite of their true poverty, those poor people in South India are sending 50 times as many cross-cultural missionaries as we are.6

The point here is to show that those who encourage Christians to pursue a luxuriant peacetime lifestyle are missing the point of all Jesus taught about money. He called us to lose our lives in order that we might gain them again (and the context is indeed money-"What does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?"- Mark 8:36) . And the way he means for us to lose our lives is in fulfilling the mission of love he gave us.

Praising Children

A friend of mine recently sent me this article from the New York Times about the adverse effects of praising children. A number of studies have now shown that praising children for their intelligence will actually cause them to try less in the future because they become afraid of failure. When their success is attributed to their intelligence fear of failure arises because then to fail indicates to them that they are not actually smart. Conversely, children that are praised for their effort and taught that effort is the key to success showed improved growth over their peers.

I've noticed that parents and teachers in our society feel compelled to praise children for everything that they do. Sometimes this is taken to ridiculous ends. I've also seen praise be used insincerely and manipulatively. I like how this article suggests a reasonable alternative to a constant stream of praise with encouragement the praise of effort. Kids do need to be encouraged just as adults do. I imagine that telling kids that they'll never amount to anything would be just as damaging, if not more, then telling them that they are great at everything. Instead of either, "you'll do well if you try hard", is more helpful.

My Secret Sin

Confession time! Recently I've been convicted about a certain little sin of mine. Unless you know me really well this one might come as a surprise to you. I struggle with gluttony. I'm not sure if the bible actually specifically mentions it anywhere but I've been convicted about my uncontrolled eating habits. I know that they don't compare at all to other people's problems with food but it's still sin. Often I don't know how to stop eating before I'm quite full and if there are sweets or yummy carbs around it's almost impossible for me to say no. I think that the only real reason that I'm not fat is that I keep the sweets out of the house and try to avoid cooking high fat meals. I've found ways to avoid temptations but not ways to say no when temptations are in front of me. The problem is that food is everywhere. I can't make vegetable soup for dinner every night because my ultra skinny husband would waste away to nothing. I imagine that this is what lust is to some men. Somehow I need to win this battle and let the Spirit's fruit of self-control satisfy me instead.

There are a few problems that I see in this kind of behaviour. First, I'm not in control of myself; the appetite controls me. I want nothing to be my master besides God. Secondly, it's not good stewardship of God's resources. We has entrusted me with a certain amount of money and I am obligated to share that where ever I can. Eating more food then I need means that others can not eat instead. Thirdly, it just not healthy. As I get older my body is pushing to put on weight and I have to fight it.

I know that some people out there think that airing dirty underwear on ones blog is tacky but I've chosen to share this about myself because I know that others have this same problem and because I want people to know that I am real.

I'm back

We're home! We've been away the last couple of weeks for Joel's interviews. We drove all around western Canada and it is so nice to be home now. We had a nice chance to spend time together and to visit my family. I should be a more regular on the blog again now that I'm home.

On another note, if you haven't seen the NET bible I would suggest checking it out. It is a new translation that was put together so that the bible could be more freely distributed instead of being tied down like most bible translation in copyright red tape. You can download the whole bible for free in a decent format or Posted by rose at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)