Islam

Making friends

Without any hidden agenda, I want to make friends with Muslims both here on the internet and at home here in Somerset West and Macassar, for example. As a Christian, I do not want to persuade a Muslim to become a Christian, or to persuade them that they are wrong. I do not want to argue about violence. Let me take the last one first. All forms of faith have the spectrum from pacifist to holy war in their scriptures. Christians have behaved badly towards Muslims, especially in the crusades where racism first became a white Christian superior race over black Muslims in Spain, so as Christians and a white one, I have a lot to answer for, both racism and Christian superiority are rampant in my world. Forgive me, whoever you are. Now let’s be friends because you worship the same God as I do. You, the Muslim, and I with the Jew share the same scripture.

Being a liberal Christian, I do not take our scripture literally, which as a Muslim you do. I could hinder our relationship with you because you do not mess with the Quran. However, because I am liberal I think that Muhammad is a prophet and the Quran believes in Jesus, also as a prophet surely means we can be friends?

Let me return to another theme on this web site, discontinuing all religion, politics, economics, the law and the nation. By religion, I mean organisations that hold us up as distinctly separate, I do not mean God as religion. The scientists are saying, like Dawkins that God does not exist. What if we take on a Gandhian idea of both of us ‘searching for truth’, Gandhi’s prayer form. He always added, ‘truth as I understand it’.

Being a Hindu, Gandhi found a prayer life that all forms of faith can follow. Instead of focussing on violence and our differences let’s find a common prayer that as we join in it, we find truth and like Gandhi we find justice and make friends overwhelming the enemy, poverty.

Where did grace start for me and my world in Methodism

Viv Harris, the chairperson of the District, was also the Superintendent of the circuit where we went to church. I went every second Sunday and babysat the next week to give Wendy, the real Methodist a chance. We lived in Brakpan. My whole upbringing up until I met Viv was as a moralising Anglican, thinking God owed me a place with God because I had gone to church all my life, twice a week and sometimes more for communion. God and I are buddies, but I had no idea why we enjoyed each other.

When I think back on it, Viv toyed with me as I expressed a call to preach in 1976. He never once talked grace and he never ‘preached’. He was worse and I only begin to comprehend his method now. He simply said. “Why don’t you give everything away: your house and your job!” What – and a ten-year long-service reward at work? “Yes,” he said without any doubt in his voice. My own minister Steve Roux had been more practical, “No, don’t go there. The church is changing and will encourage ministers to buy your own homes.” Yippee!! But it never happened, we never bought a house because I gave our home away and lost the long-leave bonus.

Every sermon, though, at Brakpan and later at every training event Viv taught grace. I loved what he taught. As Chairperson of the district, in every action, he demonstrated grace. There were no rules. When an august body, the Christian Citizenship Department (CCD) and an even more formal Austen Massey wanted reports every year, as representative of Viv’s district, I took great pleasure in telling Austen that we do not keep reports and that the District did not ask for society reports, nor any in the life of the church. That is when I began a campaign across districts, to do social justice instead of reporting on it. Austen said, correctly, that I joined the ministry at the end of a many decades’-long fight against apartheid and for most of that time, before black consciousness in the early Seventies, the white liberal churches were the only recourse for black activists to change things with government. When I joined the church, in my first interview with Viv, he said, “Forget joining the black cause; they have taken over their own fight!” That sounds dismissive, but only of my naivety. He was again demonstrating grace. His favourite expression about bringing change was:

“We are the cats’ eyes! They may ride roughshod over us, but they see the way forward because of us”.

I did not like the above maxim as it gave a weak portrayal of Viv’s grace. I understand the Christian model but it meant we tended to be passive in giving direction. I fought with him but he steadfastly disagreed with me: he preferred the power of powerlessness. I said that this is a contradiction: power is never without power. I still say that grace is very powerful. Power is not an ugly word; Viv struggled with power in politics and in the church. I say that grace enjoys, the power of the people. A gracious fight is the way forward. Together, our power will overwhelm the politicians, economists, the nation, religion and the law. We wield huge power: for example, China dumps all the overproduced iron and steel on the rest of the world at rock bottom prices killing the rest of the world’s steel industry. The rest of the world all say, it is the law of supply and demand. That is nonsense! The Chinese have not obeyed any law. They are state driven not market driven. We have the power, if we get rid of all rules, including economists. We will fight graciously with them, as Gandhi did against the cotton mills of England saying, “We are making our own cotton fabrics!” They cheered him in Manchester. The Chinese will cheer us too, if we find a gracious way of confronting them as potential friends!

Over the years, I brought grace into everything. Then it developed into a biblical survey, where we discover that heaven is free. I have an intensive study of the bible that drives this way of life; it is called “Gracious Evangelism”. It is not on the web site but it is available; it is openly liberal so it does not support a biblical imperative. It also takes years of instruction, where on a person-to-person basis, in their homes, the whole congregation adopts the gracious life. Like anywhere else, not everyone agrees, mostly those with Reformed upbringing. They struggled with my stance, preferring the safety of the law. Many Baptist, Anglican and Presbyterian are reformed so I know my gracious life is not popular until you experience it.

Part of the above teaching, woos people away from laws in church but this becomes possible in all areas of life. People grasp worship, tithing, discipling and service as desires not legal obligations but beyond the church we love the traffic law.

Rather than believe in it, grace asks you to trust it. There is no law, no biblical prescription, there is no fact. From trust, we offer many experiences of grace and joy until large groups of people live it.

The essential difference between law and grace is knowing and understanding. No matter how hard you try, you can understand the law but not know it, meet it. Grace, however, is an experiential event, you meet it. Once you know grace, living under the law is irrelevant. Religion, so enamoured with the experience of grace, put rules around it to protect it and killed it! All religion includes grace but prefer law. Being kind to them, they say that the only way to perfection is to obey. Worst of these was my hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer who in his otherwise excellent book The Cost of Discipleship plumped for obedience on the Sermon of Mount, like a good reformed theologian he was. The riddles posed, ‘Is it they who believe that obey, or is it they who obey that believe?’ Grace does not insist on the riddle, belief or obedience are irrelevant because being is valuable and being present, is the ultimate. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus mocking the law as hyperbole: you cannot be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect!

Joy is the sign of grace in our lives. We know (experience again) grace, not fully understanding it, but in accepting grace, joy bursts out. Joy, meaning ‘presence’, admits value of being before doing or understanding. Perfection is irrelevant because being present is the goal. Unfortunately, in every dimension of life perfection is still God, politically, economically, nationally and the law itself cannot think unless perfection is made possible. The only answer is to laugh at them until they see how ridiculous these pressures are in pushing human beings to perfection when joy is already there.

While Viv Harris and I did not agree on the definition of power, I accepted his challenge to live both within and beyond religion in a gracious life so I enjoy fighting graciously, fighting against the powers that prevent a world of justice. Ideologies and religion fall away in the joy of a gracious fight.

Rev Dr Brian Wilkinson
081 270 1713

briangotsowilkinson@gmail.com

www.movementingrace.com

Retired minister of the Methodist Church
and an ethicist on economic ethics

Grace …

At last my website is working. Blogs will be a regular feature again. Books are now ready for sale with those with Rand denomination. It is an electronic book for your computer or for mobile use. Here is what is on offer:

Gemors
“The real life of Brian” with apologies to Monty Python. My theology does break through the fun of life in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, if only to tell you God created for fun just to annoy religion.

Learn to Love
Before Christians can become activists learning love of self, God, the cockroach and others is a prerequisite. Taking Life Line principles and psychotherapy seriously, all people and nature will learn to love.

Mending Fences
This ontological retreat produces ubuntu. Here the love finds transcendence in a practical way for people to live in harmony. Marriage, democracy, the worker-owned co-operative and sustainability work only because people know how to transcend freedom and equality … the genius of ubuntu.

Rooted
This book details a very different encounter with God, like wrestling Jacob. In phases of the mind people learn to cut out ideologies and idols. It is a clearing up of alien thinking. This positions us next to God. At the same time a contemplative action fixes us towards the ultimate (truth, beauty, justice or God). When God does break through an attitudinal change in us forces us to act on the encounter with God.

Grace Gardens
I tested the above encounter with God in Rooted in the parables of Jesus. In the so-called ‘agricultural’ parables I find that grace is the way Jesus works and that we are given an example of the gracious life in the person, Jesus.

Gracious Gandhi
I tested the above encounter with God in Rooted in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. With one or two exceptions, I find that Gandhi was gracious and like Jesus is a model for the gracious life.

Common wealth
In my retirement, I went through all my stuff and discovered a series of books I wrote for the Theological Education by Extension College (TEEC). I think the content with the above stuff is perfect for this modern world of godlessness. I am inviting people to join me in setting up ashrams beyond religion to encounter God to change the world for justice. I am starting this week-end at my home church suggesting we start in a small way.

Peace …

Brian