Islam Making Friends

Posted on by Brian
14 Feb

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 it Began

Posted on by Brian
14 Feb

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.

Brief Sales Pitch

Posted on by Brian
14 Feb

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

A Neo-Gandhian Soul Force

Posted on by Brian
16 Jan

A Neo-Gandhian Soul Force

A NON-VIOLENT WAR AGAINST IDEOLOGIES

Coming out of Brian’s movement in grace an urge in God suggests we follow Gandhi with common wealth, the book.

1 INTRODUCTION TO SOUL FORCE

It begins with me. I discover a new continuing encounter with God. This new relationship reveals that I am free and equal with others and with the earth. My family, my community and the earth now enjoy this way: a just life. When you and I with the earth are free and equal, this is the just way of life.

The next step is you: to explore your inside for a new continuing encounter with God. It starts with your mind, and how you think. Try thinking freely, before you think about God, without any other ideas restraining your freedom. The bible, your favourite music, religion or ideology, makes you an alien thinker. That’s not bad but it is not freethinking. When all other thoughts are put away and you are really freethinking, God is very near. Alien thinking seduces you away from God.

Then we gaze at God, still a thinking act, but now a profound depth reveals difficulty in understanding something: a book, a painting, music, logic or a scientific conundrum. Despite the difficulty, in understanding something in your brain says, “I know the answer! I seem to have leapt above understanding to the answer (of the painting, a logic, a book or a scientific puzzle).” Understanding and knowledge meet here. You are at the interface with God. This is where huge discoveries in the world take place. But God remains elusive. We have to wait. In the mean-time write down the new learning from the meditation. Wait for God. It may take months, Gandhi waited years! When God breaks through you will know it by certain subjective experiences in you. You enjoy a greater a greater sense of freedom, an acute awareness of others, a new way of relating to people and God, an ability to transcend seeming impossible problems, an erotic wave and you doubt everything even God.

When you and I and the cockroach agree with God we then act against ideologies for justice, using the book as guide, called common wealth!

2 IF SUCCESSFUL WITH COMMON WEALTH THEN:

  • Even atheists will agree to a love Theonomy directing those with faith to just structures
  • We are free and equal including nature.
  • Transcending Ecology, Economy and Equality (the Triple E) leads to sustainability
  • We practice Ubuntu: a person is a person by people with cockroaches.
  • All knowledge to be open and free to all people in a universal learning centre on line.
  • Ideology falls away. Ideas are welcome.
  • Religion, the nation, politics, economics and the law fall away. Common sense works.
  • Small is beautiful, the village replaces nations.
  • An inclusive, non-hierarchical, non-violent, restorative justice holds us accountable.

3 A NON-VIOLENT WAR AGAINST IDEOLOGIES

Across forms of faith, we search for truth. Either on the internet or in groups across the world we look in God for the enemies in all ideologies. We seek ways non-violently to overcome all ideologies. Although assumed there is an ideological split within science between pure science and ecosystemic science, where symbolically, asking why represents pure science and asking how represents the social science. Transcending ideology here brings both knowing and understanding to meet in God.

4 THE ENEMY

Anyone who obliges us to believe in their ideology against others; anyone who oppresses us and others from freedom and equality; anyone who distracts us from God including science, nation, economics, politics and the law – is the enemy.

5 VALUING THE ENEMY INTO FRIENDS

The neo-Gandhian Soul Force does not have ashram vows. Instead we confront the enemy with joy. We celebrate the ‘demonstrative value of being’, which flies in the face of ideologies and the law! As people recognise how serious and futile ideologies are, they join us.

6 LEARNING IN INTERNET ASHRAMS

Learning the value of being, and being present as joy, leads to an encounter with God. Learning to sustain an encounter with God and to learn just answers requires intensive practice. Discerning God’s justice in practical terms is a communal listening to God and acting in justice. The movement in grace website provides all learning.

7 THEORIA-PRAXIS

The internet carries all the learning and guides but until one person takes out another person to act out justice, it is useless. There has to be an oscillating back and forth between prayer and action for a real Soul Force.

8 THE COMMON WEALTH FUTURE REPEATED

When you and I and the cockroach agree with God we then act against ideologies for justice. A benign love Theonomy drives us to the truth and a just world without religion. Justice not judgement reveals an inclusive, non-hierarchical, non-violent and restorative world, rejecting exclusive, male dominating, violent and retributive judgement.

All information (knowledge) is openly recorded in a completely computerised matrix of software made available to all human beings for education and training, on a learner-directed basis.

The village is the ultimate authority in a collaborative economy worldwide.

Plentiful water, warmth, weeds and worms symbolise the flow of free and equal earth with human beings. Because of the love Theonomy, human beings regularly transcend equality, economy and ecology, in the Triple E sustainability.

Democracy, marriage, the Triple E sustainability and the worker-owned co-operative are practical demonstrations of transcendent village life… common wealth the book, will hold us all accountable to the revolution as we work through it together in internet ashrams across different forms of faith

Queen Elizabeth as Model

Posted on by Brian
16 Jan

Queen Elizabeth as Model

“That shall be to you better than light, and safer than any known way.” – M.L. Haskins.

Minnie Louise Haskins wrote the poem in 1908 as a Wesleyan missionary to India. Another girl, though, made Haskins famous, Queen Elizabeth. As a young girl, worried about her father doing a major speech, in December 1939, Elizabeth slipped the poem into view for King George VI to include in his address. Only 13 years old, she inspired her father and the nation as they prepared to enter the worst nightmare of their history; here is the beginning of the poem with my own corrections:

“I said to the person who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” The person replied, “Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you, better than light, and safer than any known way.”

Since then, for ninety years, Queen Elizabeth has put her ‘hand into the hand of God’. Like Gandhi, Elizabeth is a model for life for all of us. The answer is both simple and daunting. While the Queen emphasises her Christian faith, she readily accepts that other forms of faith have the same opportunity. I know I am putting words into her mouth but, in reading her tribute1 authored by the Bible Society and the LICC (the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity), I am convinced that the above quote was the driver of her faith, something Muslims, Hindus and Jews would enjoy too, ‘putting their hands into the hand of God’! Even though the authors push Jesus all the time and the Queen is, of course, a practising Christian as we approach a new paradigm, let me assume that proselytising is no longer needed and that the whole world is approaching huge problems as radicalised religion, both Christian and Muslim, should rather follow both the Queen and Gandhi by taking Minnie Haskins’ poem as a practical way forward to bring about just change.

The poem does not come up with trite sayings to make us feel better. The poem knows that good or bad, being in the hand of God is better than light! Being with God is safer than any ‘known way’. As we look back at a long servanthood of the Queen, the result is justice, but not determined by human politics, economics or the nation but by prayer-action and being a little aloof, apart like a monk! Or Mahatma!

If we were to ignore or reject all politics, economics, the nation and religion, we would come very close to the Queen’s position for over ninety years! Here we have, literally, “that shall be to you, better than light, and safer than any known way.” By restricting her to only ‘putting her hand into the hand of God’, the Queen brought justice into the world way beyond any politician did.

IF YOU DO MY COURSE, ROOTED, YOU WILL SEE THE QUEEN’S WAY, RELYING CONFIDENTLY ON GOD TO SHOW THE WAY THROUGH BOTH THE GOOD AND BAD TIMES.

1 The Servant Queen and the King she serves. A tribute for Her Majesty’s 90th Birthday. 2016: Bible Society, HOPE and LICC.

We can all follow the Queen’s life by living beyond all ideologies and walk with God and acting in God with all forms of faith for justice. In this new paradigm, church or mosque are irrelevant, being with God with other people regularly looking for God’s hand for a safer than any known way. We will not ‘know’ but we will be in God’s hand. For me, being with God is joy. Helping others see the futility of ideologies will bring them to joy too. Haskins again:

So I went forth, and finding the hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And God led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

Idols

Posted on by Brian
10 Dec

Idols

What is it, this love of soccer players, or teams? What is hero worship of a beautiful or handsome actor? Get over it! They go to the loo too. If we were to sum up the idols of the world, simply seen as money, sex and power, then we admit we easily succumb to the seemingly harmless ideas that hamper our growth. Idols bind us grovelling shackles. There are powers behind these ideas that we happily argue are valuable so that the world can operate efficiently. “We cannot live without money” we say because the modern world depends on this economic structure. There is nothing wrong with money; it is simply a commodity. The trouble is the power behind the money that raises it above a commodity into a love affair or when we find oppression because of a lack of or no money. The same with sex, created by God, a wonderful activity, we become obsessed and addicted to it. Power is normal until we turn it into an absolute!

As a normal part of God’s creation, the power behind power, sex and money is also just a function of God that we waylaid and persuaded to join us in a counter-creation! The answer appears simple but none of us is wholly free from these idols. The trouble is the severity of our contact with godly vibes so easily turn into demons. Just like the myth in antiquity where human beings ate the forbidden fruit so too the powers fell from grace and chomped on the apple. That is simply remedied with the Good News, just as we Christians discover that ‘heaven is free’ so too the ‘powers’ love to hear that heaven is for them too. In the old language, we called them angels if they were good and demons if they were bad.

What is the difference between a fallen angel and a demon? In modern language, a fallen angel is a vibe that tickles our fancy behind money, sex and power. Converting the vibe to Christ is the answer because they want to return to their original created function, that is, to facilitate the smooth operation of God’s reign so they happily work in society as Christian money sex and power! Without taking away the reality, but dropping the myth, a demon is a complex sociological phenomenon, a structure of destruction (happily an oxymoron). From the simple system of alcoholism, taking up to sixteen people to counter create, to the highly complex slavery taking a hundred and fifty years to eradicate, demons are present everywhere in you and in systems, structures, institutes and the church.

Dealing with the fallen angel is a personal internal confession and challenge to the angel to convert to Christ. Dealing with structures of destruction requires the combined resources of people everywhere but primarily people inspired by the Spirit to eradicate the evil. Most South Africans in a multi-faith stand on the 1st of September 1993 stood on the streets finally to exorcise the demon of apartheid, we have won the war but the evil keeps creeping into us seducing us to idolise it!

Courage

Posted on by Brian
10 Dec

Courage

Authentic human beings find courage within to reach out for greatness but they fail. Sometimes, the result of a courageous act is mediocrity and human beings sink into despair trying to hide but the courage remains and soon visions of greatness re-emerge. They oscillate from one outreach to another. That’s life!

When we realise that the courage in us sources in God, we try even harder until in waves of reaching up and out, we soar like eagles. In antiquity, they called this phenomenon holiness but we have ruined its meaning with a ‘goody-two shoes’ taint. The closer we get to God the more courageous we become. It is very simple, but huge at the same time: when we say ‘yes’ to God, power overwhelms us, changes others and us. Suddenly, the possibilities are diverse, from riches in money, sex and power to a wealth in emotional and psychological power. Whether it is literal or abstract, the overwhelming power of God provides answers to the world’s problems and if we have the courage to take it on, greatness is around the corner.

What do I mean by greatness? All the common appellations, like Mahatma Gandhi or Alexander the Great do not fit our modern world. We are simply still too close to people and we struggle to find a word for Nelson Mandela but we will soon talk of his greatness. There are many more great people but they do not happily sit with greatness and in Christian circles, the problem with humility masks the greatness. In addition, there is something marvellous that we Christians follow in courage and that is, gracious living. The act of being gracious means we defer greatness to the other. If only in attitude but increasingly we actually give the riches away: hence my web is called Seventy Times in support of socio-economic and political movements that forgive 24/7, that set people free and that empower people.

Courage emerges out of the intimacy of our friendship with God. It grows and replenishes us, the more we enjoy and worship God. Mahatma Gandhi demonstrates a continuing intimacy with God and courage strengthening for his acts in breaking the British regime culminating in Indian independence just after the Second World War. It took most of Gandhi’s life of developing courage and often despaired that he had lost it. It took up to ten years for Gandhi to regain his courage each time he acted; he had to renew his relationship and stay close to God. He still belonged in the old tradition of committing vows to stay close to God but today we have found joy in doing things with God. It is not a chore or committing vows.

Fountains of Grace

Posted on by Brian
21 Aug

Fountains of Grace

When we live in community, fountains of grace pour out into us so that our talents, gifts and power to work for a just world are overwhelming in abundance. ‘Get real,’ you say sarcastically, ‘we do not live in community, sies, that sounds socialist and it is my Jesus not yours. When we sing, “I have come to praise you,” even though many people are singing this together, it is for me, and they can fight me for it, but I found Jesus first!’

In the days of antiquity, I mean really a long time ago, people were living in community as the norm and they did not consider it a political decision but everything was a village. Even then, they struggled with finding grace. Rules drove them to do certain things to receive grace: going to church, reading the bible with others at home and father every night, praying every day, giving money to God and the state, confessing to the local priest weekly, baptised one another (once a year), receiving mass regularly, working with the poor, evangelising and doing death rituals. I say rules drove them but it was the law! Even today, in some denominations and cultures, you lose your membership if you do not partake in the above activities and they say, “Because it is good for you!” It is like taking Epsom salts, “because it is good for you.”

We no longer listen to that advice. We no longer go to church, or pray or read the bible. As for going to a priest to admit anything about our personal lives is crazy, “What have we done wrong?” Nothing, there is no such thing anymore of wrong or right, besides we go to therapy once a week and we are mentally healthy. We meet with friends in the local pub; we give huge taxes to the state for the poor; we organise amazing events on the internet to galvanise things like the Arab Spring to bring democracy to the world and we just do it, not because we have to, and the last thing on our minds is searching for grace!

Guess what, despite the above, whether you know it or not, grace pours out in response to all these activities that we do. The world is a better place because of these fountains or experiences of grace and our acting in them. Would it not be a good idea to re-evaluate our lifestyle and co-ordinate those means of grace regardless of the church wanting us to do it theirway. There is nothing wrong with church; it works like a mega-fountain; everything in it points us to grace and its outpouring. The church in its reaction to human beings rejection of its tradition has wised up, cleaned up and looks good with contemporary music, modern preachers and lovely leaders – in some arenas. If you want out, that’s ok but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Co-ordinating your churchless life so that grace pours out is the way forward. Even if you are a churchgoer, take note: doing things with others is not necessarily community.

Go back to my Mending Fences course and own the inner meshing of ‘being alone’ and ‘being a participant’. Modern Western lives hate participating, but remember again that that is what makes us human. God made us that way, modern society manufactures a false identity that values only the individual, rugged and successful. ‘Participating’ is not a socialist thing, it is a human thing and when you hold the two in tension and enjoy that your ‘personhood’ comes from being with others. Then the pub becomes a church, the shopping mall becomes a community singsong. Encountering God with others on the village common is prayer.

Free

Posted on by Brian
20 Aug

Free!

The whole world is free. Taken as “the absence of restraint” that is ludicrous, no one is free. Ok, the whole world is free within a context. Human beings, unlike birds cannot fly. The Chinese cannot vote, but they can become millionaires. North Koreans can breathe! Nature, too, has varying degrees of freedom: kikuyu grass will break through concrete to find the sun but it does not choose thick newspaper mulch that kills it. Does the dolphin choose anything? I remain sceptical about the scale of relate-ability of animals to choose and so enjoy human freedom.

Freedom, amazingly, easily hides in human beings, unlike kikuyu. We believe we others oppress into submission when the circumstances appear against us. We always have more power than we believe. When someone holds a gun to my head that person has no authority only the power of the gun so I am free to resist the gun holder and to die in the process never knowing that my power is greater than the kikuyu grass by bursting the gun highjack into submission.

Freedom can only be free if there are no strings attached. I cannot ask for it because then the giver is still in control of me and I am not completely free – like God setting me free, is a contextual freedom. In all realms, we must seize freedom. Politically, economically and socially we have to abrogate freedom. When we do, even the power of the gun is less than our power of being.

Choice, for human beings, is the corollary to freedom. Whatever we choose becomes our destiny. Nature does not organise its destiny. Only the human being moves along a polarity from freedom to a destiny shaped by the choices and taking responsibility for those goals. Actually, freedom reveals the other (person, God and creature in nature), but human beings hide this actuality, and tend arbitrarily to discard others and their reality, which is about equality. Arbitrary freedom leads to a diseased state of individual and little gods occupy my destiny and I worship these idols ignoring that there is a vital component to my arriving in a healthy state of being: equality. Between my idols and me, I fashion a superior stance over you and the cockroach. You are no different from the cockroach; you have no right to live to exist and if you do insist, I cast you like animals devoid of choice or the right to share my air! At its worst, hubris, concupiscence and unfaith drive my freedom. Men, just think of your insistence on having sex, “Now, woman. This is my conjugal right. I am like that dog on heat, I must have it now!” However, you are not an animal, nor is your spouse and animal. In the moment God created you, you enjoyed the capacity of treating people and animals equally. Various ideologies, cultures, and the Christian tradition ignored the tension of freedom and equality so that a male dominating, capitalist, communist, nationalist violent idol seduced you and me so that we emphasised the one or the other of freedom and equality. The task in regaining the tension is to call out the idols, throw them out of the lounge of your heart. Agree that these were misplaced love affairs and start the journey of mending the fences spiritually inside you in a meditative repair job so that the poles of freedom and equality stretch across your inside you so that no idol can enter in you.

Life’s a Party

Posted on by Brian
19 Jul

Party

Life is a party

Life is a party. God created for joy, for fun. What happened, then, that everything is so serious, so violent, so exclusive and full of conflict? What is joy? I do not mean simply ‘pleasure’ because that could be connected to a masochist hurting for pleasure or self-gratifying activities like masturbation but I think both of these pleasures are possible in joy, properly defined. Joy is presence. “I am” without any end to the predicate is joy. “What are you doing?” I am ‘amming’ could be my answer to provide some colloquial reason that demands an activity or at least a state of being beyond, just, ‘I am’. Look at the birds: according to biologists, they show ‘a demonstrative value of being’ without doing, knowing or having anything.

‘I am’ comes before ‘I do’ or ‘I know’ and well before ‘I have’. Logically, without being there is no one to do, know or possess? Yet we have idolised the latter at the expense of the foundation of life. Only when we restore ‘being’ to the primary role in our lives will we enjoy life as a party. ‘Knowing’ and ‘doing’ are less than ‘being’. They are secondary actors as we agree that life is a party. The key test is to ask the legitimate question, when we are alone and honest and spend time on the Augustinian reversal:

· “It is not that we should use God to enjoy the world but that we should use the world to enjoy God”
Religious people are more openly flagrant users of God to enjoy the world. By our prayers, telling God what to do, we have become demonic consumers. In our madness, we claim God’s healing with personal orders so that we can enjoy the world. “Please God heal my spouse, I’m tired of doing the dishes!” From this doing and knowing global village, it is a logical extension to see inactivity as wrong or a sin. ‘Being’ implies doing nothing. The growth economics law, another demon, demands that we work harder and every year so that we can grow! What is the goal of modern economics ‘so that one day you can retire and do nothing’ but we are doing that already without getting a hernia.

The opposite of joy is godlessness, or not being present! Look at the cross to see the meaning of the absence of joy, the only real place of godlessness, literally demonstrating that God was not present. As Moltmann the theologian put it, God killed God on the cross. Yet it also provides comfort for those who suffer that the presence of that crucified person can give hope that a resurrection in their suffering may and does happen. However, I want to suggest that because of that once-only event, the cross, joy is permanently here. The resurrection declares that God is always present and powerful so that joy is infectious.

Worldwide, the gospel is producing fruit. We may not notice it, especially if we are carriers of the joy by the power of the Spirit, we are too busy infecting all around us with joy. The possible failure in our action is in not telling others, outside of our comfort zone. We do not tell others that heaven is free and they too should enjoy God in a new relationship of grace. Laws, rules and ideology are disguising this fact that we are free. Laws depress us and joy seems far away, a silly mistake brought about by our own misunderstanding. We do not think that God wants to party!