Author Archives: Mark Porthouse

The Star Wars Fallacy

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As we all know, the Star Wars epic is a story of a battle of good against evil, where the evil empire uses fatal force to ensure it’s dominance against the good rebel alliance who also use fatal force against the enemy to ensure their dominance.

Unfortunately for us, we are taken in by this idea that good can defeat evil using hate – the tool of evil – but we find it hard to accept that the tool of good is love, and that the only hope of defeating evil is with love. Jesus set an example of love and perhaps the hardest commandment was to ‘love your enemy’, which seems to entailing doing the same stuff to your enemies as you do to your friends!

For some reason we find it easier to accept the violence fallacy as being the ultimate power rather than the supremacy of the truth of love! Let’s not be fooled by the myths and legends of our culture, which present the idea that violence is the ultimate arbiter. Let’s accept Christ’s example on the cross and incorporate his message fully into our lives as we are changed by his love for us.

Travellers (and the) Rest

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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1)… and gave it to oil barons, multinational mining corporations and property tycoons. No, seriously, it was not God’s intention that a powerful minority would control access to the earth’s natural resources – land and its natural deposits being the most obvious.

One example of sharing the land is that of nomadic tribes who do not recognise private ownership of land but see it as the inheritance of their society to be shared fairly. Another alternative pattern was laid out in the laws of Jubilee in the Old Testament (Lev. 25:10) where land was to return to the original family every fifty years.

We see today that it is the landless who are least able to lift themselves out of poverty. To merely exist they have to pay those who own the land. To work they have to use someone else’s land, either paying them rent or working for that other person on that other person’s land. I cannot imagine that many of you, the readers, have not had to pay someone (usually over a long period of time) for the land you live on. It is also likely that you work on either someone else’s land or land that you have paid for.

For some of us an inheritance in middle age is as close as we come to getting on a level playing field; a point in time where we can stop paying others for the privilege of merely existing.

Travellers are a continuation of the nomadic way of life and set of values, where access to land is a societal right. Those of us who participate in the system of property ownership (whether we are paying rent, paying off a mortgage or own our ‘patch’) find it easy to resent those who have managed to have access to land without paying for it. Perhaps we should question the nature of our land ownership and think about what we are doing to our children who find themselves landless and having to exchange their labour for someone else’s land.

How to Participate in Church Without Turning Up on Sunday Morning!

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Right, let’s face it, the most important thing about Sunday morning is to pick up a copy of the weekly newsletter so that you know what exactly is going on in the life of the church for the rest of the week!

Aw, come on! The most important thing is face time with your (church) family, not something that you get a lot of on a Sunday morning (especially when the music/singing group decide to prevent all chat before kick off).

Anyway, living in the Internet era should enable us to not need to grab a hardcopy of the newsletter… well in theory anyway! In practice most churches aren’t net savvy enough to practice ‘push’ email where information is pushed to ‘consumers’ of said via email. So the alternative is to get a friend to pick up a copy for you.

Surely it is without doubt that every church recognises that there will be some who can rarely attend church, due to work or perhaps because they live elsewhere at the weekends…?

So, get along to prayer meetings, house group, meals, parties, mission presentations etc – that should give you your fill of face to face encounters with your brothers and sisters. If that isn’t enough then get yourself invited to people’s houses for meals, or babysit (and then refuse to leave when the parent’s get back!). Better still, invite others to your place or on holiday. Why not employ some of them?!

But I do recommend turning up on Sunday am once in a while. You never know, it may have changed…

Better to be Killed than to Kill

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We are called to change ourselves and to show love. We are called to be Christ to others. We are not called to force others to behave in particular ways.

Also, when we believe, life takes a very different context – life on this planet ceases to be all important as we see what is beyond. We also know a God who gives justice even amongst what seems to be so unfair and unjust. Ultimately justice is that God will judge us fairly – justice between people in this life takes a different place. Justice in this life is something that we should seek to provide, reflecting God’s justice.

When we seek our own survival above the survival of others we fall back into the failed way of living, we fall back into a self centred life which doesn’t look beyond to God’s provision. Attempts at self survival are doomed – we can’t do it – only God can give us our survival as we give our lives to him.

If we back war, police with guns or any kind of ‘self survival over love for our enemies’ then we are reverting to (human) type and we deny Christ’s provision and Christ’s message of love. We will continue to be responsible for the circle of violence and for the death of the innocent.

Money or Time?

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What does God want the most – our money or our time?

I’m posing this question (to which I’m going to give my own personal response in a moment) because I regularly (but not too often) hear it said that ‘God needs rich people in the church for their money’ or ‘It is good to get rich because God needs the church to have money’.

Now, from what I can see the Bible doesn’t make any comments along these lines. Sure, it does show situations where the money of rich people are used – some of those wealthy people being followers of God. So don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to say that God won’t use our wealth.

Other interesting Biblical accounts that relate to the subject include:

  • Job – where God allowed him to be stripped of his wealth and then given new wealth.
  • The coin in the fish – where Jesus took a coin from a fish to pay some tax.
  • and there must be loads of examples where God gives the wealth of unbelievers to his children

I reckon that God can get money however he wants, whenever he wants. His difficulty is getting our hearts, getting us to follow him, getting us to show his love to others.

Interestingly there are plenty of examples where God bypasses money completely:

  • The oil in the jars that wouldn’t run out.
  • Turning water into wine.
  • Feeding the 5,000.
  • Manna in the desert.

And tonnes of other examples. In fact God’s use of money is the exception! However, if we look at the role of the church we find that God chooses to show himself largely through the church – i.e. through the commitment, time and deeds of those who follow him. It is our time that he needs, more than anything else.

A problem with the idea of ‘earning money for God’ is this:
Many say that we are over consuming and that our exploitation of nature is highly excessive, that we can’t carry on in the way we are. Now, we know that consumption is matched by production (you can’t consume what is not produced!), so if we believe that God wants our production to be as high as possible then one would have to assume that he is cool with the idea of raping the earth…
…I’m not convinced!

Evidence and Proof II

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Regarding “Evidence and Proof”:

I always simply thought that, if there was ‘proof’ of God, then it would no longer be a choice of whether to follow Him or not – instead we would be compelled to follow Him, which isn’t much use in a free will world.

It’s a bit like 1+1=2. Am I ever going to believe that is wrong? No. Will I act on the fact that 1+1=2? Yes, I do so every time I pay for something with cash, every time I wait a minute for someone. So surely if God was proven then I would have to believe and I would have to act on it. Just like believing in 1+1=2 isn’t my free choice, believing in God would not be free choice but would be mandatory.

I always figured free choice is important in our relationships. The thing about people in general is that you can believe that they exist, but you don’t have to believe what they say. If God was proven then you would have to believe what he ‘said’ – because it is proven that he is God (God being the all powerful, etc. – that’s the point of the term ‘God’). If it wasn’t proven that you had to believe what he said then it wouldn’t be proven that he was God.

So I guess that’s why I think God is being perfectly reasonable in not proving his existence to us, at least scientifically! Faith, though, is an entirely different proof type of thing…

Migration: Fair Trade?

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As a response to news today about taking health staff from developing countries here is an article I wrote that was first published in Benchmark Magazine:

There are many aspects to the immigration discussion, but one that hits me as particularly pertinent to issues of justice is the movement of skilled people away from developing countries.
We can view this issue as a problem of trade. We don’t normally think of migration as a trade in people – after all it’s not slavery that is going on! However, when we offer an individual the prospect of a higher standard of living in exchange for their participation in our economy we are indeed trading. The unfortunate thing about this trade is that it is between a poor individual and our rich society with no thought for the community from which we take, the community which invested in that person, the community which that person was serving. When we trade with these communities in this way we are not practising fair trade, we are not giving them just compensation for their loss, we take and we do not give back.
However, it is worth saying that this exploitation is only possible because of the global inequities between rich and poor. It is only when the root causes of this inequity are addressed that the symptoms are relieved – the ball is in our court, as rich nations, to do something about this.
But where does that put us, as the church in a rich nation? What is our role in the migration of skilled labour? Well, I don’t see our role as global policeman, preventing individuals from moving where they want or even preventing societies from tapping the wealth of societies less wealthy than our own. However, I do see that we each have a personal responsibility – we, as Christians, must seek to not cause such migration. As with any form of trade, sometimes we have to be prepared to give up what is within our grasp, as we are called to be fair in our dealings.
In practice such personal fairness can be difficult to achieve – how do we refuse the caring attention of a Filipino nurse or the school education of a Jamaican teacher? Is there any way that our actions can compensate those societies in another way, perhaps by charitable support? Can you go out to teach in a Jamaican school or give your life to support the health of those in poverty in other parts of the world?
What if you are that Filipino nurse working in the NHS or that Jamaican teacher working in a comprehensive school? This is the hardest question for me, as I’m not such a person. However, one thing that I must say is that, for many of these people, the purpose of their lives here is to support their families back home, to send money home so that their families can live better lives than if they had never left.
So, perhaps our role is to take a back seat, not to judge, but rather to recognise the opportunities that are open to us to do our bit for our global community.

What Doesn’t Kill You download

Fundamental or Liberal?

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Just picked up on the Tall Skinny NewZealander:
http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2005/05/newbigin_on_fun.html

Isn’t it odd that the term fundamentalist (at it’s most basic interpretation) implies someone who adheres to the fundamental (and therefore ‘core’) truths of their faith. So doesn’t this imply that they don’t get carried away with peripheral (less obvious) aspects of their faith?

Isn’t this liberalism? Where you are more open to different, previously unexplored truths surrounding the core beliefs?

When did the term fundamentalism become something that encompassed more than core belief?Oliver & Company on dvd

Church Amongst Churches

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Further to my ‘Denomination Domination’ post I would like to speculate that we can be church amongst

Bewitched movies churches. I.e. just because you want to change your pattern of fellowship with other believers, you don’t have to exclude those in your current church (i.e. the church that you ‘attend’).

However, what does seem to be necessary is a re-prioritisation of how much time you are going to spend with who, but this is a long way off from dumping anyone entirely. Our mission of discipleship (internal church activity) should still be a priority in the situation we find ourselves – I tend to recall the passage around:
1 Corinthians 7:20
Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him.

and imagine that this could apply to continuing to participate with the church we are in, whilst we allow ourselves fellowship with those from outside ‘our’ ‘church’.

Naturally there is a danger, if we practice this slightly subversive form of church, that existing church leaders might have a problem with us… but one would hope not! I imagine it would only be a problem if they were particularly territorial or possessive!