Amaharo: Silver and Gold Have I None

This is a post I’ve put up at the Emerging Africa site. See the conversation there at www.emergingafrica.info.

Note that I don’t consider myself to be emerging or Emergent (or anything for that matter besides Christian) but I converse with brothers and sisters who do.

Having given some praise in my last post about the recent Amaharo conference (okay, I know it’s not THAT recent but I’m a bit slow) I felt that in line with the whole honesty thing that I also ought to do some criticism (constructive, of course; edifying, I hope).

This time I listened to the following talks:

Transfiguration – Claude Nikondeha
The Church and Apartheid – Moss Nthla
The Reformation of the Church – Paul Verryn

Now I know some found these encouraging but I, for reasons I think I now understand, couldn’t help but feel a little discouraged. Not that the talks were in themselves bad but just because their subject matter – social problems, what is being done from a social perspective, what we can do about social problems – is just so BIG. Verryn’s talk about what they are doing in the inner city methodist church was just so… well… it’s great and all, but is there really any CHANGE happening? Are people truly experiencing God, knowing God, finding new LIFE – real, spiritual, down-to-earth life and joy, rather than just hand-me-outs?

Please hear my heart on this. This is an honest reflection.

I am not judging what Verryn and the church is doing there, nor what Claude is involved with (I’m sure he may read this). I don’t even know these guys or what they do. What I’m trying to say is if our Gospel becomes nothing but the ’social gospel’ then it is no different to any other gospel out there. And it’s just so tiring. We’ll never see lasting transfiguration through social programmes alone – there needs to be real spiritual and literal LIFE transferred from believers in Jesus to others; and those others need to become believers in Jesus themselves, surely, if the Kingdom of God is to grow like a mustard seed.

Something felt like it was missing. The something I refer to is at the end of 1 Cor 4: “For the kingdom does not consist of talk but of power“. Now, again, I’m not criticising anyone in particular now – I’m just saying that, even amongst emerging church people in general I see a real lack of talk about power and, quite frankly, the supernatural (I use the term for conversation’s sake, not because I like to lump things into categories of ‘natural’ or ’supernatural’).

I don’t mean a metaphorical or poetic meaning to power, I mean something far more literal and down-to-earth; gutsy and dirty. I mean flaming hot ‘you’re going to experience God’ now power. The kind that truly makes a person addicted to drugs no longer addicted; the kind where the crippled walk and the deaf hear; the kind where evil spirits flee and the joy of the Lord fills the person.

The power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit that God gave to us on Pentecost. The Spirit that Jesus referred to in Acts 1:8 where he said “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samara, and to the ends of the Earth”.

Claude did speak about contemplation, but I still felt that the spark required for contemplation to bring true refreshing was missing a little. The spark, the tongue of fire, the Holy Spirit Himself. We can contemplate, meditate, pray, chant, sing, dance, whatever we want as much as is humanly possible but without the Spirit’s power it’s really just so tiring and boring; and there is no fruit. After all, it is the fruit of the Spirit we are seeking (Gal 5) – the Spirit produces the fruit we’re wanting to see.

Social programs are only social programs until they are ignited with the fire of God. That’s when they move from social programs to Kingdom advancement. That’s when we truly see transformation and transfiguration. That’s when living water truly flows. When the bread of life is tasted. We need the Holy Spirit, and we need Him to be not theoretical, not JUST poetic, but literal and actual in our lives.

Taking my que from Acts 2:3 where Peter says to the lame beggar that he doesn’t have money to give him, but rather has something else to give him, which was complete healing, I can’t help but feel a little bit like we can miss it. Yes, we must clothe and feed the poor, and this is good news to the poor, but is it THE Good News? Isn’t THE Good News the fact that Jesus is alive and he can come miraculously into your life and change you and your life completely? Isn’t the message of the Kingdom that He has come to bring Shalom? Peace and abundance? Spiritual on-the-ground reality?

Yes, of course feeding and clothing is part of the job, but without the reality of the Spirit and the actual dynamite power of God we are not going to be able to achieve our purpose. And what is our purpose? Isn’t it, in the end, to actually make disciples of Christ who can also bring the life-changing power of God to others? The world will be changed by us changing government, of course, but you put a bunch of wicked-hearted and injust people in charge of government and any system will just become corrupted.

Where is the power that literally heals the sick and raises the dead? This is the power I’m talking about.

In our quest for transformation in this world we must not forget the basic doctrines of our faith, listed in Hebrews 6:1 and 2 for us,

“Repentance from dead works and faith toward God… baptism… the laying on of hands… the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgement.”

The laying on of hands is what we are actively doing now, or we should be. This doctrine, as all doctrines, has a very practical application – we lay hands on the sick and the destitute, they recover, change happens, they experience God. And, of course, we lay our hands now on this world and it recovers, change happens, and it experiences God. But in the laying on of hands it is the power of God which is transferred, and that is what we are trying to do.

This is an honest critique and I’m hoping to edify us all to continue the journey, and in doing so not forget our true Source and what it is we are truly doing. We’re transforming the world with true power, we’re transferring the Living God’s life that is in us to others – literally. We are bringing the true Gospel of Shalom. We are pursuading others to believe on Jesus and join us on His quest of true, literal, healing to individuals and to the world. We are not merely clothing the poor and feeding the sick, for

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me, to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

For the Kingdom of God is a mustard seed.

If emerging guys want to be the well-rounded Christians they want to be, perhaps they also need to start getting a little old-school pentecostal and charismatic too. At the moment, I do feel that this element of Christianity appears to be missing.

Amaharo and abiblical

I’ve started (at last) listening to the audio of the Amaharo conference, which was held in June in South Africa.

Roger Saner has very kindly put up the recordings of the event here

The talks I’ve listened to so far are:

Edward Simiyu - The ministry of presence
Kelly Nikondeha - The Amahoro story
Postcolonialism and why it matters – Dr Kenzo Mabiala
The African Reformation – Brian McLaren

Once I get some more bandwidth I’ll download and listen to some more.

Alright, now what did I think? Feel? Both?

Actually, both are a good way to explain what the talks have so far meant to me.

Mabiala’s talk about postcolonialism was quite fascinating. This is because it began to unravel and reveal the colonial thinking in my own head, particularly in areas of which types of thinking are ‘biblical’ and which are not.

Example? Well, Mabiala made some references to TIME. For the African, the watch is not something that comes from their culture. The African gets up when he gets up, goes to work when he goes to work, etc.

Now I’ve begun to realise how my own colonial mindset sits in judgement over this thinking. A concept of time such as this is far less ‘efficient’ than the Western concept of time, in my thinking.

From a background perspective, I know that Africans tend to view time in the form of “now – backwards” whereas Westerns view time more of “now – forwards”. This has led to Westerners being more interested in progress, while Africans more interested in the past (ancestors, etc.).

Ancestral worship aside, the very concept of time from the African was not only viewed as ‘inefficient’ for me (and one could discuss what ‘efficiency’ really means anyway, which I’ll probably reserve for a future post) but also as ‘unbiblical’.

But is it unbiblical or just… different? Or, is it not that bringing in both concepts of time, forming something together will show us something truly biblical? Is that the answer? A form of pluralism?

Or, even more so, perhaps the concept of time has nothing to do with the Bible whatsoever? In other words, it’s ABIBLICAL.

What does the Bible say about progress and efficiency? The BIBLE, not my own protestant work ethic or Western tradition?

Seems to me the Bible has a few things to say about work. It implores us not to be lazy, to work with our hands, to be diligent in our work and to watch our herds carefully. It also reminds us that wealth is seasonal, or that we should work with seasons in mind. But it doesn’t say anything about what the RIGHT philosophy of time is, it simply says that as long as we stick to these basic guidelines we’re ok.

What’s my point? My point is that rather than putting everything into a category of “biblical” or “unbiblical”, which is how I’ve always measured things (or thought I was), there is now a third category opening up to me – “ABiblical”. Something that is neither WRONG or RIGHT, but simply dependant on either my taste or what is necessary for the culture I find myself in.

For instance, when I am in Africa I must do as the Africans do. If I throw my watch away and live as the Africans do am I doing something wrong? Unbiblical? Or am I just taking on another culture, or parts of another worldview, for a time so that I may reach those in this culture and worldview with the Gospel?

See, there are certain things I may feel I must ‘teach’ Africa as an educated person, and that these are ‘biblical’ concepts. Some examples are: We must be on time, we must work from 8 to 5, we must wear respectable clothing, we must do this and that. And so Africa seems like this huge challenge because ‘basic things’ of ‘life’ and the ‘gospel’ need to be taught.

But are these not rather ABiblical things that, even myself, who is not racist and loves cultures, somehow at the back of his mind still judges his ‘culture’ as ‘more right’ than another? Is it about one culture being better than another, or is it about forming a colourful culture together, with one Head and King, Jesus?

For one, as a white guy, the talks so far have made me understand the African better and also see my own ignorant colonial thinking.

Last night my wife and I watched a bit of Sting’s “All This Time” DVD. I’ve always loved world music, and I felt God really speak to me last night, while enjoying this spectrum of music and musicians from all parts of the world. It’s time to break loose of the pressures of my own culture and greco-roman, even stoic thinking, that has for too long disguised itself as ‘biblical’ when it is nothing of the sort (or, rather, some of it is just abiblical) and be free from concepts such as what ’success’ really is, what ‘efficiency’ really is, and what Biblical really is, what Kingdom really is, amongst others.

This frees one up to preach the GOSPEL, not their own culture’s view of the gospel, or their own culture as the Gospel. While I never for once thought I was doing that, it seems that I have been doing that without even realising it. After all, Paul in the Scriptures said “I have become all things to all men so that I might save some.”

Press On

Forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead
(Phil 3: 1-16)

This was the subtitle of my sermon “Press On” I preached this last Sunday at my church, Church on the Square.

You can download the sermon here.
(Right-Click and ‘Save target as’)

I thoroughly enjoyed it! Although, giving it a listen, I could have dropped some of the “ums” in places… oh well, I’m sure I’ll improve.

As Christians we need to leave the past behind, and leave those things behind that get us caught in a rut and prevent us from moving on towards the upward call and greater prize God has for us.

Once we are saved, we are saved, and when we fall we can get up in the grace of God and press on. We don’t need to dwell on our sins, our mistakes, guilt, shame etc. And we should sort out any relational problems, such as forgiveness issues etc.

Also, God wants us to know more about Him – who He is – and we need to be unsatisfied with what we know now. Some of our doctrines and ideas of God are not necessarily wrong, but they aren’t the full picture – God in His fullness. God wants us to open our eyes wider and see more of Him, and so we need to move beyond the rut that prevents us from seeing and knowing more of Him.

Grace is not just forgiveness, but also the power to get up and move on. Thankfully, when we’re saved we can sort out sin issues within God’s safety rather than run away from God. The problem is many times we run away from God when we sin rather than run TO Him, and it’s the latter that we need to do if we want to get rid of sin, even habitual sins.

Religion wants to tie us up in a sin-focus, where all we do is focus on our sins in an effort to be ‘perfect’ and ‘accepted’ by God, when we are already accepted by God and don’t need to be perfect – we just need to be moving on.

The more we focus on sin, the more we’ll sin. We need to focus on the victory Jesus attained for us, and race towards the prize – forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead.

Those are a few snippets of my sermon. Download it here.
(Right-Click and ‘Save target as’)

That Hideous Strength

Shannon (my wife) and I have been reading CS Lewis’ Sci-Fi trilogy in the last few weeks together.

All I can say right now is wow. Lewis did an amazing job with this trilogy, I don’t know why it isn’t as popular as much of his other work. It may be because the first two can be a little difficult to read, but other than that it is a really good job.

One of the best themes he has developed through the series has been one of obedience. We’ve got about three chapters left of the last book and then I’m going to post a review of sorts here at this blog.

The three books in the series are:

1. Out of the Silent Planet
2. Perelandra (Voyage to Venus)
3. That Hideous Strength

Wikipedia has an entry on the trilogy here

The Spiritual Dangers of Hyper-Fundamentalism

In response to some debates I’ve taken with various fundamentalist groups (mainly ‘discernment’ websites I’ve stumbled across recently) I’ve decided to post an explanation of why I view hyper-fundamentalism (an extreme type of fundamentalism) in Christian circles as spiritually harmful to those who would consider themselves fundamentalist.

In other words, I’m saying hyper-fundamentalists are on dangerous ground (‘playing with fire’ to use their phrase) by being so, well, hyper-fundamentalist. In this case I place them in the same “class” (so to speak) as all forms of extreme thought – such as the extreme emergents who are dabbling in other forms of spirituality, the extreme charismatics who claim to see angels every weekend etc., and the like.

I’m making a point here that I feel needs to be reiterated. ALL forms of extreme theology are spiritually dangerous. We must at all times stay balanced with our theology and our outlook, with the capability to truly be able to discern lies from truth. In all forms of theology there is some truth somewhere. Even Paul found this by quoting the poetry of the Greeks in Acts 15 where he used their own poetry to Zeus to describe God. This is why discernment also doesn’t always take a second, sometimes it needs careful study.

This is to allow those who I’ve debated with recently (more than one ‘discernment’ website) to understand my views and motives more correctly. I don’t know if any of you guys who I’ve been debating with are actually going to comment on this article, but I thought you may still find it of interest

So, hyper-fundamentalism is dangerous to those who are in it because:

1) It will sidetrack you, take you away from God’s calling on your life, and get you involved with nitpicking everyone’s theology in the church rather than engaging those outside of the church with the Gospel.

2) It has a tendency to make you unteachable and finally unapproachable.

3) The result will be that you will not be able to teach and exhort others, no one will listen to you.

4) In other words, you will not be able to minister to others effectively.

5) It will take away your joy.

6) It will bound you into LAW, not GRACE, despite how much you THINK you are living in grace, and despite your theology on the matter, you will find yourself living under LAW.

More than that, hyper-fundamentalist groups have a habit of causing great division.

Saying this immediately invokes the response of “we will not compromise the truth for anyone” and a whole lot of verses where Jesus said he has not come to bring peace but a sword etc.

That’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m saying is that hyper-fundamentalism causes division within itself. As the ‘true’ and ‘really born again’ and ‘really bible-believing’ Christians break off, each group begins to believe that they are the ‘really REALLY bible-believing Christians”. Elitists mindsets go nowhere but to further elitism, resulting in many of the sheep hurt, scattered, and without a shepherd… easy for the picking. While the elitists continue to fight about who really is ‘in’, and form their own groups around a particular ‘non-compromise’, the honest sheep don’t know what’s really right and wrong and many get lost. Furthermore, those who are fighting about some particular fringe-doctrine find themselves burnt out in the end and greatly hurt. Some of them simply never go back to church, while others will delve into new age stuff in a knee-jerk response to their hurt.

This happens, I’m not making it up. Guys like the guy who runs infidels.org, the atheist site, are fundamentalists who got hurt in the process. Hyper-fundamentalism is a trap to sidetrack you from what God really wants to do through you.

I’m using the language of fundamentalists to make my point here. Hyper-fundamentalism is a trap of the devil. It is NOT bible-believing Christianity. Hyper-fundamentalism’s doctrines READ INTO the Bible, they don’t READ OUT of the Bible. They READ IN what they WANT to see, selectively taking what supports the hyper-fundamentalist agenda, which is – ultimately – to enslave you to religion.

This sounds very much like what hyper-fundamentalism would call Emergents or Third Wave people etc. That’s my point. Little do you know you are stuck in a similar trap, just on the other end of the scale.

This is not to say that hyper-fundamentalists are not well-meaning people. What I’m saying is I’ve never heard a hyper-fundamentalist ever quote a scripture in its context, with a solid background in balanced theology.

Ok, maybe I have once or twice, but most of the time it’s just a pick-and-choose of scripture to support the point that someone, somewhere, is not really a Christian because they said this and that, and if you say “they didn’t really say that” you are told “yes, but I’m just making it clear what they really MEANT. I’m exposing the lie.”

Well I’m exposing the lie right now about hyper fundamentalism. If you are caught in it your are dabbling in something that is spiritually dangerous to you. You need to surround yourself with balanced, well-meaning, honest Christians who read and discuss the Bible, who believe it and practice what it says, not what they think it says, and not what they want it to say to support their own views.

Hyper-fundamentalism will either lead to you getting badly hurt, or to you going nowhere, as it’s a trap designed to keep you from growing.

Here’s what I’m not saying:

1) I’m not saying we need to compromise on truth. But Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. If you’re unsure on truth just stick to Jesus and you will be fine. What I am saying is we need to be more discerning as to what is really truth, and what is just a red herring. We need to be less hasty and more responsible with discernment.

2) I’m not saying there’s no place for rebuking, or sharp rebukes at that. There is a place for rebuking, usually out of a context of relationship, as we see modelled by Paul and others in the Bible. The only time Jesus rebuked people publically was when they made a public thing of it.

That should be enough explaining, I hope!

Historical Validity of Jesus’ Resurrection

Personally, I think that the historical validity of Jesus’ Resurrection builds the strongest case for Him being the Son of God, and all the basic stuff that Christians believe.

Over at ilovephilosophy.com (philosophy forums) I’ve heard a couple of atheists, agnostics, or non-believers (as some I’m not sure what they are) say the same things:

1) The Gospels and New Testament letters were written too far away from the original events, meaning they cannot be trusted (and are probably mythological).
2) The disciples made the whole thing up so they could have a following of some sort (usually forms into some conspiracy theory of how the apostles were power hungry).

Of course, I’m summarising the general views.

Most of these seem to get their ‘facts’ from popular media rather than studying it for themselves. One person actually thought that Jesus died in 0 AD, and that is why they thought that since the earliest letter in the New Testament (Corinthians) was written in 54AD it was too long from the original event.

But Jesus was crucified 29-32 AD, which means that the letter to the Corinthians was written only something like 22 or 24 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Why this is important is because Paul, in 1 Cor 15:6, claims that over 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus and that many of them were alive at the time of writing the letter. In other words, there were many people around to validate the event.

Myths don’t take 20 years to develop. Therefore only 20 or so years after Jesus’ death people believe He was raised again. Why didn’t the Jews produce a body or something?

When challenging an agnostic on the fact that they thought that Jesus was crucified in 0 AD I was told that ‘history cannot be verified’ and ‘historians argue all the time’. Only that I don’t think there is one historian in history, save perhaps David Ike (okay, not a historian, but you get my point) who says Jesus was crucified in 0 AD. So what real reason do they have to believe this?

The point is that i’m often told that the ‘historical evidence’ is laughable, but when I challenge this thought I’m told ‘oh, but all the historians argue about dates anyway.’ This is suspicious reasoning. If historical evidence is ‘laughable’ then it means the person is placing some stock in historical evidence (that which we do have). But, of course, because many actually haven’t really done any actual study on the subject they’ll eventually write it off to uncertainty, or keep speaking nonsense about how the Gospels were written in 120AD and Jesus crucified in year 0.

If you don’t believe that Jesus was actually risen from the dead in history then why do you believe that? Saying “history cannot be validated” is dubious, and going on about what some pseudo-historian said on Discovery Channel intellectually lazy.

If Jesus really was raised from the dead you are forced to take Him seriously as the Son of God. Ignoring the historical studies is convenient, but intellectually dishonest.

According to a bio I read of a guy called Gary Habermas, who lectures on the resurrection, he spent several years studying the subject before he realised that the resurrection of Jesus was a real historical event. He almost became a buddhist in this time, but was convinced when he studied the resurrection from a historical perspective (so he had no bias or reason to become a Christian). His site is very resourceful around this subject – see it at www.garyhabermas.com.