Christian, Soldier or Jew

When I told my 9 year old my dream last week, he just laughed. He laughed and I laughed, from somewhere very deep inside. Which was refreshing. This was my dream:

The room had no windows but was warm and very humid having been freshly plastered. The ceiling was vaulted and the walls were still the colour of a milky mocha.

It was just the two of us on the job. My colleague was doing the woodwork and I was doing the mudwork.

He was telling me how he also did plastering. So I asked him what he thought the surface area of the room was.

He said about thirty two square metres.

I was thinking how I would have said exactly the same.

I asked him how long it would take for him to plaster such a room.

He said two days. Which is how long I would also take.

So I said to him "How much would you charge?"

Without hesitation, he parked his tools and looked me straight in the eyes.

"That depends on whether you're a Christian, a soldier or a Jew".

The Child Parent

In a very very small handful of ways, I am no longer a child. Although, of course, when my mother refers to me in a conversation with some peer or other third party, I am indeed one of the children of whom she speaks. I have been for almost 40 years, and I suppose I always will be. 

For almost 8 years now I have also been a parent. One of the greatest question marks floating over my head as a parent is in working out how much effort (if any) should be exerted in steering our children either towards, or away from, inheriting our own shortcomings, ... that in some way their lives might me enriched by either avoiding mistakes that we ourselves have made, or by sharing in successes that we ourselves have experienced.

Neither wanting them to become either carbon copies of ourselves, nor our alto egos – or arguably worse – so liberally minded that they have such an expanse of possibilities and freedoms that they are unable to focus and function in any structured mechanisms that might bring them fulfillment – I am currently dwelling on the following two helpful notions:

One, on the parental importance of helping to frame a child’s worldview. By this I mean trying to explain difficult and adverse situations, instead of removing them from them, or instead of shielding them from them, that as they grow they might have a healthy approach to building their own worldview frames.

And secondly, having wrestled with - and won over - some pretty pious teaching on the matter, on the beautiful realisation that we are all products of our parent’s inadequacies, idiosyncracies and coping strategies. And that this is not something to shy away from, mask, or be ashamed of, but something to be immensely proud of.

[1925:5723]

The Escape from Freedom

A response to a friend’s blog post on Freedom and Liberty ...

I would say that what you have defined here is not ‘freedom’ per se, but ‘personal freedom’. If we are on a determined quest for personal freedom then the destination is ultimately a place which is very lonely. It is also a place from which it is impossible to escape without giving up that desire.

Giving up the quest for personal freedom leads us to the next question which is with whom we are going to share our domain, our life, our space. Some people are free to choose their neighbours and others are not. For example in our country currently, social mobility is restricted by the state for families who have a high state dependency whereas the breadth of choice of living location is very wide for families who have either access to capital or who have strong borrowing power.

Of course some societal unpleasantries can be escaped by a change of living location, but most can’t and it is the tension between the afoermentioned diametrically opposed extremes which ultimately lead to various forms of ethnic cleansing. Either that or just tall walls.

A mild form of this can even be seen amongst religious institutions who preach ‘love thy neighbour’ but actually practice ‘choose thy neighbour’ by sending their missionaries temporarily to international neighbourhoods of their own choice, to live amongst people who are not able to leave those same neighbourhoods and - were it not for the ‘babylonian’ capitalisms within which said institutions are 'free' to practice – probably never will. Such institutions are effectively sending the free to preach among the captives instead of going to ‘set the captives free’ which is what their guru claimed to embody.

So freedom is one thing, liberty is another. My understanding of ‘liberty’ is as a kind of societal framework that exists in order to achieve a kind of ‘corporate freedom’. It allows a body of individuals to live together without allowing one man’s freedom to encroach on another’s. The supporting framework which holds this web in tension includes mechanisms such as legislation, contracts and cultural shaming. The latter of which seems more prevalent in Eastern cultures and used mostly in the West only where legislation, contracts and other social pressures are evaded.

[1861:5672]

Growing Up

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day." But all the streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late. (AAMilne)

A nice metaphor. Except for grown-ups who are still eager to find out.

All the fun is up in the small streams.

[1834:5609]

The God Of My Own Creation

Can you guess which person represents me and which 'thing' represents the God that I have created?

[1834:5609]

Relational Lockdown

“When a nation undergoes occupation by a foreign army, for example, some formerly reliable citizens begin to co-operate with the enemy, perhaps for the rewards that such co-operation promises, perhaps out of fear. Especially when the foreign occupation has a criminal character, it becomes exceedingly difficult for ordinary citizens to maintain their customary honesty and sound moral habits. Cynicism is forced upon them; they must defend themselves on all sides, and feel great pressure to narrow their sphere of moral action to life in the family and among trusted friends”

(Michael Novak, “A Universal Culture of Human Rights and Freedom’s Habits: Caritapolis” a contribution to “Making Globalization Good”, John H.Dunning, Oxford University Press 2003)

I have never lived in a nation under foreign occupation, but this phenomenon feels uncannily familiar.

In Novak’s scenario, the citizen-enemy relationship is crisply defined and the relational lockdown is an obvious resolution for becoming neither the perpetrator nor the recipient of further betrayal.

But life in our increasingly globalised world is far less straightforward. We have created technologies that feed our own expectations. We both want, and are expected to deliver, everything, anywhere, right now. Oh, and for a good price. How do we do it? Well we don’t really do we. The confusion and illusions need only last until the robber is out of reach. And when the smoke clears we find ourselves on our backsides in a muddy pool of conveniently ill-defined roles with our own identities left shaken and our relationships feeling at best misunderstood and at worst betrayed.

For the Globalised Citizen it seems we must add to the temptation of reward and the terror of fear, a third explanatory factor:

Not really understanding who the enemy is.

[1759:5489]

Seed and Thorns

Some thoughts stirred up by a friend’s blog post, who, in the thick of transition, writes “… he sees a good number of older people who have been in ministry for years, and who haven’t made provision for their older years. They have ‘trusted in God’ to look after them, without having the understanding or wisdom (or help from others) to get practical about it. How sad. How scary. How real”

There is a lot in this post. The Maths Of Mission. It scratches on the surface of the controversial and taboo subject of Christian provision; it rattles the keys to the cells of the ‘free’ church.

When I read this post it reminds me of things that I have read in a bible, or things that Jesus once apparently said - and that I once believed had some personal application, but now wonder if I misunderstood the character of ‘my’ God in what I have read … or if I believe in a different God to everybody else. Though I doubt that.

I remember respecting King David for “… buying the threshing floor and the oxen and [paying] fifty shekels of silver for them, saying “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” (2 Sam, 1 Chr)

I remember reading something about “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it“ and considering both the curiousness and weirdness of those that choose that path.

When I consider those who have ‘trusted in God’ at the expense of their future ‘life securities’ I’m not sure I would call it sad. The reality is that everybody’s reality is different. It is complicated because faith is individualistic and personal, but interdependence is not. And this is a truth that divides the church.

I guess everybody’s reality is also influenced by his or her own macro-political environment. Where I live, my government once told me that if I worked for 30 years that I would be entitled to a state pension. Twelve years on and the goal posts have already moved so significantly that by extrapolation I expect to be working until I die. I don’t mind that. But whenever the state announces disproportionate tax rises, it serves only to inspire me to become more tax-efficient and to further believe that Old Age Criminality will eventually become justified (!) So one could only imagine how I might feel about being asked to give to any ‘charitable’ organisations who add a further burden to the tax bill without returning a proportional service.

If I don’t know how to plan and budget, but I do have faith is that good? I think it's wonderful. Yeah, let's tear down the schools (!). But if I know how to plan and budget but I substitute exercising this knowledge with ‘faith’ is that irresponsible? Maybe. A pension plan is just a business risk, right? Is a ‘faith’ risk any more futureproof than a business risk? If my business risk fails, people seem to care less that I am poorer than they because they know that if I had succeeded then it would be they who would be poorer than I. But if my ‘faith’ risk fails then that just makes me a fool for Christ, right? Maybe.

I remember reading a parable about a farmer whereby Jesus said that “… the seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

If I speak to those OAPs, I mean OAMs, I wonder if they will speak in regret, or with a wise and unswerving faith that reflects depths like a pearl finely honed by a lifetime of abrasion.

[1739:5316]

The Side That We Forget

Branding and brand images can be powerful entities. Two logos that I see almost every day remind me of two significant characters from history who we remember for their respective villainy and heroism.

One was a man who had a vision to forge a new future for people within his sphere of responsibility. His Robin-Hood-style plan was to make car-ownership available to average families; something that would open up doors for them, creating possibilities and freedoms within a globalising world. Up until his era, such freedoms had been a luxury affordable only to society’s wealthy; the most an average citizen could afford was a motorcycle. Under the new state-sponsored program a family could make weekly payments into a savings scheme and drive away with a vehicle that could carry up to two adults, three children and luggage, at 62mph.

The other man had a vision to forge a new future for people from distant lands and of alien language and culture. He himself travelled extensively and endured harsh living conditions in order to help people who had been subject to slavery, mostly ruthlessly, and frequently fatally. His plan was to equip them with a means out of their predicament, by trading commodities as an alternative to labour and through faith-based societal teaching. His earlier trips were made together with his family, but as his divine mission increasingly obsessed him, he left behind those for whom he had responsibility where his wife became an isolated and depressed alcoholic.

It is difficult to find Good Intention exercised in one realm that has not had an adverse affect, to some extent, in another.

The latter character was, obviously, David Livingstone, whose surname is printed in bold letters across our kids’ school uniform. The first, Adolf Hitler and Volkswagen whose logo perpetually glares at me from the centre of my steering wheel.

The hero, the villain, and the side that we forget.

[1686:5230]

Submission v Contract

I have recently been enjoying some thought-provoking dialogue on Facebook. David Grant in particular writes some very insightful stuff. Below is a comment I made on David Fisher's note - The Economy and the Book of Acts:

"I would say that the manner in which interdependence can be handled by a body of believers depends on which of the two models you subscribe to; one based on ‘submission’ or one based on ‘contract’.

Under ‘submission’, and in the event of disagreement, we ‘submit’ ourselves to the nominated individual(s). Under ‘contract’, we revert to what we had previously agreed.

Even though contracts are a little inflexible and require significant foresight to comprehensively create, my vote goes with the contract model.

Partly because of my struggle to find people with a broad enough biblical worldview and humble enough heart to submit to, but mostly because I believe that the concept of ‘mutual submission’ (i.e. ‘submit to one another’ (Ephesians 5)) is impossible.

Both paradigms are biblical (OK so we can just about justify anything as ‘biblical’). God’s agreement not to flood the Earth again (Genesis 9 the rainbow etc), the covenant of circumcision with his people (Genesis 17) and the new covenant made by the shedding of Jesus’ blood, which is remembered by ‘communion wine’ (Hebrews 9, Mark 14), are all significant contracts.

The notion of submission is a popular subject in the context of husbands and wives, though it is often and conveniently treated as contextually confusing by many. Submission to ‘kings’ etc is also biblical, but God’s attitude towards monarchy seems to be ‘well, you have kings, because you want kings … and everything that goes with them … so don’t complain, etc’.

The beauty of contracts is that they avoid ambiguous relationships, and the disappointments and emotional haemorrhaging suffered due to the steep differences between presumption and reality. I would say that it is actually difficult to ‘love’ deeply without contracts – leaving us with weak smiles and relational indifference in church gatherings.

I have contracts with God, with my wife, with the state, with insurance companies, with banks, with service providers, everybody except my kids(!). Sketchy relational definitions are insufficient in all aspects of current life in the UK, except amongst the church it seems.

I run a small business. What happens if some rich idiot decides to not pay his bill? Assuming the breach of contract is his, and not mine, he becomes my enemy and I fight him for justice in the courts. I cannot ‘turn the other cheek’ when I have dependents, and I cannot exercise ‘divine grace’ unless he acknowledges his wrongdoing before a mutually respected (or not!) judge. A bigger problem would arise if a poor idiot doesn’t pay a bill(!), or if I don’t succeed in obtaining justice in the courts. If I can still love him in my heart, through all this, I have won one for Jesus. That’s hard. What would happen to my family, employees, and suppliers? All the risks are agreed and understood contractually. I’d hope that the suppliers also had other customers. And the rest of us? maybe we’d go out for a Chinese and have a laugh about the fight?

Would I expect the church to bail me out? No. The Lord is my rear guard, not the church.

Contracts clarify any shared ‘risk’ amongst the body, which is important since faith and scriptural interpretation are unique to individuals. Hence my point that if a group wants to genuinely share each others’ loads, there would need to be a common starting point and openness about the baggage that is brought to the body, including debts, equity, investments, commitments (both financial and time), assets and maintenance burdens, number of dependants, etc. It would be a messy business, but how else could giving to the communal pot be ‘equally sacrificial’?

Just thoughts. Not my kind of thing really. All that time spent squabbling about entitlement; meanwhile life goes on for the rest of the unbelieving world. And who would be watching their backs?

For all of it’s flaws, a capitalist ‘free market’ economy is relatively impartial to the belief of the individual and that is important. Personally, I will only accept a biblical economic model as a pattern for global interdependence when someone gives me a coin from the mouth of a fish (Matthew 17).

Maybe we’d do better trying to find something that we can export to aliens?

[1643:5170]

Freedom v Responsibility

"... I am not a free, autonomous individual. I am a son, husband, father, grandfather, neighbour, colleague, student, teacher, citizen, friend. I have a very large number of relational obligations and responsibilities, which severely constrain what I do. These responsibilities occasionally frustrate or annoy, they more often satisfy and they are always binding ... And my individuality, if anyone wishes to keep the concept, will come from the specific actions I take in meeting my relational responsibilities."

(Rosemont, H., Jr. (1998) Confucianism and Human Rights, Cambridge University Press)

[1612:5120]

Unconscious Planet

"There is nothing that destroys the world and the consciousness of people faster than injustice" (Taymiyyah)

[1611:5105]

World Vision

My messed up religio-political-economic worldview works well within the microcosm in which I live. Amongst the community of wider society it works less well. And as a global economic model it is completely hopeless. So this is my conclusion:

Today I will stay at home.


[1566:5000]

Consumer Power(less)

A couple of years ago, my wife and I took a trip to London’s West End on a date. We were there to watch a show and we stopped off in a small Chinese restaurant on the way for some dinner. We were quite deliberate in our choice of venue.

It was a small institution, one of many along the street of similar 10ft terraced shop fronts. Inside there was just enough space for the kitchens, a service counter, and eight or nine very small tables. Very little had been spent on internal fittings or decoration.

I don’t write this, in any shape or form, as a call for romantic sympathy, or as a means to raise funds for a charitable cause, but the truth is that people who run establishments like this do not earn very much. They work long unsociable hours, often live in cramped accommodation with young children, speak little English and rely upon help from family and friends because of the relative ruthlessness of both state and market. Because they live month to month financially, they do not experience the simple luxuries of the middle classes; like changing into a second set of ‘socialising’ clothes at the end of the working day; or being able to look far into the future and plan for pensions and healthcare in retirement.

Anyway, our scanning of the menu was interrupted by a mouth-watering chow mein style dish being brought to the table next to us. My wife and I quickly agreed that this was what we wanted, so I asked one of the staff members, who were otherwise chatting those same customers, if we could have “what they were having”.

There was some quiet discussion amongst them until the man finally turned to me with a smile and explained that he was very sorry, but that these customers were actually family friends.

I smiled.

When you graft hard to make a living, and barely have chance to breathe between servicing one customers whim in one hand, one customers complaint in another, and handling state pressures with a third, there seems a sweet smug justice in being able to enjoy something that Money Just Can’t Buy.

[1545:4926]

Sacks (5 of 5): On the 3rd Sector

"For several centuries, western political thought has been dominated by two entities: the state and the market. The state is us in our collective capacity as a nation. The market is us in our individual capacity as choosers and consumers. It omits ‘third sector’ institutions like the family, the community, voluntary organizations, neighbourhood groups, and religious congregations which have in common that they are larger than the individual but smaller than the state. Their significance, and it is immense, is that they are where we learn the habits of co-operation, whether we describe it as reciprocal altruism or social capital or trust. Families and communities are not arenas of competition… they are based not on transactions of power or exchange, but on love, loyalty, faithfulness, mutuality, and a sense of shared belonging."

(from Jonathan Sacks 'A Jewish Perspective' contribution to "Making Globalisation Good", Oxford, Dunning, 2003)

[1529:4877]

Sacks (4 of 5): On Dignity And Independence

“Moral equality is the postulate that all persons have the same intrinsic worth. They are unequal in talents, in contributions to social life and in valid claims to rewards and resources. But everyone who is a person is presumptively entitled to recognition of that personhood” (Philip Selznick)

“The highest degree, exceeded by none, is that of the person who assists a poor person by providing him with a gift or a loan or by accepting him into a business partnership or by helping him find employment-in a word by putting him where he can dispense with other people’s aid. With reference to such aid it is said, ‘You shall strengthen him, be he a stranger or a settler, he shall live with you’ (Lev 25:35), which means strengthen him in such a manner that his falling into want is prevented. (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Gifts to the Poor 10:7)

(from Jonathan Sacks 'A Jewish Perspective' contribution to "Making Globalisation Good", Oxford, Dunning, 2003)

[1527:4870]

Sacks (3 of 5) : On Market Power

“In ancient times, wealth and power lay in the ownership of persons, in the form of slaves, armies, and a workforce. In the feudal era they lay in the ownership of land. In the industrial age they were the ownership of capital and the means of production. In the information age they lie in access to and deployment of intellectual capital, the ability to master information and turn it to innovative ends. The labour content of manufactured goods continues to fall. To an ever-increasing degree, multinational enterprises are outsourcing production and peripheral services and becoming, instead, owners of concepts, brands, logos, images and designs. In such an age, immense advantage accrues to those with intellectual and creative skills."

(from Jonathan Sacks 'A Jewish Perspective' contribution to "Making Globalisation Good", Oxford, Dunning, 2003)

[1517:4837]

Sacks (2 of 5) : On Responsibility

“There have been five universalist cultures in the history of the West –cultures that imposed their way of life on others through conquest, conversion… They were the empires of ancient Greece and Rome, medieval Christianity and Islam, and the European Enlightenment. Globalisation is the sixth, the first to be driven not by power or ideology but by the neutral, impersonal forces of the market.

There is a personal dimension to existence. We are not powerless in the face of fate. Every technological advance can be used for good or evil. There is nothing inevitably benign or malign in our increasing powers. It depends on the use we make of them. What we can create, we can control. What we initiate, we can direct. With every new power come control, responsibility, and exercise of the moral imagination. Global capitalism is not a juggernaut that no one can steer. It can be turned this way or that by collective consent. Our aim must be to maximize human dignity and hand on to future generations a more gracious, less capricious world."

(from Jonathan Sacks 'A Jewish Perspective' contribution to "Making Globalisation Good", Oxford, Dunning, 2003)

[1508:4820]

Sacks (1 of 5) : On Co-Existence

“Judaism is that rarest of phenomena: a particularist monotheism. The God of Abraham, according to the Hebrew bible, is the God of all humanity, but the faith of Abraham is not the faith of all humanity. So strange is this idea that it was not taken on by the two daughter monotheisms to which Judaism gave rise, Christianity and Islam. These faiths are both universalist monotheisms, holding that since there is only one God, there is only one true religion, one path to salvation, to which ideally all mankind will be converted.

To attempt to eliminate diversity (by conversion, missionary activity, or holy war) is to fail to understand the dignity of difference. Hence the great command in the Bible is ‘Love the stranger', the person who is not like yourself. Fundamentalism –the attempt to impose a single truth on a plural world- is religiously misconceived. The spiritual challenge is to recognise God’s image in one who is not in my image."

(from Jonathan Sacks 'A Jewish Perspective' contribution to "Making Globalisation Good", Oxford, Dunning, 2003)

[1502:4768]

The Ship, the Shoal & the School

James warns teaching wannabees how large ships “… are steered by a very small rudder, wherever the pilot wants to go …” [Bible:NT:James3]

My understanding of ‘what God is like’ shapes my personal faith, as well as my role in the corporate church, and also my responsibilities in wider society. This understanding, in turn, is defined partly by my own experiences but mostly by the message that I receive from my teachers.

So James’ ship metaphor is significant. It reflects the sad truth that, even so soon after Jesus’ resurrection, the early church was riddled with the desire for power by the control of the message.

Today we have different problems. The thirst to dominate and control the message is perhaps less common (though not extinct). And yet, even though we live post enlightenment and teachings by the likes of Martin Luther are broadly accepted, our dependency on being 'spoon fed' doctrine is frightening.

Maybe it is because the time-consuming commercial pressures and family responsibilities associated with living in a global capitalist society leave most of us without the time or capacity to challenge and filter sound teaching from the plethora of information bombarded at us. Or perhaps a celebrity-style standard set by charismatic speakers leaves us with unbelief that a small word or behaviour from the backbenches could yield considerable prophetic impact.

The difficulty is that, under the ship metaphor, it is impossible to have common direction in ‘our journey together’, but for a Pilot At The Helm.


But this week my thinking experienced a Copernican-style revolution. And it was by a more organic metaphor of ‘doing the journey together’.

Like when a shoal of fish becomes a school of fish.

It’s amazing. How do they do it ?

[1489:4677]

Wolf Chops

One of my favourite quotes is by Benjamin Franklin on the subject of liberty:

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch …”

I have recently been mindful of Palm Sunday and wrestling with the irony of how, in Sunday school classes, our children make ‘palm leaves’ as a craft to learn how Jesus’ entrance was as a triumphant king.

Or was it? The irony being that the Jews who laid palm branches on the road before Jesus were, quite probably, the same Jews later demanding his crucifixion.

And understandably too. Put yourself in their shoes. The hope of a prophecy fulfilled. And then, dramatically not fulfilled. Jesus rode a colt into town, yes, but he did not remove the power of the oppressor. He was clearly not there to bring peace. He toppled their micro-markets and their clever tax avoidance schemes. To replace it with what?

Our own upcoming national elections remind me that, along with hope for a new leader comes hope for a new military strategy, hope for a new financial system, hope for a better system of justice, for a better job or role, for a better way of life for me and my family. For the oppressed, hope for Wolf Chops.

But this is not the Kingdom of God that Jesus brought near as I understand it.

It is not about the Acquisition Of Power, whether for good or otherwise.

In terms of a strategy for service, Jesus teaching is exhausting. In terms of finance, it will leave you penniless. In terms of a social role, it will make you an alien and in terms of military progress it will (to cite Chris Martin’s genius lyrics) leave you sweeping the streets you used to own.

[1454:4544]