Baggas' Blog

I just wanted to make a few random observations while I’m reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. This is a powerful book written by Boenhoeffer in the 1930′s in Nazi Germany. He was later matyred by the Gestapo in 1945 after being part of a failed plot to assassinate Hitler.

Anyway I’d reading this book slowly because it’s so rich (and also because I’m reading three other books and am also theoretically supposed to be studying…). For my my own memory as much as anything, I just want to list some key points and quotes here. I may or may not continue to post more on this but here’s a few quotes and insights from the first chapter, on Community :

Firstly, we should not take Christian community and fellowship for granted – it is actually a great blessing and privilege.

“it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God’s Word and sacrament.” (p18)

“The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God.”  (p20)

“What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely of what Christ has done to both of us.”   (p25)

“Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily.” (p28 – this page contains some of the context if you are interested)

“Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Christ Jesus? Thus, the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together – the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.” (p28)

In this passage Bonhoeffer counsels us against entering Christian community with our own “visionary ideals” of what we wish that community to be like. He welcomes the inevitable disillunsionment we will have with others and with ourselves and sees dealing with this disillusionment as a necessary step towards authentic Christian community which is bound together only and entirely by Christ, rather than any extraneous human concerns….
“The more genuine and deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.” (p26)

Always a sucker for a good quiz, Christianity Today have put up a Church & Politics Quiz. Many of the questions are very specifically geared at the USA and are fortunately issues we don’t seem to ever encounter here in Australia (like having national flags in the sanctuary and the notion of our nation as being somehow “chosen by God”) but it’s still very interesting and worth doing.

For the record my scores were :

• Part 1 Politically Engaged or Disengaged : 29 – You scored between 10 and 32, which indicates that you believe the church ought to be Politically Engaged
• Part 2 Chaplain or Prophet : 27 – You scored between 10 and 32, which indicates that you believe the church should take a prophetic posture toward the government.

This all puts me close to the centre of their grid, but within the “Quiet Critic” quadrant, which I suppose is fair enough. Not the most precise quiz of this sort I’ve ever seen but still worth a look. The Out of Ur blog is hosting a discussion of people’s results but there’s not much there as yet.

The Global Ambition of Rick Warren

this is a great article from Time about Saddleback megachurch pastor Rick Warren, author of the Purpose Driven Life. Warren cops a bit of flack on the Christian web, both from conservative dogmatic types and from some emerging types, for being a bit of a lightweight, too compromising, not conservative enough, not liberal enough etc etc – but perhaps this is part of his success. He has managed to present the gospel message in a way that connects with the average person in a real and meaningful way. Although a very smart guy, he keeps his message simple and direct so as not to overwhelm people.

So I’ve always kinda liked Warren, but his story gets better. Not content with having a massive church and being a best selling writer (who gives away most of his earnings though), Warren is now moving more into the political sphere. Fortunately he’s not just becoming yet another of the divisive, condemnatory Religious Right – rather he seeks a more conciliatory, unifying approach to Christian involvement in politics. He seems to see the role of the church as being a force for good, making positive changes in the world, rather than just a defense against bad.

He says he is more interested in questions that he feels are “uniting,” such as “poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights”

Interesting article about Warren, his global PEACE plan for Christian mobilization, and his upcoming political forum where he will have both Obama and McCain together for one of the first times this campaign.

Getting a bit sick of all the negative press coverage surrounding the Catholic World Youth Day festival in Sydney at the moment. The condescending and patronizing tone they are taking, giving the impression that all the people attending are some sort of simpletons, and that the Church is full of perverts. The vast majority of these people are sincere and devoted Christians, and indeed the vast majority of Catholic priests are decent men who have given their lives to serve God – so it is unfair for the media to focus so much on the sins of a tiny minority and tarnish the reputation of the bulk of the church.

Hundreds of thousands of young Christians gathered in one place surely cannot be a bad thing. I may not necessarily agree with all the beliefs of the Catholic church but I find such a huge celebration of faith tremendously inspiring. Such a huge gathering could never happen in the Protestant church. I understand the reasons for the Reformation, however it’s a shame that they couldn’t have worked it all out without breaking up the Church in the process – Unity sure was a big thing to sacrifice… For the rest of us non-Catholic Christians, I guess we’ll have to wait until Jesus returns before we can join such an immense gathering for worship. The closest thing to this in Australian Protestantism at least would be the Hillsong Conference (which was in Sydney last week – big month for religion in Sydney) – one of these years I will get around to going along. In the meantime, I admire and applaud what the Catholics are doing with their World Youth Days and give posthumous kudos to Pope John Paul II for coming up with the idea

You know the old taboos that used to abound in Christian circles (and still do in some ultra-conservative or fundamentalist groups) – like no playing cards, no dancing, no alcohol at all, no going to movies etc? Well according to the following quote from a book I’m currently reading, this sort of thing might be directly attributable to the excesses of the American Wild West! Who would have thought that all that stuff we know so well from old cowboy movies could have such a big impact on the 20th century church?

The origins of the dos and don’ts in American evangelicalism go back to the revivals in the frontier days of the nineteenth century. All of us have seen the western movies and the depiction of life in the western spread of the American frontier. The center of town is a bar with it’s heavy drinking, gambling, card playing, and lewd women. As Christianity spread west in the revival tradition, it was imperative for Christians to distinguish themselves from the crude, boisterous, drinking, smoking, dancing, card playing, gambling, and lascivious crowd. Christians, therefore, swung the pendulum to the other side and insisted on a cleaned-up life as a demonstration of a converted life and a spiritual walk with God. In time these outward expressions of a cleaned-up life turned from sin became the external marks of the spiritual life.  While abstinence from wordly practices was a genuine choice of an original generation of Christians, the dos and don’ts became for the second and especially the third generation of Christians an imposed structure of spirituality. The inner convictions that generated the original choice to refrain from wordly practices was lost. In it’s place now stood a legalistic ethos, that is, restraint from wordly practice became the sum and the substance of the spiritual life.

Unfortunately these dos and don’ts oten get in the way of seeing the real ethics of Christian spirituality such as the growth of character, the concern for justice, and the care of the poor and needy.

~ Robert E. Webber – “The Divine Embrace” p81

Doctor Who to boost church popularity – yet another news story about how a church is trying to tap into modern culture to boost flagging attendance among the ‘youth’ – these stories always make the church leaders seem like out of touch old fuddy duddies sitting in a room somewhere.

Interesting choice though – I haven’t seen much of the recent Dr Who (although I used to love it as a kid) but it strikes me as being one of the least spiritual/theistic sci-fi series out there. Apparently (according to the comments) Richard Dawkins will be featuring on the series soon so that says a lot. Better to use Star Wars, or Star Trek, or the new Battlestar Galactica  – which is deeply infused with religious elements, and is a brilliantly conceived and produced show.

Out of Ur : The Passion of the Heist

Lot of buzz at the moment about the newly released video game Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV), which looks like it will be the biggest game release of all time, and probably one of the biggest media releases ever, with sales in the same league as the takings of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. And the reviews of the game have been extremely positive, some even going as far as to compare it favourably with The Godfather. And I’m not immune to this – I must confess I’ve been tempted to get the game for my Xbox360 and give it a go myself, despite never being much of a hard core gamer and definitely not having the time to do so.

Now those two words “confess” and “tempted” should be read in a biblical sense, well at least if according to this article and some of the comments. In it, the writer confesses his previous forays into the GTA series playing the GTA : Vice City game :

I had no problem preaching on Sunday morning (in real life, of course) and selling drugs from the back of an ice cream truck (in Vice City, of course) on Sunday afternoon.

It’s all reasonably tongue in cheek but he does try and raise the question seriously as to whether playing these sort of games is an appropriate activity for Christians, and whether the church should respond in some kind of fashion similar to the response to the Da Vinci Code or Harry Potter, both of which have spawned a panopoly of Christian books (in my opinion a massively overblown response). He also raises the question as to whether all this virtual killing and vice is a sin in the same way that Jesus equates having anger or lust in your mind with the real thing in Matthew 5:21-30.

Interesting questions, which I guess parallel in some ways the broader argument in society about whether violent video games lead to violent behaviours (an argument I’ve never found especially convincing). The replies in the blog comments are also quite fascinating. Several commenters conclude that playing games like this is most definitely a serious sin, and one even suggests we should pray for those who play GTA IV. But another commenter makes a cutting remark about Christians making a fuss about a violent video game whilst being unconcerned about a war in Iraq which has killed over 500, 000 real people (particularly aimed at the American church I think).

As for me I’m still in limbo on the subject. Is this sort of thing a sin? maybe. But I don’t think killing pretend people in a computer game is a direct equivalent of Jesus’ comments in Matthew 5 :

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgement. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement. ” Matt 5:21-22 (ESV) [+/-]ERROR: Please add &action=doPassageQuery or &doReadingPlanQuery or &getQueryInfo or &getVerse or &getDailyVerse or &doQuery or &getReadingPlanInfo to your request URL.
.

Maybe this partly applies here, but I think the main issue in Jesus’ comment here is the breaking of relationships – being angry with your brother (whether a literal family member or a fellow Christian or simply a fellow human). Pretending to kill a purely fictional character in a computer game is much less serious – actually if that’s a sin then deriving pleasure from a violent movie or book is possibly worse, since these have depictions of actual people rather than virtual ones.

I’d be interested to hear what others think. But in my mind at least the jury is still out. Will I play the game? maybe… But I’ll confess it’s not a feeling of guilt or conscience stopping me, but simply my lack of time and having too many other priorities.