by emma | Feb 22, 2007 | Africa, Books
I’m still reading Shake Hands With The Devil… haven’t had a lot of time to read lately as I’ve been so busy, plus this is a fairly heavy book to read… heartbreaking is more the word maybe. I was reading a passage from it this morning, when I came across these words, which cut me to the bone…
“As to the value of the 800,000 lives in the balance books of Washington, during those last weeks we received a shocking call from an American staffer, whose name I have long forgotten. He was engaged in some sort of planning exercise and wanted to know how many Rwandans had died, how many were refugees, and how many were internally displaced. He told me that his estimates indicated that it would take the deaths of 85,000 Rwandans to justify the risking of the life of one American soldier.“
I don’t even know what to say in response to that. I’m not American, and I don’t want to pick on America, because the UK and other developed nations were no better… but what???! Why should an American (or British or Irish or whatever) life be worth more than an African life? We have a lot to answer for. I have a lot to answer for. In what ways do we still perpetuate this idea that African lives are worth less than ours? How do we overcome it?
by emma | Jan 19, 2007 | Books, Faith
I recently read the first chapter of Rob Bell’s forthcoming book Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality. If you’ve been around here long enough you’ll know I have a lot of respect for the guy, and that I got to meet him back in November.
Here’s a brief quote I liked…
“Moments when all of the ways that we divide ourselves and rank each other and convince ourselves of how different, better, and unalike we are disappear, and we are faced with the fact that first and foremost, we are humans. In this together. And not that much different from each other.
Jew. Gentile.
Marine. Iraqi.
Orphan. Family.
Pastor. Prostitute.
We could be them.“
We could be them. I’m stuck by how easy it is to lose sight of people’s humanity, their dignity. I walk down the street here and every day I pass numerous Big Issue sellers… I don’t do enough to help these guys and it’s so hard to find a balance of knowing how to help. I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that the tension is so important. It’s not insignificant, but rather the tension is a vehicle for God to continually be prompting me to keep my heart soft, to remember that I could be them. There are no hard and fast rules that I can follow… “Give this amount…” etc. It is subjective, changing, and progressive… there are no rules… I could be them.
Get the first chapter of Sex God here.
SYNOPSIS:
God and sex go together. You can’t separate the two, says Rob Bell, because this physical world is intimately linked to deeper spiritual realities. And so, in order to make sense of sexuality, at some point you have to talk about God. With beauty and unusual insight, Sex God explores this connection.
by emma | Jan 15, 2007 | Books
Over the Christmas period I read The Jesus of Suburbia by Mike Erre. It was an interesting read, and the more I think of it, quite appropriate considering the Soliton Sessions theme of ‘Dangerous Living‘ next month. (Jesus of Suburbia is subtitled ‘Have We Tamed the Son of God to Fit our Lifestyle?’) Here are some of my thoughts from it:
“Daniel waited three weeks for an answer to his prayer because the angel sent to answer Daniel was opposed for that time by demonic forces.” (From Daniel 10:12-13)
Maybe sometimes unanswered prayer isn’t that God is holding off, but that the devil is attacking harder? (Not always I know, as Mike notes, but sometimes we under-spiritualise stuff) Puts a new twist on the verse ‘God is not slow to act as some understand…’
“If somebody asks me, “Hey, how’s your walk with Jesus?” I immediately want to tell them about my prayer life and quiet times, but I don’t want to talk about my driving or how I talk with my wife when I’m angry with her.”
Our whole lives are influenced by who we follow. Jesus is just as interested in my driving and how I react to my little brother as he is in my prayers. Makes me think of the concept of shalom – the presence of wholeness, completeness. Jesus is interested in it all.
“The critical issue today is dullness. We have lost our astonishment. The Good News is no longer life changing. It is life enhancing.”
(M. Dawn)
How true this is. Oh that we would see a glimpse of God as he really is. Oh that our hearts would be awakened to the glory of a God who is so beyond our comprehension, so beyond our imagination, so beyond… just beyond. Beyond us.
Mike Erre also made this comment:
“One of the most fundamental mistakes many commentators make in understanding the book of Revelation is forgetting that the book would have made sense to it’s original audience. Its symbols, imagery, and hundreds of Old Testament illustrations would have been readily understood by Revelation’s first-century hearers.”
Can anyone shed some light on this for me, is it true? Would the imagery in Revelation have been so easily understood in their culture?
by emma | Jan 13, 2007 | Books, Words
So Pete Rollins book How (Not) To Speak Of God arrived in the post this morning from Amazon. Pete is one the guys who will be speaking/facilating/conversing/being at the Celtic Soliton Sessions in Feb, and I was keen to read the book before the conference. It’s a pretty deep, heavy book I have to admit!
In the introduction Pete gives a really useful definition (the best I’ve heard so far) on what the emerging movement actually is…
“The term ’emerging Church’ has also been used to describe this diverse community. While it is a useful term, the word ‘Church’ can be quite misleading, since the movement is not so much developing a distinct religious tradition within Christianity, but rather is re-introducing ideas that help to both revitalize already existing religious traditions and build bridges between them. It is not then a revolution that is in the process of creating something new but rather one that is returning to something very old.”
I also very much like this quote from the first chapter:
“The only significant difference between the aesthetic idol and the conceptual idol lies in the fact that the former reduces God to a physical object and the latter reduces God to an intellectual object.”
It helps me to understand why God would say in Ecclesiastes that “much study wearies the body”… theology and thinking and discussing are important… but living it out is more important! Is it possible that all our theorising about God could actually just be trying to put him into a box, one into which he does not fit?
OTHERS:
Andrew Jones, Jonny Baker, Scot McKnight, Adele
by emma | Dec 9, 2006 | Books, Faith
I finished off Shane Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution today. Boy does that guy challenge me.
Will post some thoughts later when I process them a bit more, but until then heres a few brief quotes to mull over:
“How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?”
“I saw a clearer glimpse of Jesus in this leper’s eyes than any stained-glass window could ever give me.”
“Following Jesus is simple, but not easy. Love until it hurts, and then love more.” (Mother Teresa)
“If you have two coats, one of them belongs to the poor.” (Dorothy Day)
“When we look through the eyes of Jesus, we see new things in people. In the murderers, we see our own hatred. In the addicts, we see our own addictions. In the saints, we see our own holiness.”
“We live in an age in which people, when they hear the word Christian, are much more likely to think of people who hate gays than people who love outcasts.”
“If we are crazy, then it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy.”
by emma | Nov 16, 2006 | Books
Time for a review…
For me, there are two key, stand-out ideas/thoughts that I am meditating on currently.
“But maybe faith has less to do with gaining knowledge and more to do with causing wonder. Maybe a relationship with God doesn’t simplify our lives. Maybe it complicates our lives in ways that they should be complicated.”
It’s true. Being a Christian is not going to make your life easier. If you got sold that lie when you gave Jesus control, I’m sorry, but it’s just not true. The call of Jesus goes the other direction – its about making our lives more difficult, more complicated. It’s choosing to give ourselves away, be more generous and disciplined and loving and free. More ourselves. And people are complicated. That’s why when our churches grow, it gets more complicated.
So what if instead of fretting about how complicated something is, we simply allow ourselves to wonder about the greatness of a God who has it all under control?
“One of our greatest spiritual shortcomings is low expectations. We don’t expect much from God because we aren’t asking for much.”
This one… wow this one is really impacting me. I’ve kind of made a pact with God that I don’t want to pray anything I don’t mean anymore. I find it so easy to just pray and waffle and not even really know what I’ve said at the end. I don’t want that. I want to know his power in my prayers. I want to pray expectantly… waiting and believing God will answer.
No more lip-service. Chase your lions!
More:
Buy the book.
Read Mark’s blog.
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