People of the book

This is what Christians are: people of the book, the Bible, for slow learners.
However, you go into one of our meeting places: an auditorium in a church building, and what do you see?
No book anything!

In older church auditoriums I've seen plaques showing the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, but nothing similar in modern buildings.

It is even rare to see a Bible passage on a church bulletin. Although I've seen such recently, as above.

However, here's an opportunity for a revival of the old Christian art of illuminating (manuscripts). Look, for example at the Lindisfarne Gospels or the Book of Kells (a page from which to the left).

I wonder why we don't have displayed on the walls of our buildings lots of illuminations (in modern form) of verses and short passages from the Bible, or even classic Christian prayers, creeds, the confession, etc?

Embarrased? Didn't think of it? Couldn't be bothered?

They would give the opportunity for people to contemplate scripture in quiet moments in the service, or before or after. Particularly auditoriums that are open for 'quiet reflection' could have these to aid that quiet reflection.

Religion is for...

Quote from Pfeffer's Leadership BS, p. 40:

...religion seeks to provide believers a sense of personal control, a belief in the fairness fo the world, and a feeling of meaning and purpose...

So we know that Pfeffer has no real contact with Christianity; I don't know about other religions.

• sense of personal control? No: sense of being able to bring benefit and growth out of the visissitudes of life through faith in Christ and his indwelling Spirit.
• fairness of the world? No: understanding of the complete unfairness of the world and as actors in the world are empowered to think and act contrary to this...through faith in Christ and his indwelling Spirit.
• feeling of meaning and purpose? No: understanding of why our actions, thoughts and beliefs are meaningful, and that purpose is the reality of human affairs, becuase God created a real and significant and meaningful creation.

He goes on to quote Freud (this is the equivalent of quoting an alchemist for metalurgical advice)

These [religious ideas]...are not the residue of experience or the final results of reflection; they are illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most insistent wishes of mankind; the secret of their strength is the strength of these wishes. We know already that the terrifying effect of...helplessness aroused the need for protection...Thus the benevolent rule of divine providence [or a benevolent leader] allays our anxiety in face of life's dangers, the establishment of a moral world order ensures the fulfilment of the demans of justice, which within human culture have so often remained unfulfilled.

I wonder what experiments Freud did to establish this pack of pooh tickets?

Again, Christianity is not in this, nor would be Judaism, noting that is Freud's own religious context.

Serious Christians have notably taken on vast risk, danger and frustration in pursuit of their mission (I think of missionaries, ministry entrepreneurs and even people who in ages past sought a monastic life and today a paid ministry). Nor do we seek a 'moral world order' we live knowing that this side of the revealing of Christ there will be none and our mission is to live out the new Creation that the Spirit equips us for.

The church market

Churches, some churches, see themselves as above the market.

Should they?

The doctrine seems to be that one must stick with one church for as long as one lives in a particular location. How big the location, I don't know. I also don't know why would one stick with a failing, heterodox, wrong or ineffective church. Why reward incompetence with attendance. One family cannot solve generational problems that dog a church. If one finds that a non-liturgical service is at the end more folk religion than Christianity, more insulting, or humiliating, than worshiping of our creator and redeemer with a liturgy, why stay?

At last count I've been an active member, over time, of 19 churches, and have explored another two or three. Thus, reasonable experience of about 22 churches.

During that time I relocated my home 5 times, but other reasons were theological, theo-social (that is the church life did not reflect the church life that I would expect from the scriptures), social (ran out of single girls to chase), utilitarian (service times wrong for family needs, social environment wrong for family needs) and performance (folk-religion, social gospel, naffness).

If people stay in churches that are not compatible with other objectives, like congenial social environment for one's family, theological rectitude, dignity of meetings, wise use of resources, paid servants of the church behaving as servants, then leaving is the right thing to do. Failing churches should fail if one cannot rescue them, if they will imperil the spiritual or social development of one's family, or of they leave the theological rails and will not contemplate reform.

The 'market' is a wonderful discipline in these cases, and it should be left to do its work.

Should one stay in a church that Yeshua would spit out of his mouth?

Holiday from church

Being holiday time I took holidays from church, and went to another church. I'm trying to find one where they don't start with two songs/hymns sung consecutively. I think I'll be out of luck on that one these days!

But!

The church I went to did feature decent Bible readings (note, plural) from both First and Last Testaments, and decent place for prayer: after first songs we said the confession, then the lector gave an extemporaneous prayer, then we ended in the Lord's Prayer. Nice. A well thought out prayer at collection as well.

I was less impressed by the speaker's prayer. He was 'channeling' God!

I also liked the church bulletin. The list of prayer suggestions was balanced and intelligent and a passage from the Psalms was printed.

Come to think of it, why don't we have passages from the Bible displayed around our church buildings? Are we being neglectful of an opportunity?

Coordinate this with encouraging people to memorise scripture, we could have a hundred or so passages that we rotate every couple of months in the foyer, on the auditorium walls...could be very good.

A visit

I visited my old church, St James, Turramurra, Christmas eve evening service. 7pm. A 'traditional' time, but it works. Why do the cool modern churches have late afternoon services at 5, 5:30, 6....no darn good. 7  works.

A nice tight friendly dignfied and completely full service. Good music well performed, all went so well...and very musically creative work by the drummer sycopating merrily with the bass and floor tom. I loved it.

Both the sermon and remarks by the rector were good for the occasion: short, to the point, adult and mature (that is, not corny, in-language, or hectoring).

Ran into some old friends, lots of familiar faces, now aged by many years, of course (me too, I guess).

A nice cap to the day.

Aboriginal Justice

The lector at church this morning bemoaned the 'social' justice implications of the shorter life expectancy of aboriginal Australians than non-aboriginals.
Here's the reason, then. Nothing to do with justice, social or otherwise (or maybe it is...do silly things, justice will repay with poor outcomes, automatically).

(In memorium, Bill Leak).

But its not just Bill. Jacinta Price is on record for pointing to Aboriginal culture as the root of the appalling violence faced by aboriginal women and children.
Other problems of a self-inflicted nature include: poor diet (thus diabetes and early death), excessive alcohol (FAS, abused children, early death), illicit drug use (early death), lack of personal responsiblity, agency and engagement (mental health risks) leading to above habits and...you got it...early death.

All that on top of the nepotistic mis-management of the $50 billion of public money given to Aboriginal support over a few decades. Mostly wasted!

Happy to help, but as Jacinta points out, we know which court the ball is in.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda?

I read a blog post on a question: "why did not God create a world with free being that could not sin?"

The answer entertained the question when it should not have, in my view, with all sorts of deterministed/Calvinistic contortions of which none had biblical warrant.

But here's the mistake in dealing with this question. It misunderstands sin as something out there and not in the choices people make.

So here's how the question in expanded form reads:

Could God have made a world where his image-bearing creatures were not his image-bearing creatures?

OR

Could God have made a world where creatures were free to turn from fellowship with him but not free to turn from fellowship with him?

As  you can see the average smarty who asks this hypothetical question is dim on sin.

Then there's the problem of all hypotheticals. The include so many implicit assumptions as to be not worth the air they are breathed in. They are about another world, but do not fully describe that other world to make sense of it. Just varying one existential component of the world changes the world.