Changing the World?

Law school hasn’t been easy and I don’t think it will get any easier. Coming from someone who grew up in a comfortable well-off Chinese Christian family in West Vancouver, who has never worked for a day in his life and spends most of his time in the church, coming to face the reality of this world is extremely difficult. Everyday on the news, in our classes, in our newspapers, we are faced with genocides, starvation, slavery, aftermaths of natural disasters, economic disasters, and debates over humanitarian causes. Being a student of law means the studying of law and it’s interplay with politics and policies, whether on a national or international level, is inevitable. One, cannot help, but to ask the question: As ppl called by God to bring the realization of the “kingdom of God” that is ever so present, to the people of this world, what can we do to reflect our love for mercy, our strive for justice, and the gift of a relationship with God that He has so graciously and lovingly bestowed upon us on the cross.

What makes us good servants of God -- someone whose presence, along side God’s, can maximize their influence and impact on the very world that God invites us to change? Does it come with a thorough understanding of God – whether it be a substantial knowledge of the Bible attained by years and years of studying, or a divine understanding of God and His ways derived from a mind attuned to the very nature of God? Or is it a heart and mind full of faith – believing that God will lead and guide every single one of your steps (if not the small ones, the big ones) whether it be through divine inspiration or circumstances, and through that, ultimately changing the world simply because you’re walking with a God who longs to and works to change the world in the process? Or is it someone who has a acquired and attained the depth, the caliber, and the understanding of the world, and having built and developed skills to maneuver and manipulate the system, affect the very policies that run our nations and international relations? Or is it simply with love? One random act of love, one step at a time? Do we live life with the general guidelines of righteousness, wisdom, and love, given to us through the writings of our fathers in faith? Does it help the child bondage by the very fact that they are sex slaves? How does it bring hope to those that are watching their sisters and mothers getting raped, and their fathers and brothers mutilated and tortured by the very same ppl? What good is it, to those starving to death?

Answers? Anyone?

The Kingdom Of God: How does that fit in?

In the gospel of John, we see the evangelist uses of dualailty quite often with light and dark, good and evil, etc etc etc. You get the idea.

But have we taken this dualism too far?

Is the kingdom of God a left or a right?
is the kingdom of God liberal or conservative?
is the kingdom of God modern or postmodern?
Is the kingdom of God emerging or not emerging?
Is the kingdom of God catholic or protestant? MB or Baptist?

I was talking with this sunday school lady the other day at Dan's church, and Wing and I started to debate the whole issue of the Kingdom of God and her answer was," The Kingdom of God is the love of God in the hearts of men."

I have many more thoughts, but I'll just leave it here and let the discussion begin.

Too Generous of an Orthodoxy?

I just read this from "Generous Orthodoxy" and I was wondering what your thoughts are on it and what your thoughts are on my thoughts

"In this light, although I don't hope all Buddhists will become (cultural) Christians, I do hope all who feel called will become Buddhist followers of Jesus; I believe they should be given that opportunity and invitation. I don't hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus." p.297

I've only quoted one paragraph from a chapter on "Incarnational" so please feel free to read it because it is most likely out of context if you just read this.

Anyways, before you guys turn me into the church heretic, here are my thoughts:

This passage brought up a few older thoughts of mine which I shall mention as we go along but I find myself agreeing with this paragraph to some and most degrees. The first thought of mine it brought up was from a sermon. In the middle, the pastor mentioned that there are a number of Jews in Israel that acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. When the person who met them asked if they consider themselves as 'Christians', they said no and said that they were Messianic Jews or Jews who had found their Messiah. With this in mind, I don't think all people should have to convert to Christianity AND abandon everything they use to know.

My thought on this came from me thinking about why I like studying religious studies in the bathroom yesterday before class. I find studying religions interesting because you can see how people live when they consider something to be true. Some questions for myself that arose from this included: What if Christianity was false, would I still have all these changes in my life? What if say, Islam was true, would I convert? What if I saw changes in a Buddhist's life that I did not see in my own life, would I see what they have that I do not have?

These made me think of if I converted, would I toss everything that was good about Christianity out the window. Say if I became a Muslim, would I use similar techniques in prayer as I did in Christianity. I think it has to do with human nature. When we get older, it's harder to change habits and it's like uprooting a tree and planting it somewhere else, it becomes increasingly difficult as the tree gets older.

My final thought comes from C.S. Lewis who said religions are like doing math. There is only one correct answer but some are closer to the right answer than others. Maybe it is not wise to throw out everything Buddhists know about meditation and abstaining from worldly things. Maybe we should take a page from the Muslim playbook about praying often (as they often pray more in a day than we do).

So if you feel like it, read the chapter, it's pretty good (I haven't finished it though, I just wanted to write this down before I forgot). Builds on what Bell says in Velvet Elvis about how all people are saved but how they have not all yet accpeted salvation.

One final thing I forgot to write down is a quote from Bono.

"And I learned that religion is often the enemy of God, actually. And religion is this sort of -- religion is the artifice, you know, the building, after God has left it sometimes, like Elvis has left the building. You hold onto religion, you know, rules, regulations, traditions. I think what God is interested in is people's hearts, and that's hard enough."

Perhaps religions as we know them are more man made than we want to acknowledge and maybe we don't need everyone to be Christian in the sense of doctrines and church buildings but maybe just to believe in Christ and to be saved. And perhaps just holding onto the two greatest commandments, they won't need all the unneccessary junk we have (i'll let you decide what you think junk is as we all have a different opinion). But let us not wipe out complete cultures without sensitivity and replace it with the North American version of Christianity that may not work in their communities. (not everyone has bread and wine to spare ;-) )

But my thoughts end here and they are incomplete. Please continue with them.

Discussion Topic: Restoration

I Was sitting with Andrew and Wing today at the SUB during my break and somehow the word "restoration" came out. I'm sure each of you have your own definitions and feelings towards the importance and where it stands in your journey.

Boxing Day Gift: Continuing on with TULIP 2

I want to pick up with Unconditional election since I didn't elaborate enough from last time.
Unconditional election for me also means that there is technically no human obligation for us to fulfill in order to receive salvation from God. Hence the term "saved by grace, not through works". Hence this is extremely important or else we cheapen grace. What is mercy without grace, what is salvation without grace? What is Jesus without Grace? It is through Jesus that we are 'elected'.

L = Limited Atonement

Why is atonement limited? As stated Jesus came to save all people, he died for all people. So how come there are still people that are forgiven in Hell and in Heaven? I still have more questions to ponder about this point:

Did Christ die for all the sins of some men?
Did Christ die for all the sins of all men?

Limited Atonement also concerns into the issue of Free-will, like the whole issue we had during the discussion of 1 Peter back in October.


I = Irresistible Grace
I think I associate myself closely to the general given definition of irresistible grace. The basic definition of this doctrine is that God is sovereign and can overcome all resistance when he wills. Specifically saying, this irresistible grace is already given, we can't really reject it. God has given it to us. So God supreme takes away our what resistance we have to denying his grace. It might sound like God is forcing people to believe, but in some way, I believe free will still exists in people selecting God or not.

P = Perseverance of the saints
Once saved, always saved. I should make a correction to that. Once correctly saved (meaning they placed their faith in Jesus correctly) they would not fall away. I'm actually quite hesitant about this point, although 2 months ago I would affirm it so convincingly. Questions like: Who justify as being correct and believing in the right things?

I seriously have a disliking of doctrine. For one, it takes the best news ever of the gospel and add so much baggage to it. TULIP in this example just highlighted somethings I am questioning, yet some parts I do continue to affirm because they seem appropriate.

I was talking to my dad the other day about some of these points, and to the core he said ," You're just questioning the love of God and how come there seems to say that it is impossible to have a loving God and a just God." I agreed. He pointed out, "look at our relationship, as father and son, we are just like that to God, children. He loves us as our parent, he disciplines like our parent, yet his love doesn't change. However, God himself as a father would also give people who refuse him their choice as well.

Is really hard to describe that kind of relationship with our languages. I think that's why is hard to put into words and hence we get these wordy doctrines. God's relationship with us is described as a Groom to his bride, as a father to his children. I mean, go to your parents, and ask them why they love you. I don't think they could explain it themselves above the point that "you are my child". Or how about one day turning to your spouse asking, "why do you love me?", hopefully they won't just say because "you're beautiful", or "smart", or "you're nice"but because true love is really indescribable. (this is pretty awkward coming from a family studies guy).

To be honest, I have no desire to understand all this doctrine. I believe I've been called to love God and love my neighbour, to simply demonstrate and then to testify.

Sweet, I'm done with the TULIP thing...

Oh and please welcome Sarah to our blog!

Boxing Day Gift: Continuing on with TULIP

Time to answer the long begotten question that Kevin left me in regard s to what I believe about TULIP back in October. Since now I have the time (and Kev reminded me, is time to continue on this conversation, shall we begin?)I'm not a big fan of doctrine nor Calvinism, but here we are: (The following are not in any order)

T = Total Depravity
We need God, we have all have the tendency to sin. I'm a bit hesitant on the whole idea of being "born into sin" as Augustine would argue. Yet my mind is torn on babies and kids who die without knowing better, before they know right from wrong. So they die and go spend eternity in the depths? God is too loving. I know some would argue that God will judge which I will have no doubt about. Yet it is a mystery is it not? But if we deny this point, the whole importance of the virgin birth of Jesus will come into jeopardy. (Man passing down sin to their children, so if sin does not begin at birth, then Jesus didn't need the virgin birth, and vice versa, Jesus was not a sinner if born not from a virgin, some hard things to think about).

I hold on Total Depravity in my definition as that we all need God, and we all have the tendency to sin and rebel against God. Yet, the questions still linger...

U = Unconditional Election
God has chosen to save everyone. I believe that salvation is for everyone. God came to save everyone. Heaven is full of forgiven people. Hell is full of forgiven people. Jesus came to save all.

Ok...I think that's enough for one day...my brain doesn't work too well during the holidays...haha

But let's discuss these 2 points first.
Brothers & Sisters, fire away....

Restoration

It's been a long while since anyone has posted anything on our conversational blog, since I'm still awake, I decide maybe I should write something for the Christmas holidays...

I titled this part of my thought as restoration after Gary's insight to Velvet Elvis, because within me, I believe we could do so much, to elaborate on how we are to try to restore this world to a place God intended it to be.

Just recently, the stats for one of the most elusive shopping days in the United States coded name 'black friday', in which is the day after thanksgiving kicking off the Christmas shopping season. The figures that came in on how much people did spend on that day was a close estimate of around 27.8 BILLION dollars USD.

Think about that...27.8 BILLION Dollars USD in one day of shopping

I hate throwing out stats...but here are some I think we need to truly consider:

It will cost us 1.74 Billion to give safe drinking water, sanitation and hygene education to the whole world (WaterAid)
It will cost about 13 Billion dollars more to what the UN is currently giving each year to provide basic health, nutrition needs of the world's poorest people. (Bread for the World)

Think about that.

14.74 Billion dollars a year can give the world its basic needs of surival of safe food, water and sanitation...just basic needs

Do you feel pain when you read these stats?
Cause I think Jesus does

How do we help in trying to restore the world?
I guess here's a start...doing the basic things Jesus commands us to do:
Feed the hungry
Taking care of the sick, widowed, and orphaned

I'll be the first one to admit, when ever those TV commericals come on about helping the poor, the needy, in places like Afica or Burma, I would change the channel. Cause I want to be ignorant of what is real around me. If I don't see it, it is not happening, is not affecting me.

How are we to 'T'Shuva' to the way God made us to be?

Something for all of us to think about during this holiday.