The Test

It is a truism that all people are tested. However, not all tests are alike.

Here are two true stories.

Wendy was happily married with a loving spouse and two children. She had good qualifications and a job where they were well used and in which prospects were good. One son was expelled from school and has persistent problems in social adjustment. Another developed a life-threatening illness that was not covered by medical insurance. Wendy’s spouse died suddenly at a young age and she was forced to move countries. Wendy could not find suitable work and ekes out a living doing a job far below her qualifications and outside her key abilities. She is financially stretched in middle adulthood. She has remarried but the new family is not yet happy.

Wendy has the test of deprivation. This is a Job-like pattern, where all was taken from her and her confidence in God was tested to the limit.

Darren had a spouse who developed cancer but recovered. After some difficulties, their adult kids are on the feet. His qualifications are mid-ranking but he gained employment above his level and in a post which gave him great significance. He lost this job but another good post came knocking at his door and he had a seamless transition. He is financially secure and could retire anytime. Darren is well liked and has a wide circle of friends and contacts.

Darren has the test of success. He is like King David who won battles, gained popularity and had women falling at his feet. His test was to stay loyal to God amidst these blessings and to walk in humble obedience before God.

Deprivation or success – which is the greater test?

GE 2011 Singapore

Singapore soon has a general election that is attracting unparalleled interest. Candidates, platforms, alternatives and rallies abound. Normally apathetic people are going to rallies and following the new media for their fresh and diverse perspectives.

How do we follow Christ in the polling booth?

The following Bible study uses the familiar rubric of creation / fall / redemption to give some starter questions on this issue. The study and questions arise from the conviction that there is not a singular Christian way to vote, but what matters is whether our motivations and reasons for voting the way we do reflect our confession of Christ as saving Lord.


CREATION

1. Where do institutions of government come from? How should that shape our attitudes and actions? (Rom 13:1-7; 1 Titus 3:1; 1 Pet 2:13-17)

2. What boundaries are there to Christian submission to governments (Acts 4:19)? In what ways does that reflect the first commandment? (Exod 20:3) What does that mean in Singapore today – where should our boundaries be? Are we adept at separating our Christian and Singaporean identities?

FALL

3. What sad effects of the Fall do the following passage track with respect to politics? (Deut 17:14-20; 1 Sam 8:10-17) How do we see that playing out in local politics?

4. It is often said that the US constitution has a Biblical sense of human sinfulness in a careful separation and balancing of powers. In what ways can we help maximise this separation and balance in Singapore - given a single-chamber parliament and local political realities?


REDEMPTION

5. How should our identity as followers of Jesus shape the way we vote tomorrow? How is this different to the way others may decide how to vote?

6. How do we love both God and our neighbour in the polling booth (Matt 22:34-39)?

7. How, specifically, should we pray for politics generally and specifically for local Christians in politics (1 Tim 2:1-2)?

8. 'If Christ is not Lord over our all, he is not really our Lord at all.' Discuss the implications of this for how we vote.

On not going to church

Hebrews 10:25 tells Christian people not to neglect the habit of meeting together in order to encourage one another in view of the Lord’s coming. The book of Acts records Christian people meeting together on resurrection day. And, most of us can speak of those many Sundays when meeting with God’s people for worship has helped us reboot, refocus and recommit to be God’s people.

In keeping with all this, it’s my habit as a pastor to encourage church going for the sake of the person themselves (to be fed and encouraged); for the sake of others (to encourage and serve them by our presence) and for the sake of unbelievers (to witness to the priority of God in our lives).

However there are times when not going to church may be appropriate.

… I think of Christian workers who are paid to go to church but then face the danger of a professional piety in which their relationship with God is subverted and subsumed by their ministry identity. Not going to church on occasions can help resurrect that personal identity in Christ.

… Likewise with Christian leaders who are always ‘on duty’ when at church and readily occupied with institutional clutter which clamours for attention and seems so important, but which shows itself to be ephemera when stepping back.

The examples could be multiplied. For example, the believer whose soul is bruised and battered by such things as conflict at church, disappointment at bad decisions, gaps between profession and practice by more senior believers etc. In these situations, going to church may compound a problem of seething anger or disappointment that is worsened by donning a mask to ‘play’ at church.

In such situations, a ‘fast’ from church may be appropriate in order to devote ourselves to the Lord in word and prayer. These can be times of remarkable spiritual refreshment as we see him face to face unmediated by churchly clutter. This, of course, should be only for a season lest we breach Scripture by losing the habit of meeting together and retreat to ourselves with the attendant dangers of a private and introspective piety.

And so I’ll admit to times when I could have gone to church but chose not to. These have not necessarily been Godless times, but times of rebuilding and reinforcing my direct link with God and identity as a Christian person as opposed to my persona as a pastor. And likewise there have been times when I have encouraged / affirmed others in their choice not to go to church for a season.

So let us indeed encourage and keep the habit of meeting together with fellow believers. But let us stop it becoming idolatry by sometimes breaking the habit in order to meet with the Lord.

A note to a friend about both / and spirituality

Why is spirituality tricky?

There's a big bunch of material whose basic strategy is to withdraw folks from this realm into the presence of God for a time with the expectation that this then charges us up to return to the world (which may be seen as a hostile and godless place). At first glance that may sound good, but taken to extremes, this is an essentially escapist spirituality.

You are smart enough to see the basic flaw. Experiential spirituality that becomes escapist easily trends towards a dualism in which creational reality is seen as evil or unimportant. Some spiritualities fall right into that nasty little hole and essentially deny the outside world. Of course, that will be to varying degrees and there are times in which withdrawal to seek God is totally apt and has great Biblical precedent (think of Jesus ducking off for a night of prayer away from everyone and everything). And there are some people for whom withdrawal into experiential spirituality is a natural disposition. That’s fine, but there’s a need to nudge such folk back to a ‘both / and’ relationship with God in which we both withdraw and engage.

(And, of course, there are others of us who need to be nudged away from our primarily objective spirituality and encouraged into the experiential and relational element.)

A better way is generally to cultivate a grounded and world spirituality in which our relationship with God arises from, is conducted within, and is directed to the everyday world in which we are called to live. This is the spirituality of an ‘engager’ who takes the created world seriously as the place where we must relate to God. Indeed, we may ask if it’s worth holding a faith that does not push us to meet and be with God in the creational greys in which we live and move and have our being.

But you are also smart enough to know that all this is another one of the both/ands with which the Christian faith is littered. A purely worldly spirituality needs the complement of experiential relationship with God and a purely experiential spirituality needs the complement of worldly groundedness. Thus Jesus occasionally withdrew, but then he returned to engage with his father’s world and will.

Whatever the mix, its good to apply this test: does this spiritual resource or practice help me know and know about God more closely through prayerfulness and the Scripture, be more Christ-like in an everyday sense, and does it equip me to engage with the world in active discipleship and service?

Lent and earth hour.

On Saturday 26 of March 2011 many cities will observe earth hour.

This is a one-hour switch off for lights. It started in Sydney Australia and has gone globally viral. As such, it’s been an effective public event. However, does it raise environmental awareness to change behaviour beyond its hour?

A parallel can be drawn with Lent.

This is a 40-day time of various spiritual disciplines before Easter and is globally viral for a very long time. It is an effective public event. However, does it raise spiritual awareness to change behaviour beyond its ‘hour’?

Isaiah 58 is relevant. The context was one of religious fasting that was conducted with great display and fanfare. In God’s name he calls for what we can call a life-fast where people departed from wickedness and showed God’s righteousness in their day to day. Calvin somewhere picks up this theme and urges his readers to make the whole of life a fast to and before the Lord.

On this year’s earth hour we are urged to action ‘beyond the hour’. A life-habit of sacrifice to lessen our personal energy consumption is surely better than the hour. Likewise, a life-habit of abstinence and spiritual discipline is surely better than just the 40 days.

By all means let’s choose to observe things like Lent and earth hour. But let’s ensure that they are more than tokens by turning the ‘hour’ into the habit of a lifetime.

Home and away

Exile, or being away, was a tough experience for Old Testament Israel after the fall of Jerusalem. There they were, dispossessed and far from the land promised to Abraham (Gen 12:1; 15:18f). No wonder they found it hard to sing the Lord’s song in exile and far from the place that they regarded as home (eg Ps 137).

This language of home and exile is picked up in the New Testament. Thus Peter can address his readers as ‘elect exiles of the dispersion’ and urge them to conduct themselves with fear through the time of their exile (1 Pet 1:1; 17).

Christian believers, as much as the old heroes of the faith are strangers and exiles who seek the homeland which is the city to come (Heb 11:14-16; 13:14). Our real sense of home is to be with the Lord and away from the flesh (2 Cor 5:6-8; Phil 1:23) which is to occupy our room in the prepared place of the new creation (Jn 14:2-3).

Yet we are called to be in the world rather than to escape from it (Jn 17:15). We cannot live in a ghetto of the coming age and refuse engagement with the present.

How do we put this together?

Perhaps we can use a human comparison.

Let’s imagine a person who is living in a country other than their heartland. Their citizenship, identity and love lies elsewhere, especially if they were wrenched from the heartland. Yet they recognise that they are, for the time being, in another land. Thus they strive to make a fulfilling life in the new, live responsibly there and enjoy what life there brings. However, their sense of who they are and where they are has two dimensions. There is the adopted ‘home’ of the present and the ‘Home’ of their heartland (or, as we call it, homeland). Add to that a Christian identity and we add a third sense of ‘HOME’ as the place of the deepest Christian longing.

This sense of ‘home’, ‘Home’ and ‘HOME’ can help the exile find a working equilibrium in their inner and outer life. She is at home where she is and engages with the life that God gives. Yet he maintains an interest in, love and loyalty to the Home from which he is removed. And beyond that, a sense that all life lived in this age is a homeless exile and thus a refusal to unduly attach to home or Home, lest that tear the affections from HOME.

Come you weak

My wife and I went to a church service recently. As we walked in we could hear a group of people singing praise choruses with weak voices and no accompaniment.

There were about 30 of us there. About half came from a nearby home for people with mental and emotional disorders, many due to substance abuse. They would occasionally interrupt the service with odd remarks and wander in and out. The church ensured that these folk were given a worksheet to colour and complete during the service and the more regular members were careful to sit among the people from the home to help keep order. Of the rest, only one man was in modest employment and the rest were retired.

We met in a hall that had recently been renovated with the effect of a warm and welcoming appearance. All the singing was by voice alone and attuned to heaven if not to musical pitch. The preaching was workmanlike and adjusted to the audience and the fellowship cuppa afterwards was warm.

It’s a service we’d go back to despite its modest nature. Why? The caring and thoughtful welcome and reception of the weak and meek from the nearby home. The genuine warmth of welcome to us. But also the kingdom-minded heart of the congregation. This is visibly evident in their finances where this little group gave about $33,000 in offering last year and almost one third of it given to missions.

Here is a little local church in tough circumstances but with a big heart for God’s work. The open door of the church onto the street is a symbol of their heart for the community. An outpost of heaven.