Small is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher

My recent reading on the circular economy reminded me of a book that I read 36 years ago in one of my classes at the Kings University in Edmonton. I remember how we were challenged to think through some of our assumptions and beliefs regarding culture and economics. I remember the Biblical roots to what we now call a circular economy.  I also remember that one of our professors said that if you think you have a new idea, look about about 30 years, and you may find it there.

Small is Beautiful was a great little book that promoted thought and reflection. It was almost as difficult to read now as it was then, but provided some great insights. Here are some quotes as they relate to development of a circular economy. (we accept that now we would use more inclusive language in reference to “man”).

“Man is small, and therefore, small is beautiful”

“The illusion of unlimited power, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production. The latter illusion is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where this distinction matters most…the irreplaceable capital which man had not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.”

“To get to the crux of the matter, we do well to ask why it is that all these terms – pollution, environment, ecology etc. – have so suddenly come into prominence…Is this a sudden fad, a silly fashion, or perhaps a sudden failure of nerve?”

“The changes of the last 25 years, both in the quantity and in the quality of man’s industrial processes, have produced an entirely new situation – a situation resulting not from our failures but from what we thought wre our greatest successes. And this has come up so suddenly that we hardly noticed the fact that we were rapidly using up a certain kind of irreplaceable capital asset, namely the tolerance margins which benign nature always provides.”

“The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product. Perhaps it cannot be measured at all, except for certain symptoms of loss.”

“We must thoroughly understand the problem and begin to see the possibility of evolving a new lifestyle, with new methods of production and new patterns of consumption: a lifestyle designed for permanence.”

“We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men, but also with nature, and above all, with those Higher Powers which have made nature and have made us.”

“It is always possible to dismiss even the most threatening problems with the suggestion that something will turn up.”

“An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single minded pursuit of wealth… does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited…already the environment is trying to tell us that certain stresses are becoming excessive.”

“We find that the idea of unlimited economic growth, more and more until everybody is saturated with wealth, needs to be seriously questioned on at least two counts: the availability of basic resources and…the capacity of the environment to cope with the degree of interference implied.”

“I suggest that the foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity,…because such prosperity, if attainable at all, is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroys intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of man.”

“Our wealth depends on making inordinately large demands on limited world resources and thus puts us on an unavoidable collision course, not primarily with the poor (who are weak and defenseless), but with other rich people.”

“The economics of permanence implies a profound reorientation of science and technology, which have to open their doors to wisdom…Scientific or technological ‘solutions’ which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived”

“We need methods and equipment that are cheap enough so that they are accessible to virtually everyone, suitable for small scale application, and compatible with man’s need for creativity.”

“There is a need for a proper philosophy of work which understands work…as something ‘decreed by Providence for the good of man’s body and soul’….it is work and the relationships established by work that are the true foundations of society.”

“When people ask for education they normally mean something more than mere training, something more than mere knowledge of facts…maybe they cannot themselves formulate precisely what they are looking for, but I think what they are really looking for is ideas that would make the world, and their own lives, intelligible to them. When a thing is intelligible, you have a sense of participation.”

“Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. Even the greatest ideas of science are nothing more than working hypotheses, useful for purposes of special research but completely inapplicable to the conduct of our lives or the interpretation of the world.”

“Education can help us only if it produces ‘whole men’. The truly educated man is not a man who knows a bit of everything, not even the man who knows all the details of all subjects,…he will not be in doubt about his basic convictions, about his view on the meaning and purpose of life.”

“Among material resources, the greatest, unquestionably, is the land. Study how a society uses its land and you can come to pretty reliable conclusions as to what its future will be.”

“Is the land merely a means of production or is it something more, something that is an end in itself?”

“Man has not made it [land], and it is irrational for him to treat things that he has not made and cannot make and cannot recreate once he has spoilt them, in the same manner and spirit as he is entitled to treat things of his own making.”

“The fundamental ‘principle’ of agriculture is that it deals with life,…Its products are the result of processes of life and its means of production is the living soil. A cubic centimeter of soil contains millions of living organisms, the full exploration of which is far beyond the capacities of man.”

“It remains true that agriculture is primary, whereas industry is secondary, which means that human life can continue without industry, whereas it cannot continue without agriculture”

“agriculture has to fulfil at least three tasks: to keep man in touch with living nature, of which he is and remains a highly vulnerable part, to humanize and enoble man’s wider habitat and to bring forth the foodstuffs and other materials which are needed for life”

“we should be searching for policies to reconstruct rural culture, to open the land for the gainful occupation to larger numbers of people, whether it be on a full time or part time basis, and to orient all our actions on the land towards the threefold ideal of health, beauty and permanence.”

“Modern agriculture relies on applying to soil, plants and animals ever increasing quantities of chemical products, the long term effect of which on soil fertility and health is subject to very grave doubts…there are highly successful farmers in many countries who obtain excellent yields without resort to such chemicals and without raising any doubts about long term soil fertility and health.”

“Their [the Soil Association] methods bear the mark of non-violence and humility towards the infinitely subtle system of natural harmony, and this stands in opposition to the lifestyle of the modern world. but if we now realize that the modern lifestyle is putting us in mortal danger, we may find it in our hearts to support and even join these pioneers rather than to ignore or ridicule them.”

“when the Lord created the world and people who live in it…I could well imagine that He reasoned with himself as follows: ‘If I make everything predictable, these human beings, whom I have endowed with pretty good brains, will undoubtedly learn to predict everything, and they will thereupon have no motive to do anything at all, because they will recognize that the future is totally determined and cannot be influenced by human action. On the other hand, if I make everything unpredictable, they will gradually discover that there is no rational basis for any decision whatsoever and, as in the first case, they will have no motivation to do anything at all. Neither scheme would make sense. I must therefore create a mixture of the two. Let some things be predictable and others unpredictable. They will then amongst other things, have the very important task of finding out which is which.”

“I thus come to the cheerful conclusion that life, including economic life, is still worth living because it is sufficiently unpredictable to be interesting.”

“Any organization has to strive continuously for the orderliness of order and the disorderliness of creative freedom.”

 

 

The Circular Economy, A Wealth of Flows by Ken Webster

This book provided some fascinating insights on moving us away from a linear economy based on unlimited natural resources to a circular economy that integrates our soils and other resources in a way that promotes flourishing of our economy and our communities. This book resonates with me because it reflects and integrates our values, experience and our approach to business.

“A linear economy, with its kickstarting money cycle, is massively wasteful of both raw materials and finished products. Elements and consequences outside the money-valued cycle are costs loaded onto the environment and society at large. The solution to this downside is the idea that increasing economic growth would allow enough surplus to clean up the mess and heal the sick – the cure was hiding behind the problem.” p 9

“The circular economy is about an economy that will work long term and add, not detract, from social and environmental capital and flows…Because as circular economy is a dynamic system and inclusive, it is an economy which includes flows of resources (energy and materials), and information.” p 15

“A circular economy is led by business for a profit within the ‘rules of the game’ decided by an active citizenship in a flourishing democracy” p 21

“At the turn of the 20th century, the economy became ‘disconnected’ from its resource base and it was assumed that it was about a circular flow of income and an accumulation of wealth driven by the idealized decision making of individuals and businesses seeking maximum ‘utility’ or satisfaction from moment to moment…Natural and social capital, the reservoirs of resources for production became an incidental part of the economic playbook rather than the economy being nested within the environment and what society demanded of the economy” p 28

“Debt is a claim on future wealth. Debt therefore demands economic growth to meet the interest payments, if these payments are not to become an ever bigger part of the economic pie and prompt a downward spiral – less spending, less production, less work and so on.” p 43

“What is there was another way of seeing the world, one based in the science of our times, one which entrained systems in a virtuous cycle of capital building rather than in a vicious one where human, social, manufactured and natural capital are transformed into financial capital?” p 47

“Ordered, complex, intertwined mutually interdependent systems are the new normal. That is where the economy and business exists, and hence the notion that a circular economy is an expression of systems thinking: an opportunity to upgrade our economics and business to match an expanded, richer vision.” p 48

“Previous patterns of growth have brought increased prosperity, but through intensive and often inefficient use of resources. The role of biodiversity, ecosystems and their services is largely undervalued, the cost of waste are often not reflected in prices, current markets and public policies cannot fully deal with competing demands on resources such as minerals, land, water and biomass” (statement from the European Commission). p 90

“The quest for sustainable (holistic) solutions, which would simultaneously address economic, social and environmental issues, is jeopardized by the ‘silo’ structures of public administrations, academia and many corporations.” p 91

“Work is the most versatile and adaptable of all resources, with a strong but perishable qualitative edge: (a) it is the only resource capable of creativity and with the capacity to produce innovative solutions, and (b) human skills deteriorate if unused” p 99

“Water and energy savings, as well as waste prevention, now become profitable activities that positively impact the bottom line of corporations. Whereas in the industrial economy, sufficiency and prevention options during the utilization phase of goods present a loss of income, and are thus undesirable.” p 99

“Sustainable politics should build on simple and convincing principles, such as: do not tax what you want to foster, punish unwanted effects instead. Also, it should promote sustainable solutions, ideally, sustainable solutions create self-reinforcing virtuous circles, which guarantee their longevity.” p 103

“A sustainable tax policy of not taxing renewable resources, including work, constitutes a very powerful lever to accelerate, boost and generalise the circular economy and its positive impacts on resource security and regional job creation, while simultaneously reducing GHG emissions.” p 105

“Perverse subsidies is where non-renewables and stocks of natural capital (soils, fisheries, groundwater, forests) are exploited at prices which are below market values and which probably already inadequately reflect the true value of the resources.” p 109

“The basics of circularity are very easy. Materials are of two types ideally: those which are consumed and rebuilt through the biosphere safely – biological material or ‘nutrients’, and those which cycle at high quality for longer in the technical nutrients cycle…the sharing economy must fit a circular economy by intention” p 131

“Trapped between high hopes place on the potential of materials that have yet to be invented and the growing concern generated by the need to mine more stuff, we often seem to overlook the wealth of resources already in circulation” p 153

“In the idealized schematic of a circular economy, the loop is eventually closed on the biological side and on land via the agency of sunlight, fungi and bacteria and the other communities of life in the soil. Here, then, soil is a simplified notion of natural capital in agricultural systems.” p 162

“We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process: it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they begin to flourish.” p 176

“Being in favor of more cognitively rounded individuals in a restorative economy could be described as taking a position about what is right and good. So maybe we are stuck with morals somewhere but at least the focus is shifted outward – from ‘what is good for me and mine’ to ‘what is good for us and also me?” p 184

“People are social beings and formal education empowers learners to be empathetic, to respect the views of other and to contribute their own views, knowledge and skills clearly and with confidence.” p 189

“Regenerative systems are enmeshed in natural and social processes in ways that make their purpose far more complex. While technology remains the means for augmenting nature, it ideally becomes a factor within the larger social and ecological context rather than the engine driving that complex.” p 192

 

 

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller

We often acknowledge that everyone has a story. Here is a wonderful book about “story” and a good fictional story needs to have some of what we long for in our own stories.

“A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it is the basic structure of a good story” p 48

“If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you” p 59

“I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breath and face conflict with courage” p 59

“I wondered….if we were designed to live through something rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us. The point of a story is the character arc, the change.” p 70.

“The idea that a character is what he does remains the hardest to actually live.” p 74.

“I believe that there is a writer outside of ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.” p 86

“The real Voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right and wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and the profane. It’s not an agitated Voice, but ever patient as though it approves a millon false starts. The Voice I am talking about is a deep water of calming wisdom. p. 87.

“by this time I really came to believe the Voice was God, and God was trying to write a better story.” p 88

“People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.” p 100.

“the inciting incident is how you get them to do something,…It’s the doorway through which they can’t return. The story takes care of the rest…the character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen” p 104-105

“great stories go to those who don’t give in to fear…fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life” p 108.

“there is a force in the world that doesn’t want us to live good stories. It doesn’t want us to face our issues, to face our fear and bring something beautiful into the world. I believe God wants us to create beautiful stories, and whatever it is that isn’t God wants us to create meaningless stories” p 116

“it made me think about the hard lives so many people have had, the sacrifices they’ve endured, and how those people will see heaven differently from those of us who have had easier lives. p. 143

“sharing the story with someone made the story more meaningful” p 154

“the reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of the story is never about the ending, remember. Its about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle. p. 177

“I think this is when most people give up on their stories….they get to the middle and discover it was harder than they thought,….and they go looking for an easier story. p 179.

“Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it’s conflict that changes a person.” p 180.

“story, about how every conflict, no matter how hard, comes back to bless the protagonist if he will face his fate with courage. There is no conflict man can endure that will not produce a blessing. p. 188

“after a tragedy, I think God gives us a period of numbing as a kind of grace. Perhaps he knows our small minds, given so easily to false hope, couldn’t handle the full brunt of reality” p 192.

“misery, though seemingly ridiculous, indicates life itself has the potential for meaning, and therefore pain itself must also have meaning…pain then, if one could have faith in something greater than himself, might be a path to experiencing a meaning beyond the false gratification of personal comfort.” p 196

“the book of Job is about suffering, and it reads as though God is saying to the world, Before we get started, there’s this one thing I have to tell you. Things are going to get bad…God say’s to Job, Job I know what I am doing, and this whole thing isn’t about you” p 197.

“Its written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn’t, and if only this and if only that, it would be beautiful again.” p 202.

 

A Public Faith by Miroslav Volf

In the cultures where both we and our children currently work, and also now in relation to the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation efforts with our First Nations in Canada, we have to consider how we in our world, can work together for the good and benefit of all.

“Only when we see and respect both – undeniable differences that give communities a peculiar character and commonalities that bind them together – will we be able to honor each and promote the viable coexistence of all”  Miroslav Volf in A Public Faith

Below are some of the quotations in this book that I have learned and benefited from.

“Faith does its most proper work when it 1) sets us on a journey, 2) guides us along the way, and 3) gives meaning to each step we take. When we embrace faith – when God embraces us – we become new creatures constituted and called to be part of the people of God.” p 16

“In all our activities, and certainly in all our work, we strive to succeed. By this I mean that we want to 1) accomplish what we have undertaken to do, 2) accomplish it in an excellent way, and hopefully, 3) contribute to some larger good……We need power and creativity to succeed, but we inhabit a fragile and uncertain world and are ourselves fragile and unpredictable creatures….since power and creativity are in short supply, to succeed we often seek the help of what we describe as the “higher power”” p 24

“If God is the source of our being, then we do all our work in the power that comes from God. God gives, and therefore we exist and can work. God gives, and therefore we can succeed in our work… it is God who gives us power and creativity, and it is ultimately God for whom we work. Hence it is quite appropriate to ask God to bless our endeavors…we pray not so much for God to miraculously bring about a desired result but to make us willing, capable, and effective instruments of God’s hand – which is what we were created to be in the first place” p 26-27

“In our quiet moments, we know that we want our lives to have weight and substance and grow towards some kind of fullness that lies beyond ourselves….when we work for the well-being of communities, our work acquires a richer texture of meaning than when we work just for ourselves..our work can find its ultimate meaning when, in working for ourselves and for community, we work for God.” p 33-34

“God blesses us, and we succeed in work; God delivers us so that we aren’t weighed down by our failures and can achieve lasting happiness; God directs us so we can work in morally responsible and morally excellent ways; and God gives meaning to our work in that God gathers all our efforts on behalf of ourselves and our communities and works through them to create, redeem and consummate the world. Our faith will have a positive difference when God is at work in our work in these four ways” p 36.

 “The impulse to eliminate religion is mistaken also because religions can and often do play and indispensable role in fostering healthy and peaceful social relations” p 39

“Absolute hospitality” seems generous and peaceful, until one remembers that unrepentant perpetrators and their unhealed victims would then have to sit around the same table and share a common home without adequate attention to the violation that has taken place..Hospitality can be absolute only once the world has been made into a world of love in which each person would be hospitable to all. In the world of injustice, deception, and violence, hospitality can be only conditional – even if the will to hospitality and the offer of hospitality remains unconditional.” p 47

“It is neither the character of the Christian faith nor some of its most fundamental convictions are violence inducing. The Christian faith is misused when it is employed to underwrite violence…Christians are manifestly not to gather under the banner of the Rider on the white horse, but to take up their crosses and follow the Crucified…If they were to do otherwise….First, they would illicitly arrogate for themselves what is reserved for God, Second, they would mistakenly transpose the violence from the end time to a time which God explicitly refrains from deploying violence in order to make repentance possible. Finally, they would wrongly transmute a future possibility of violence into a present reality.” p 51

“Properly understood, the Christian faith is neither coercive nor idle. As a prophetic religion, Christian faith will be an active faith, engaged in the world in a non-coercive way – offering blessing to our endeavors, effective comfort in our failures, moral guidance in a complex world, and a framework of meaning for our lives and our activities. To be engaged in the world well, Christians will have to keep one thing at the forefront of their attention: the relationship between God and a vision of human flourishing” p 54

“The challenge facing Christians is ultimately very simple: love God and neighbor rightly so that we may both avoid malfunctions of faith and relate to God positively to human flourishing….today’s most fundamental challenge…to really mean that the presence and activity of the God of love, who can make us love our neighbors as ourselves, is our hope and the hope of the world – that this God is the secret of our flourishing as persons, cultures, and interdependent inhabitants of a single globe.” p 74

“I want to make Christian communities more comfortable with being just one of many players, so that from whatever place they find themselves – on the margins, at the center, or anywhere in between – they can promote human flourishing and the common good.” p. 79

“Christian communities will be able to survive and thrive in contemporary societies only if they attend to their “difference” from surrounding cultures and subcultures” p. 81

“If Christian identity matters, then difference must matter as well. In the most general sense, get rid of difference and what remains will be nothing- you yourself, along with everything else, will be drowned in the sea of undifferentiated “stuff”…to erase difference is to undo the creation, that intricate pattern of separations and inter dependencies that God established when the universe was formed out of no-thing. Literally, every-thing depends on difference. .. the gospel is also about difference, after all, it means the good news – something good, something new, and therefore something different!”  p 95

“A central challenge for all religions in a pluralistic world is to help people grow out of their petty hopes so as to live meaningful lives, and to help them resolve their grand conflicts and live in communion with others” p 100

“all our efforts at sharing wisdom should focus on allowing wisdom to shape our own lives – including making us willing to both repent and forgive – and to show itself in all its attractiveness, reasonableness, and usefulness. We need to trust that it will make itself embraceable by others if it is going to be embraced at all. In that way, as sharers of wisdom, we honor both the power of wisdom and the integrity of its potential recipients” p 117

“in relations between religions, both differences and commonalities count. If we see only differences, we will “empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than cooperation” If we see only commonalities, we will either have to conform ourselves to others or they will have to conform to us; most likely, we will distort and dishonor both others and ourselves. Only when we see and respect both – undeniable differences that give communities a peculiar character and commonalities that bind them together – will we be able to honor each and promote the viable coexistence of all” p 140

 

Playing God – Redeeming the Gift of Power by Andy Crouch

Many of us react negatively to the word “power”. We conclude that power is limited, and either we have it, or someone else has it – therefore life is all about a struggle for power. In this book, Andy Crouch explains how God created us to have power –  and to use our power to help others flourish. In other words, power is not limited, but can be multiplied if we use the power that God gave us as He intended! This is another book given to me by our daughter – who is in the helping profession in countries where the concept of power is very obviously being misused.

When we misuse power, we are playing god – which is is not what God intended when he created us. Here are some quotations:

“I believe the deepest form of power is creation, and that when power takes the form of coercion and violence, that is actually a diminishment and distortion of what it is meant to be.”

“Power is rooted in creation, the calling of something out of nothing and the fruitful, multiplying abundance of our astonishing world. It is intimately tied to image bearing: the unique role that human beings play in representing the cosmos’s Creator in the midst of creation.”

“Power is for flourishing. When power is used well, people and the whole cosmos come more alive to what they were meant to be.”

“It is the unique power of human beings to invest our creations with meaning….the more debilitating form of powerlessness is to be cut off from making meaning. There are able bodied people all over the world whose physical capacity to make something is undiminished, but who are denied any opportunity to make their own sense of the world.”

“Because the ability to make something of the world is in a real sense the source of human well being, because true power multiplies capacity and wealth, when any human beings live in entrenched powerlessness, all of us are impoverished.”

“If we have done our job well, at this stage we will have surprisingly little to do because others will be taking up their own creative task. And if they do their task well, the creation will be enriched, more useful, more beautiful and more capacious for further creativity. This is power as it is meant to be.”

“It is the Creator’s desire to fill the earth with representatives who will have the same kind of delighted dominion over the teeming creatures as their maker. Which means image bearing is for flourishing. The image bearers do not exist for their own flourishing alone, but to bring the whole creation to its fulfillment.”

“the loss of image caused by injustice is equally devastating. On the one hand, the image born by the god player ceases to resemble the true Creator God and begins to bear false witness…far worse than this hypertrophied false image, however, is the effacing or even eradication of the image bearing capacities of the poor who cease to believe that they bear any image at all.”

“He [God] hates that the poor, who have infinite value as image bearers in their own right, become devalued and commoditized, pawns in the self-inflating schemes of the god players.” 

“Benevolent god playing happens when we use the needs of the poor to make our own move from good to great – to revel in the superior power of our technology and the moral excellence of our willingness to help. Benevolent god playing makes us, not those we are serving, the heroes of the story.”

“Because we believe every one of our neighbors is an image bearer, however broken their relationship with the One whose image their bear, we will find much common ground for working for justice and freedom.”

“To covet is not just to take; it is to desire – to long for a godlike mastery over parts of creation I have not been given to steward.”

“Most of us…have an absurdly low estimation of the power we have and how many opportunities we have to use it well. And curiously, this blindness afflicts the visibly powerful as often as the seemingly powerless.”

“Coercive power is instant but short-lived, creative power is patient and enduring.”

“Institutions are at the heart of culture making, which means they are at the heart of human flourishing and the comprehensive flourishing of creation that we call shalom.”

“the most basic power in any institution is the power to distribute power. This power is always shared.”

The Duty of Charity to the Poor by Jonathan Edwards

What I knew about Jonathan Edwards came from local evangelical churches that wanted to experience more of God, or of the Holy Spirit. What I did not realize until recently is that he had very strong words to say about a Christian’s responsibility to the poor.

Jonathan Edwards was a pastor of a church in Massachussetts in the early 1700s. He is mostly known in relation to the Awakening, or the Revival of the church in the eastern US at that time. My questions in relation to Christians wanting to “experience more of God”, or “revival” is for what purpose? To me, it would only be more overwhelming to understand more of God’s heart for the many victims of abuse and violence around the world. It turns out that Jonathan Edwards also had strong words for our responsibility to our neighbours.

In his book, “Generous Justice”, Timothy Keller brings up this sermon given by Jonathan Edwards in March of 1732. The verses in the Bible that he introduces his message is from Deuteronomy 15: 7-11, specifically verse 7 “If there is any poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard hearted or tight fisted toward your poor brother.”  We have to remember the context of this passage. God had promised the best piece of real estate in the cross roads of the then known world to the people of Israel. All the nations around Israel would be traveling through Israel on the various trading routes of the time. God wanted his people to be an example to all the nations.

Here are some quotes from Jonathan Edward’s sermon on “The Duty of Charity to the Poor”

“Tis the most absolute and indispensible duty of a people of God to give bountifully and willingly for the supply of the wants of the needy”

“Men are exceedingly apt to make objections against such duties,..God said…beware that you have not one objecting thought against it, arising from a backwardness to liberality.”

“Jesus said in Matt 26:11, “the poor you always have with you”. This is to cut off the excuse that uncharitable persons would be ready to make for not giving, that they could non find nobody to give to, that they saw none who needed.”

“We are commanded, therefore, to give our poor neighbour what is sufficient for his need.”

“This is a duty to which God’s people are under very strict obligation. It is not merely a commendable thing for a man to be kind and bountiful to the poor, but our bounden duty, as much a duty as it is to pray, or to attend public worship,….And the neglect of it brings great guilt upon any person.”

“we should love our neighbours as ourselves; for men are made in the image of God, and on this account are worthy of our love…we have the same nature,…like desires of good, like needs, like aversion to misery,…”

“consider how much God hath done for us, how greatly he hath loved us, what he hath given us, when we were so unworthy, and when he could have no addition to his happiness by us.”

“What would become of us, if Christ…had been as ready to excuse himself from dying for us, as men commonly are to excuse themselves from charity to their neighbour?”

“Your money and your goods are not your own. They are only committed to you as stewards, to be used for him who committed them to you.”

“Many persons are ready to look upon what is bestowed for charitable uses as lost. But we ought not to look upon it as lost, because it benefits those who we ought to love as ourselves.”

“It is easy with God to make up to men what they give in charity. Many but little consider how their prosperity or ill success in their outward affairs depends on Providence…how easy is it with God to increase their substance, by suitable seasons, or by health and strength, by giving them fair opportunities for promoting their interest in their dealings with men,…”

“Consider what a shifting, changing, uncertain world you live in, and how often it hath so happened, that men have been reduced from the greatest prosperity to the greatest adversity, and how often the children of the rich have been reduced to pinching want.”

“If providence should so order it, that you or your children should be brought into the same circumstances, would you make light of them (the poor) then? Would you not think that your case was such that needed the kindness of your neighbours? Would you not think that they ought to be ready to help you?”

“Giving to the needy is like laying up against winter, or against a time of calamity. It is the best way of laying up for yourselves, and for your children.”

“Showing mercy to the poor does as much belong to the appointed way of seeking salvation, as any other duty whatever.”

 “If you expected to meet with no trouble in the world, because you gave to the poor, you mistook the matter. Though there be many and great promises made to the liberal, yet God has nowhere promised, that they shall not find this world a world of trouble.”

“How can you tell what blessings God hath yet in reserve for you if you do but continue in well doing?”

“Some may object against charity in that they are not obliged to give them anything, for though they be needy, they are not in extremity….this is not agreeable to the rule of loving our neighbour as ourselves. That rule implies that our love towards our neighbour should work in the same manner, and express itself in the same ways, as our love towards ourselves.”

“Some may object against charity..because he is an ill sort of person. He deserves not that people should be kind to him. He is of an ill temper, of an ungrateful spirit and particularly because he hath not deserved well of them, but has treated them ill, has ben injurious to them, and even now entertains an ill spirit against them……. we are obliged to the rules of God’s word… that of loving our neighbour as ourselves….we are commanded to love one another as Christ hath loved us.”

“Christ denied himself to help us, though we are not able to recompense him, so should we be willing to layout ourselves to help our neighbour, freely expecting nothing again.”

“Christ loved us, was kind to us, and was willing to relieve us, though we were very evil and hateful, of an evil disposition, not deserving any good, but deserving only to be hated and treated with indignation, so we should be willing to be kind to those who are of an ill disposition, and are very undeserving”

“We are particularly required to be kind to the unthankful and to the evil. We are obliged, not only to be kind to them that are so to us, but to them that hate, and that despitefully use us.”

“Some may object concerning a particular person that they do not certainly know whether he be an object of charity or not….they know not whether he be in want as he pretends, or if they know this, they know not how he came to be in want, whether it were not by his own idleness, or prodigality….we are commanded to be kind to strangers whom we know not, nor their circumstances”

“Some may say they are not obliged to give to the poor till they ask…..we shall do them a greater kindness by inquiring into their circumstances, and relieving them, without putting them upon begging.”

“If they are come to want by a vicious idleness and prodigality, yet we are not thereby excused from all obligation to relieve them, unless they continue in those vices…If they continue not in those vices, the rules of the gospel direct us to forgive them. If we do otherwise, we shall act in a manner very contrary to the rule of loving one another as Christ has loved us.”

“He has brought himself to want by his own fault – in reply, it must be consider what you mean by his fault. If you mean a want of a natural faculty to manage affairs to advantage, that is to be considered as his calamity. Such a faculty is a gift that God bestows on some, and not on others…you ought to be thankful that God hath given you such a gift, which he hath denied to the person in question. And it will be a very suitable way for you to show your thankfulness, and help those to who that gift is denied, and let them share the benefit of it with you.”

“the law makes provision for the poor, and obliges the respective towns in which they live to provide for them…..I do not suppose that it was ever the design of the law, requiring the various towns to support their own poor, to cut off all occasion for Christian charity”

Jonathan Edwards makes very strong statements about our obligation to the poor. It makes us think about our own community, and our own personal involvement in Circles of Care. Does our obligation to help the poor mean that help can be demanded of us by the poor? What does mutual respect and dignity mean for us in our community? How can we work to build a community that we all can be proud of?

 

Journey Toward Justice by Nicholas Wolterstorff

Do we have a tendency to neglect the rights of others by imposing paternal benevolence, where it is accepted that a certain segment of the population can choose what is best for others? The book entitled “Journey Toward Justice, Personal Encounters with the Global South”, by Nicholas Wolterstorff is a fascinating unfolding of human rights and our responsibility to all persons because of their dignity and worth.

“the twentieth century was filled with regimes that believed it was acceptable to treat some people like animals or worse if doing so would bring about the good society for others”

“Rights are grounded in the worth, the value, the dignity of human beings”

“Understanding what rights are requires distinguishing between how well or poorly a person’s life is going – his well being – and, on the other hand, the worth or value of that person himself.”

“Justice is important because justice is based on rights, and rights are grounded in one’s self worth, and being treated by one’s fellows as befits one’s worth is important.”

“there is a normative social bond between you and me whereby you bear legitimate claims on me as to how I treat you, and whereby I bear legitimate claims on you as to how you treat me…the language of rights is for bringing this reality to speech” 

Where did this notion of rights come from? Wolterstorff mentioned that there is a difference between objective rights and subjective rights, where objective rights specifies the right thing to do in various situations, whereas subjective rights specifies rights that individuals have or possess. Wolterstorff suggests that the notion of rights (the right thing to do – or justice) came from the Bible, first in the Old Testament, but then carried on in the New Testament.

“Christian scripture speaks often and emphatically about justice. I would have heard and read many of the passages about justice; in singing the Psalms I would have sung about justice. But it all passed me by. Nobody called it to my attention; nothing in my situation made it jump out.”

“Though Christian scripture speaks often about justice, it neither gives a definition nor offers a theory of justice. It assumes that we know well enough what justice is. What it does do, over and over, is enjoin its readers to act justly and to right injustice. It enjoins them to do so out of a love for justice. It sets those imperatives within a theological context that explains whey we should love justice, whey we should right injustice, and how we should understand what we are doing when we act justly and right injustice.”

“Firstly, the reference of the biblical writers to justice is never in the context of an abstract discourse on the nature of justice but alwasy in the context of the injuction to do justice and to right injustice”

“Secondly, when we seek to do justice and to right injustice in our actual fallen societies, we have to set priorities. Nobody can do justice to everybody, nobody can right all injustice.”

“Third, powerful and wealthy people…too are the victims of injustice – the victims of episodes of injustice. But compare that to the situation of the widows, the orphans, and the impoverished in old Israel. Their daily condition was unjust, or highly vulnerable to being unjust….their daily condition was systemically unjust.”

“If one is seeking to do justice and right injustice, one will not ignore episodic injustices, but one will give priority to systemic injustice. On will give priority to the fate of those whose daily condition is unjust.”

Wolterstorff draws special attention to the New Testament, because as he says, the New Testament is all about love and grace, not justice….

“One line of thought holds that though its true that God continues to love justice and to have a special concern for the vulnerable, it is not your and my business to seek to reform those social structures that oppress people, nor is is your and my business to press government to bring wrongdoers to justice. Change in oppressive and corrupt social structures can happen only if those who inhabit these structures have a change of heart…the New Testament instructs us to seek changed hearts”

Wolterstorff observed that English translations of the New Testament use the word “righteous”, whereas the Greek implied acting “justly”, or “justice”- doing the right thing, which is much different than many interpretations of righteous.

“In present day religious talk by Christians, righteousness has come to mean being right with God, this being understood as a matter of the inner self. Being right with God in one’s inner self does, of course, have consequences for how one treats one’s fellows. But righteousness as such is understood as a matter of the heart”

“If we act justly, if we do the right thing, then justice in our relationships will be the result. Justice in our relationships results from our acting justly; it results from our doing the right thing”

“Treating one’s neighbour justly is cited as an example of loving one’s neighbour. Just action is an example of love. The love that Jesus enjoins on us for our neighbours is not to be understood as sheer gratuitous benevolence that pays no attention to what justice requires.”

“the love that Jesus attributes to God and enjoins on us…seeks to advance the good of the other. The good of the other (and of oneselft) has two dimensions: the dimension of the well-being of the other, and the dimension of respect for the worth of the other. Love attends to both dimensions – not just to the former.”

Wolterstorff ties the concept of justice and rights with the Biblical word “shalom”

“In most English translations of the Bible, the Hebrew word “shalom” is translated as “peace”. And shalom does indeed require peace…but shalom goes beyond peace…a nation may be at peace and yet be miserable in its poverty. Shalom is not just peace, but “flourishing”, flourishing in all dimensions of our existence – in our relation to God, in our relation to our fellow human beings, in our relation to ourselves, in our relation to creation in general.”

“To be human is to be a creature who is treated with disrespect if she is deprived of education. To be human is to be a creature who is treated with disrespect if she is deprived of education. To be human is to be a creature who is treated with disrespect if she is not allowed, to a considerable extent, to set her own course of life rather than have someone else set it for her. And to be human is to be a creature who is treated with disrespect if she is forced to live in aesthetic squalor. When social arrangements force some of our fellow human beings to live in poverty, those human beings are wronged, treated unjustly”

Lastly, we have to think about why bother – why is this important – how do we have hope?

“Christian hope for the righting of injustice is not an optimism grounded in the potentials of creation, but hope grounded in the promise that Christ will bring about his just and holy kingdom. That hope is to take the form, in part, of our participation in Christ’s cause by ourselves working for the righting of injustice. But then we learn that God moves in mysterious ways, sometimes bringing our best efforts to naught, sometimes wrestling liberation out of appalling oppression.”

In the end, its an explanation of the Biblical call to “love your neighbour as yourself”, and our response as per Psalm 23 – “he (God) leads me in paths of righteousness (a definition that includes justice) for his namesake…

 

 

Pastrix, the cranky, beautiful faith of a sinner and saint, by Nadia Bolz-Weber

Following up from the previous biography of Dietric Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor living during the second world war, our friends loaned us another book written by a Lutheran pastor who has a church in Denver Colorado. The theology of grace that Martin Luther drew us to is so evident in this book. I love the heart for all persons who are created in God’s image.

“I can’t imagine that the God of the universe is limited to our ideas of God. I can’t imagine that God doesn’t reveal God’s self in countless ways outside of the symbol system of Christianity”

“in short, here’s what Pastor Ross taught me:

– God’s grace is a gift that is freely given to us. We don’t earn a thing when it comes to God’s love, and we only try to live in response to the gift.

– No one is climbing the spiritual ladder. We don’t continually improve until we are so spiritual we no longer need God. We die and are made new, but that’s different from spiritual self-improvement

– we are simultaneously sinner and saint, 100 percent of both, all the time.

– The Bible is not God. The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ. Anything in the Bible that does not hold up to the Gospel of Jesus Christ simply does not have the same authority.

– the movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us. Always. We can’t, through our piety or goodness, move closer to God. God is always coming near to us. Most specially in the Eucharist and in the stranger.”

“Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others, and even the planet, and God’s grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word. My selfishness is not the end all..instead, its that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit.”

“What makes this the kingdom of God is not the worthiness or piety or social justicey-ness or the hard work of the laborers…none of that matters. Its the fact that the trampy landowner couldn’t manage to keep out of the marketplace. He goes back and back and back, interrupting lives…coming to get his people. Grace tapping us on the shoulder.”

“I often feel like God uses other people to tell us stuff we need to know”

“there’s a popular misconception that religion, Christianity specifically, is about knowing the difference betweeen good and evil so that we can choose the good. But being good has never set me free the way that truth has. Knowing all of this makes me love and hate Jesus at the same time. Because when instead of contrasting good and evil, he contrasted truth and evil, I have to think about all the times I’ve substituted being good (or appearing to be good) for truth.”

“I realized that in Jesus, God had come to dwell with us and share our human story. Even the parts of our human story that are the most painful. God was not sitting in heaven looking down and Jesus’ life and death and cruelly allowing his son to suffer. God was not looking down on the cross. God was hanging from the cross. God had entered our pain and loss and death so deeply and took all of it into God’s own self so that we might know who God really is.”

“We want to go to God for answers, but sometimes what we get is God’s presence.”

“I can only look at the seemingly limited space under the tent and think either it’s my job to change people so they fit, or it’s my job to extend the roof so that they fit. Either way, it’s misguided because its not my tent. It’s God’s tent. The wideness of the tent of the Lord is my concern only insofar as it points to the gracious nature of a loving God who became flesh and entered into our humanity.”

“Sometimes the best thing that we can do for each other is talk honestly about being wrong.”

“loving our enemies doesn’t require the right feelings of niceness or generosity. It requires that we commend them to the one who has perfected the love of the enemy. It requires being in the prayerful presence of a God who was killed by God’s enemies and then, rather than retaliation, rather than violence, rather than an eye for an eye, Jesus said, “Forgive them”.

“I need to believe that God does not initiate suffering, God transforms it.”

“it’s always God’s first move. Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named us and claimed us as God’s own….maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are….so if God’s first move is to give us our identity, then the devil’s first move is to throw that identity into question”

“Nowhere are we more prone to encroaching darkness than when we are stepping into the light: sudden discouragement in the midst of healthy decisions, a toxic thought or a particular temptation.”

“Maybe retaliation or holding onto anger about harm done to me doesn’t actually combat evit. Maybe it feeds it…and our anger, fear, or resentment doesn’t free us at all. It just keeps us chained.”

“the kingdom of heaven, which Jesus talked about all the time, is, as he said, here. At hand. It’s now. Wherever you are. In ways you never expect.”

Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxis

I received this book from our daughter for Christmas this year. Its a captivating biography about a German theologian and pastor who struggled with what it meant to be a German Christian during World War II. He witness the unfolding injustices to the Jewish persons, and the silence of the Christians. There are many great quotations in this book, most of them taken directly from Bonhoeffer’s writings. The quotations become more profound we know that his ideas and convictions cost him his life.

“Has it [the church] not perhaps become an obstruction blocking the path to God instead of a road sign on the path to God? Has it not blocked the only path to salvation? Yet no one can ever obstruct the way to God. The church still has the Bible, and as long as she has it we can still believe in the holy Christian church. God’s word will never be denied whether it be preached by us or our sister church” *

“God does not desire reluctant service and God has given everyone a conscience.” *

“In order to know anything at all about God, one had to rely on revelation from God. In other words, God could speak into this world, but man could not reach out of this world to examine God. It was a one-way street, and of course this was directly related to the especially Lutheran doctrine of grace. Man could not earn his way up to heaven, but God could reach down and graciously lift man toward him.”

One of Bonhoeffers favorite subjects was the “the difference between a faith based on our moral efforts and one based on grace.”

“Every day I am getting to know people, at any rate their circumstances, and sometimes one is able to see through their stories into themselves – and at the same time one thing continues to impress me: here I meet people as they are, far from the masquerade of the Christian world, people with passions, criminal types, small people with small aims, small wages and small sins – all in all they are the people who feel homeless in both senses, and who begin to thaw when one speaks to them with kindness – real people. I can ony say that I have gained the impression that it is just these people who are much more under grace than under wrath, and that it is the Christian world which is more under wrath than grace.” *

“Recently I have noticed again and again that all the decisions I had to make were not really my own decisions. Whenever there was a dilemma, I just left it in abeyance and without really consciously dealing with it intensively – let it grow toward the clarity of a decision. But this clarity is not so much intellectual as it is instinctive. The decision is made, whether one can adequately justify it retrospectively is another question.”  *

“Where a people prays, there is the church, and where the church is, there is never loneliness.” *

“God wants to see human beings, not ghosts who shun the world. He said that in the whole world of human history there is always only one really signficant reality – the present. If you want to find eternity, you must serve the times.”

“One admires Christ according to aesthetic categories as an aesthetic genius, calls him the greatest ethicist, one admires his going to his death as a heroic sacrifice for his ideas. Only one thing one doesn’t do: one doesn’t take him seriously. This is, one doesn’t bring the center of his or her own life into contact with the claim of Christ to speak the revelation of God and to be that revelation. One maintains a distance between himself or herself and the word of Christ, and allows no serious encounter to take place…should there be something in Christ that claims my life entirely with the full seriousness that here God himself speaks and if the word of God once became present only in Christ, then Christ has not only relative, but absolute, urgent significance for me…understanding Christ means taking Christ seriously. Understanding this claim means taking seriously his absolute claim on our commitment. And it is now of importance for us to clarify the seriousness of this matter and to extricate Christ from the secularization process in which he has been incorporated since the Enlightenment.” *

“It is far too easy for us to base our claims to God on our own Christian religiousity and our church commitment, and in doing utterly to misunderstand and distort the Christian idea.” *

“In revelation, it is not so much a question of the freedom of God – eternally remaining with the divine self, aseity – on the other side of revelation, as it is of God’s coming out of God’s own self in revelation. It is a matter of God’s given word, the covenant in which God is bound by God’s own action. It is a question of the freedom of God, which finds its strongest evidence precisely in that God freely chose to be bound to historical human beings and to be placed at the disposal of human beings. God is free not from human beings, but for them. Chirst is the word of God’s freedom.” *

“Nowadays we often ask ourselves whether we still need the Church, whether we still need God. But his question, he said is wrong. We are the ones who are questioned. The Church exists and God exists, and we are asked whether we are willing to be of service, for God needs us.” *

“Today you are not to be given fear of life but courage, and so today in the Church we shall speak more than ever of hope, the hope that we have and which no one can take from you.”  *

“One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible, God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to inquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us….Only if we venture into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves us adn does not will to leave us along with our questions, on so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible” *

“but if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it.” *

“this path will lead right down into the deepest situation of human powerlessness. The follower becomes a laughingstock, scorned and taken for a fool, but a fool who is extremely dangerous to people’s peace and comfort, so that he or she must be beaten, locked up, tortured, if not put to death right away. That is exactly what became of this man Jeremiah (prophet in old testament), because he could not get away from God” *

“there is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect one-self. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.” *

“the restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old, but a life of uncomprising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount… Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.” *

“Bonhoeffer knew that one could see some things only with the eyes of faith, but they were no less real and true than the things one saw with one’s physical eyes. But the eyes of faith had a moral component. To see that it was against God’s wil to persecute the Jews, mone must choose to open one’s eyes. An then one would face another uncomfortable choice: whether to act as God required… Bonhoeffer strove to see what God wanted to show and then to do what God asked in response. That was the obedient Christian life, the call of the disciple. And it came with a cost, which explained why so many were afraid to open their eyes in the first place. It was the antithesis of the “cheap grace” that required nothing more than an easy mental assent.”

“the proclamation of grace has its limits. Grace may not be proclaimed to anyone who does not recognize or distinguish or desire it. ..The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample on the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them. For its own sake, for the sake of the sinner, and for the sake of the community, the Holy is to be protected from cheap surrender. The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance.” *

“we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be “unsuccessful” and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm.” *

On Bonhoeffer’s inner turmoil over whether to leave the US and return to Germany.

“It is remarkable how I am never quite clear about the motives for any of my decisions. Is that a sign of confusion, of inner dishonesty, or is it a sign that we are guided without knowing, or its it both?…I don’t know where I am. But he [God] knows, and in the end all doings and actions will be pure and clear.” *

Back in Germany, Bonhoeffer struggled regarding how Christians should respond to what they saw happening.

“Thus we were approaching the borderline between confession and resistance; and if we did not cross this border, our confession was going to be no better than cooperation with the criminals. And so it became clear where the problem lay for the Confessing Church: we were resisting by way of confession, but we were not confessing by way of resistance.” *

“In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things, the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done….history appeals its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means… the figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for a standard.” *

“God was interested not in success, but in obedience. If one obeyed God and was willing to suffer defeat and whatever else came one’s way, God would show a kind of success that the world couldn’t imagine. But this was the narrow path, and few would take it.”

“For Bohoeffer, the relationship with God ordered everything else around it….To be true to God in the deepest way meant having such a relationship with him that one did not live legalistically by rules or principles. One could never separate one’s actions from one’s relationship with God. It was a more demanding and more mature level of obedience, and Bonhoeffer had come to see that the evit of Hitler was forcing Christians to go deeper in their obedience, to think harder about what God was asking them. Legalistic religion was being shown to be utterly inadequate.”

“we must not confuse what we do naturally, such as wishing, hoping, sighing, lamenting, rejoicing, with prayer, which is unnatural to us, and which must be intiated from outside us, by God. If we confuse these two things.”

“who can comprehend how those whom God takes so early are chosen? Does not the early death of young Christians always appear to us as if God were plundering his own best instruments in a time in which they are most needed? Yet the Lord makes no mistakes. Might God need our brothers for some hidden service on our behalf in the heavenly world? We should put an end to our human thoughts, which always wish to know more than they can, and cling to that which is certain. Whomever God calls home is someone God has loved.” *

“God and the devil are engaged in battle in the world and that the devil also has a say in death. In the face of death we cannot simply speak in some fatalistic way, “God wills it”, but we must juxtapose it with the other reality, “God does not will it”. Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that it stands in need of redemption. Christ alone is the conquering of death. Here the sharp antithesis between “God wills it” and “God does not will it” comes to a head and also finds its resolution. God acedes to that which God does not will, and form now on death itself must therefore serve God. From now on, the “God wills it” encompasses even the “God does not will it.” God wills the conquering of death through the death of Jesus Christ. Only in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ has death been drawn into God’s power, and it must now serve God’s own aims. It is not some fatalistic surrender, but rather a living faith in Jesus Christ, who died and rose for use, that is able to cope profoundly with death.” *

“let us know dwell now on the bad that lurks and has power in every person, but let us encounter each other in great, free forgiveness and love, let us take each other as we are – with thanks and boundless trust in God, who has led us to this point and now loves us.” *

“who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegience to God – the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.” *

“the great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.” *

“if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ was called.” *

“to renounce a full life and its real joys in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human” *

“as long as Christ and the world are conceived as two realms bumping against and repelling each other, we are left with only the following options. Giving up on reality as a whole, either we place ourselves in one of the two realms, wanting Christ without the world or the world without Christ – and in both cases we deceive ourselves…there are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God’s reality reveale in Christ in the reality of this world.” *

“those who retreat to a private virtuousness neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But…they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest…” *

In the last weeks of Bonhoeffers life in prison before he was executed:

“death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle, it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the everlasting kingdom of peace….Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelouse, that we can transform death.” *

* indicates actual quotations from Bonhoeffers writings

Transforming Power by Robert Linthicum

Recently I have been thinking more about how God calls us to love our neighbour. I have been thinking about a recent dumping of poultry manure on a homeless camp in our community of Abbotsford and wondering how this fits with loving our neighbour.

Is it ironic that it was poultry manure – when the poultry industry is probably one of our economic drivers in Abbotsford, and we in Abbotsford boast that our agriculture produces higher economic returns per hectare than any other community in Canada?

How does this fit with the fact that our community of Abbotsford is very generous in that Abbotsford residents donate more for charitable giving than most other communities in Canada? Our Abbotsford residents give a lot towards our poor. Are we called to do more?

The United Nations has a lot to say about human rights and retaining the dignity of the homeless.

“Besides the violation of their right to adequate housing, homelss persons may be deprived of a whole range of other human rights. Laws that criminalize homelessness, vagrancy or sleeping rough, along with street cleaning operations to remove homeless people form the streets, have a direct impact on their physical and psychological integrity. Merely by not having a secure place to live, nor any privacy, homeless persons are much more vulnerable to violence, threats and harassment.”  (http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FS21_rev_1_Housing_en.pdf)

It is perhaps timely that for Father’s Day I was given a book called “Transforming Power: Biblical Strategies for Making a Difference in Your Community” by our daughter who was teaching social workers in Afghanistan….

Here are a few relevant quotes from this book that encourages me to think more and perhaps differently about this:

“You and I, as those empowered by the redeeming power of Jesus Christ, are not called to bring in the kingdom of God, the shalom community. God’s intentions for humanity will only realized fully by God’s final intervention in human history. But we are called to be a foretaste of that kingdom, a model of it in our life together, and to work towards God’s creation of that shalom community by being involved in:

–          Empowerment of our people as we together confront political systems of oppression and greed

–          Equitable distribution of wealth so that there will be no poor among us

–          Relationship with God and each other through Jesus Christ

Only as we commit ourselves to work for shalom community, keeping before ourselves the vision of the world as God intended it to be, can we have a significant impact on the world as it is.”

“The magnificent book of Deuteronomy presents God’s design for the way political, economic and religious systems, and their prophets and the people are meant to function. The word that I believe most effectively captures this comprehensive vision of the world is the Hebrew word shalom. Shalom is a corporate word….It  describes the political, economic and religious well-being of a people and their systems who are building a society upon a religion of personal and corporate relationship with God and each other, a politics of justice and an  economics of equitable distribution of wealth designed to eliminate poverty in their midst.”

“How would the church be different if it believed that Jesus worked for the transformation of both people and their society? What would happen if we believed that God’s work of salvation was as big as the totality of sin – corporate as well as individual, social, economic and political as well as spiritual – and that Christ came to die for all of that world? How would the church in your city be different if it saw itself as working with Christ for the building of you city’s shalom? And what could Christian people like you accomplish to right the wrongs in your city, if they could see such work as being the logical extension of the work that their Lord and Saviour had come to do? What would happen if we really were to take Jesus seriously?”

“Paul (in the book of Ephesians) is declaring that the work of the church is to hold up to the Roman Empire and to any other system an entirely different vision for their society – a vision of all of life lived in shalom under the authority of Christ and manifested in that society’s pursuit of a politics of justice, an economics of equitable distribution of wealth, the elimination of poverty and a people in relationship to God. And that mystery can only be realized if the church will move beyond itself to be engaged in every possible way in public life.”

“Our task is to work for the peace and the prosperity and the welfare and the good of all the people, the systems and structures, and even the principalities and powers of our city. It means that nothing is outside the purview, concern or commitment of the church, whether it is political, economic, religious, social, cultural, environmental or spiritual, whether it is in the public domain or in the private. The essential task of the church is to work for its society’s shalom – to work for the full and total transformation of all the people, forces and structures with the love of God.”

“Working for Shalom of your city:

1. Become God’s presence – enter fully into the life of the city
2. Pray for the city – God’s people must pray regularly and systematically for their city’s leaders. Systems, and the principalities and powers behind those systems.
3. Practice your faith through action – work for justice and shalom,
   1. Undertake ministries of mercy and seek to serve the needs of the poor
   2. Be advocates for the powerless
   3. Work with and mobilize the poor to provide needed community services
   4. Proclaim the good news – it is the responsibility of the church to proclaim God’s prophetic and reconciling word to the political, economic and value-producing systems of our society and to the leaders of these structures.”

The book gives further discussion on how God calls us to work towards the world as God has intended it to be:

“A final common value would be a shared commitment to the Iron Rule: “Never do for others what they can do for themselves.” This commitment recognizes that each of us as individuals and all of us as a relational culture are to assume responsibility for the practice of relational power, justice and an economics of sufficiency rather than of greed in our personal lives and our public actions”

“Power is the ability, capacity and willingness of a person, a group of people or an institution to act.”

“There are two types of power. The first is unilateral. The other essential type of power is relational power. Whereas unilateral power is power over a constituency, relational is power with… The deepest form of relational power is reciprocal power. It is one where people understand that both parties or forces can benefit from power decisions if they authentically share those decisions. Therefore reciprocal power is truly shared power in with each party is of equal strength, is equally participative in the decision-making process and is committed not to its private or exclusive good but to the common good”

“Essentially, Yahweh is described in Scripture as a relational God, yearning for relationship both with the people and he has created. Even the words used for God are relational in nature – father, son –, spirit – and God’s work in and through us is described in relational terms – love, grace, truth, covenant.”

“Our responsibility as children of God is to use relational power in ways that will be pleasing to God and transforming of each other.”

This book is giving me lots to think about as I reflect on what God calls me to to in my own community!