In this good and plain article, Archbishop Jensen explains all the plans and purposes for the GAFCON conference which is currently taking place. Definitely worth a read, and definitely worth getting your head around if you haven’t yet…. Article on Christianity Today here.
Archive for June, 2008
…. to the Fox! Firefox 3 that is.
Having been a Fox (and of course the attendant Linux and Thunderbird kit) fan from way back, I’m really struggled to be content with my Windows usage since getting this darned laptop. As a side note – I had two years of no PC, and that was pure bliss. Anyhow, after bumbling around with IE on this new laptop for a while, I’ve come back to the good side and have installed ‘THE FOX’. The new version of the fox too! Copied straight outta compton… *ehem* straight out of Between Two Worlds (www.theologica.blogspot.com), here’s a couple of cracker quotes from the nerds at PCMAG:
“Three years in development, over 15,000 bug fixes and feature improvements, a new page rendering engine, remarkable performance gains, multiple OS integration — you could say the several hundred engineers working on Firefox have been busy. And their work has paid off.
Speedy performance, thrifty memory usage, and, in particular, the address bar that now predicts where you want to go when you start typing (what Mozilla insiders refer to as the Awesome Bar) firmly plant Firefox at the top of the Web browser hill, flying the flag of our Editors’ Choice for browsers.“
In particular:
“The top new feature has to be the address bar, what Mozilla types call “The Awesome Bar,” but which the development team has officially dubbed the location bar. As you type into it, a list of suggested Web destinations based on your browsing history pops up.
It uses what Mozilla’s phenomenologist Mike Beltzner has coined “frecency” — a combination of frequency and recentness — to determine the best suggestions. And, as icing on the cake, the search bar is now resizable, so you can divvy the space between the location and search bars to your taste.
When I tried it, the location bar’s first suggestion was right on the money most of the time. Knowing that hitting the down arrow and Enter will usually get you where you want to go — not to mention save you untold keystrokes and time — will change your browsing habits.“
So, now I’m just trying how best to configure my RSS Reader and I’m interested – what readers do you use? Help!
I’ve (far left) just recently asked a few questions of Rev. Kenny Lloyd (far right) of Emmanuel Church (Port Elizabeth, South Africa) about pastoring and challenges in South Africa. Having been mentored by, and having worked with Kenny for a few years I am glad to share his thoughts with you. Kenny is the most pastorally gifted man I have come across. I have caught a mere few things from him, and am deeply thankful for Him. Here’s a short interview with Kenny:
1) Kenny, welcome to Seeing Through a Mirror Dimly! Thanks for doing a short little interview with me. Tell me, as a sports-lover who’s spent time in Australia and South Africa, how do you decide who to support in the big matches between these great teams?
I’m rather divided these days so in Cricket I shout for the South African Proteas, in rugga I cheer on the Wallabies, in fact I’m wearing my Wallaby jersey as I type! There again in the Rugby World Cup I shouted for England, I think I’m confused Mark! Help.
2) Who has been the most influential person in your life?
One tends to give different answers at different stages. At this stage Simon Manchester and Simon Flinders, pastors at St-Thomas North Sydney, have affected the way I teach the Gospel and the way I relate to people more than anyone else in a long time. Paul Dale has got me thinking about training people for ministry. They’ve affected the way I operate – that’s influence.
3) What book has most impacted your life?
Funnily enough the Bible. The Bible introduced me to the Holy and Merciful God. Books have started to play a major role in my thinking. At the moment, Calvin’s institutes of Religion as well as a good book on mission like Samuel Escobar’s “A Time for Mission,” have helped me think systematically & outside my normal frame of reference.
4) Kenny, you and your family live in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Can you give us a short picture of what your current ministry in PE looks like?
We currently serve at a predominantly White evangelical church called Emmanuel, half the week, and spend the other half amongst young Black African students in the university context. Emmanuel church currently supports the student ministry.
5) How do you keep your devotional life with the Lord fresh, and your zeal for Him strong?
At the moment I am reading Peter O’Brien’s commentary on Ephesians in preparation for a series of talks on Ephesians in 2 months time. Its that kind of demanding reading as well as my own current quiet time reading in Genesis that is giving fuel to my praise and gratitude to God. I also have a very simple prayer program for the days of the week which gives the praying some structure. I don’t know if getting quiet with God & reading his Bible is going out of fashion but Michael Cassidy is right when he says “We need solitude with God and his Word.”
6) You grew up in SA, recently spent 3 years in Sydney, and are now back in South Africa – what seem to be some of the major differences between your church experience in AUS and the church experience in SA?
One of the obvious differences is that the Sydney Anglican Diocese is a highly organized well taught resourced church with clear goals. You’ll find patches of that in South Africa (SA) but a lot of what I’ve seen, particularly amongst our younger Black people, is a zeal that lacks knowledge. The beautiful thing is so many of the younger poorer Black Christians are crying out for real Bible truth, more so than the younger White people (in my experience.)
Another difference is that here in SA we face the reality of poverty, crime, injustice and instability and so Christians need to work out how to live for God and neighbor in complex situations. The Australian challenges were different, more Post Christian and Post Modern.
7) Does post-apartheid South Africa face any major challenges within the Church in particular?
Yes. One real issue facing South Africa is Apartheid (again). Recent xenophobic attacks (over 60 foreigners killed, many thousands displaced) have reminded us how close to the surface, deep problems lie. The challenge for the church will be to show SA that there are 3 groups of people in South Africa: Blacks, Whites and Christians.
Kenny, later this year you’re moving into University-based ministry – what are your hopes and dreams for this ministry?
Kenny, later this year you’re moving into University-based ministry – what are your hopes and dreams for this ministry?We’re working more and more amongst younger South Africans. We hope to plant a church under the banner of the Church of England in South Africa where students and others will be discipled and equipped to serve and know Jesus wherever they go, beyond there student days. We also hope to see our Uni group called Bible Speaks Today, growing in its influence and numbers on campus here in Port Elizabeth.
9) If our readers (anyone!?) are keen to stop and just now pray for you – what would you love them to be praying for?
Thanks for praying friends – please ask our heavenly father to lead us by his Spirit and Word as we make lots of decisions in the next while, where to plant, how to be church, to provide everything we need. Please thank Him for opening doors for us to bring the Gospel of grace to people in Port Elizabeth, its been a great joy!
So, please do pray for Kenny and his family as they make decisions about how to serve our Lord in Port Elizabeth. He’s a wonderful friend and a guy whom I know would be very grateful to God for your prayers.
“To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.” 1 Peter 5:11
I love hiphop and love poetry generally… so this is brilliant. Lauryn Hill’s a queen, a poet, an inspiration – and this is a great piece of her poetry which I thought I might share!
There are three new editions at frame-poythress.org:
A Fresh Look at the Regulative Principle John M. Frame
Review of Peter Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation by John Frame
A Primer on Perspectivalism (Revised 2008) by John Frame
I’ve had a read of the Primer on Perspectivalism and I think it’s great! In it, Frame discusses knowledge, perspectives on knowledge and the application of perspectivalism to pastoral ministry, ethics, salvation, revelation, and the Trinity! Here’s a short little introductory sample:
“God knows absolutely everything, because he planned everything, made everything, and determines what happens in the world he made. So we describe him as omniscient. One interesting implication of God’s omniscience is that he not only knows all the facts about himself and the world; he also knows how everything appears from every possible perspective. If there were a fly on my office wall, my typing would look very different to him from the way it looks to me. But God knows, not only everything about my typing, but also how that typing appears to the fly on the wall. Indeed, because God knows hypothetical situations as well as actualities, God knows exhaustively what a fly in that position would experience—if such a fly were present—even if it is not. God’s knowledge, then, is not only omniscient, but omniperspectival. He knows from his own infinite perspective; but that infinite perspective includes a knowledge of all created perspectives, possible and actual.
But we are different. We are finite, and our knowledge is finite. I can only know the world from the limited perspective of my own body and mind. The effects of this finitude, and even more of sin, should caution us against cocksureness in our claims to knowledge. I am not saying that we should doubt everything. Certainly my limited perspective gives me no excuse to doubt that I have five fingers, or that 2+2 = 4, or that God exists. Our finitude does not imply that all our knowledge is erroneous, or that certainty is impossible. But we do, in most situations, need to guard against mistakes.”
Starting from Dave’s post about Self-Harm, I tried to unpack how narcissism has crept into our culture and what it’s symptoms are: posts, here and here.
In short, the cultural condition of Narcissism is the preoccupation with the self which distorts one’s functional relationship to reality (my definition).
What answer is there to someone who has replaced the Self-Other relationship with a Self-Self relationship? What can take a person away from using the world around them as a mirror? How can we lift people out of the pit which keeps them trapped inside their heads? What hope does the Christian have to offer a world of people who are fast becoming disconnected from reality?
I believe that the Gospel – the good news – of the Lord Jesus Christ is the one and only true place of healing for person who is crying out for truth, beauty and goodness. The greatest weapon against narcissism is reality, and Jesus Christ is the only person who can open eyes to what is REAL. This is the starting point, and really, it is the only starting point. Without the shed blood of Christ, there can be no true and lasting healing.
Now, if the crux of the issue with narcissism is the loss of the Self-Other relationship, I want to suggest three key issues that must accompany our solution:
1) The Reality of God
As Francis Schaeffer used to say, there is an infinite-personal God who is there. The one who is completely other reverses the locus of our attention. This is a radical shift in thought in the sense that it is a return to the personal radix, God. True worship cannot exist in a self-centered cosmos, but a God-centered one.
2) The Reality of Man
There is a clear Creator-Creature distinction between God and man, and this is important. For man is wholly derived from and dependant on God (“in whom we live and move and have our being” Acts 17:28). We are rooted in his existence.
Futher, we are created in his image (Gen 1:27) are thus are meant to reflect Him. Thus, who we are meant to be isn’t primarily derived from others around us (nor the advertising industry!) but from God Himself! It is only from the right standpoint outside of ourselves that we can truly find ourselves.
3) The Reality of Community
Since we are intended to image the Trinitarian God who is community, we are intended to live in community. It is only when we are living in community that we can truly be human the way God intended.
Which is why I believe that we need to make concerted efforts to foster community. Our modern, consuming society provides a framework which works against real, other-person-focused community and we need to work against this. In our homes, churches, schools, friendships, workplaces – we need to seriously think through what is required if we are to be in a community where we can “rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Rom 12:15).
We need churches to be places where we can truly show love – not just have great teaching, nor lots of numbers, nor lots of ministries, nor miraculous signs and wonders, nor even hollow community just for community’s sake! But Christ-centered, loving family churches.
I could say so much more, and this is a very feeble attempt at an answer. The Prophet Isaiah wrote in the 53rd chapter, that by the wounds which afflicated Jesus Christ - we are healed. This side of heaven, the healing will be impartial, yet substantial. By coming in filthy rags to the foot of Jesus, God says in the 55th chapter of Isaiah that your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
Jesus Christ undertook the least narcissistic of all acts, and gave his Self up for Others. Here’s a beautiful prayer from the Book of Common Prayer that you might like to pray:
“Almighty and eternal God, so draw my heart to you,
so guide my mind, so fill my imagination, so control my will,
that I may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated unto you.
And then use me as You want and always to Your glory and the welfare of Your people
through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Well, Sunday’s here. I love the Christian calendar and find it quite a lovely devotional help. So, for the lectionary-minded, it’s the 3rd Sunday after Trinity. Here’s the prayer (collect) for this week:
Almighty God,
who hast broken the tyranny of sin
and hast sent the Spirit of thy Son into our hearts,
whereby we call thee Father:
give us grace to dedicate our freedom to thy service,
that the whole world may be brought to the glorious
liberty of the children of God;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In the week past, we remembered and thanked the Lord for Bishop Broughton (first missionary bishop to Australia) and the Anglican martyrs in Uganda (1886). But, that aside, what else can we say to round up the week?
- Archbishops Peter Jensen and Rowan Williamson make the front page of the Good Weekend in the Sydney Morning Herald in a piece entitled The Great Schism. The article isn’t online, but is being discussed here and there’s a related article here.
- John Frame’s new book, The Doctrine of the Christian Life is almost out!
- For some strange reason, we’re still concerned with the Presidential election race in the US. But we’re not American…. are we?
- Dave Clancey’s church is snowed-in. Update: church went ahead, and snowmen was executed afterwards!
- Dave Miers writes a thought provoking article on Self Harm and the Cross.
- The latest Indiana Jones isn’t fantastic, but at least it’s better than the Temple of Doom.
- The World Press Photo 2008 Exhibition was fantastic! Here’s the Benizir Bhutto series, which I found very moving.
Here are some of the interesting ways of searching that people got here:
- seeing in a mirror
- sinner danger zone blogspot
- “l abri” greatham
- “james ka smith”
- postmoderns leithart
- teaching a calvinist to dance
- stalag three
- “n.t. wright”
- cruise the only ones who can help
- mark dever+bondage of guidance
- michael horton nt wright
- n. t. wright
- nt wright
- pow in staglag luft
- www.frame~poythress.com
Well, as the Lord’s providence would have it, as found an absolute treasure in a Newtown 2nd hand bookstore today! It’s a book by Christopher Lasch I’ve heard good things about entitled: The Culture of Narcissism.
In it, he draws two important distinctions: 1) a distinction between the clinical condition of narcissism and the cultural condition of narcissism, and b) a line of distinction between the all-time human condition of selfishness (which I would root in a condition called sin!), and the modern cultural condition of narcissism.
I really believe that this is a serious problem today, and it’s that it’s important to read the culture today in order to speak truth to it. So, here we go with a few quotes:
“A denial of the past, superficially progressive and optimistic, proves on closer analysis to embody the despair of a society that cannot face the future.” (Preface)
“To live for the moment is the prevailing passion — to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity.” (pg 5)
“‘Love’ as self-sacrifice or self-abasement, ‘meaning’ as submission to a higher loyalty – these sublimations strike the therapeutic sensibility as intolerable oppressive, offensive to common sense and injurous to personal health and well-being.” (pg13)
“The mass media, with their cult of celebrity and their attempt to surround it with glamour and excitement, have made Americans a nation of fans, moviegoers. The media give substance to and thus intensify narcissistic dreams of fame and glory, encourage the common man to identify himself with the stars and to hate the ‘herd’, and make it more and more difficult for him to accept the banality of everyday existence.” (pg 21)
“Theoretical precision about narcissism is important not only because the idea is so readily susceptible to moralistic inflation but because the practice of equating narcissism with everything selfish and disagreeable militates against historical specificity. Men have always been selfish, groups have always been ethnocentric; nothing is gained by giving these qualities a psychriatic label.” (pg 32)
“In a simpler time, advertising merely called attention to the product and extolled its advantages. Now it manufactures a product of its own: the consumer, perpetually unsatisfied, restless, anxious, and bored. Its ‘educates’ the masses into an unappeasable appetite not only for goods but for new experiences and personal fulfillment. It upholds consumption as the answer to the age-old discontents of loneliness, sickness, weariness, lack of sexual satisfaction; at the same time it creates new forms of discontent peculiar to the modern age. It plays seductively to the malaise of industrial civilization. Is your job boring and meaningless? Is your life empty? Consumption promises to fill the aching void; hence the attempt to surround the commodities with an aura of romance…” (pg 72,73)
“Because the narcissist has so few inner resources, he looks to others to validate his sense of self. He needs to be admired for his beauty, charm, celebrity, or power — attributes that usually fade with time. Unable to achieve satisfying sublimations in the form of love and work, he finds that he has little to sustain him when youth passes him by.” (pg210)
“The best hope of emotional maturity, then, appears to lie in a recognition of our need for and dependence on people who nevertheless remain separate from ourselves and refuse to submit to our whims. It lies in a recognition of others not as projections of our own desires but as independent being with desires of their own. More broadly, it lies in acceptance of our limits.” (pg242)
Again, I do want to stress that this is something which Christians should take seriously. Why? Well because we want to share the good news of the one who can restore relation to the ultimate Other, the others around us, the self within, and the other world in which we live. This post is coming!
Dave Miers writes a great article on his blog about Self-Harm. Pointing to an ABC article just released, Dave notes that there has been a 43% increase in the rate of youth hospitalisations due to self-harm in Australia over the last decade.
The two major methods of self-harm are firstly cutting closely followed by poisoning. This is a very sad and distressing thing indeed. From my limited experience with those who have cut themselves it seems like it’s a common way of dealing with emotions which are quite difficult.
While lamenting this sad thing, and without wanting to be overly analytical about it, I’m curious as to the causes of this rising trend. I’ll write some thoughts about the trend in this post, and I’ll write a hopeful Christian response in the next.
In the ABC radio interview from the article, one of the contributing factors was described as a “Growth in individualism and loss of connection” and I think this could be onto something.
I’ve been thinking for a while about the culture of narcissism in which we live. That is, the preoccupation with the self. I believe that self-harm might be one of the outworkings of our culture of narcissism.
If the Other outside of the Self becomes merely a way to reflect the Self, then the Self-Other relationship becomes a Self-Self relationship. This can be illustrated by the modern loss of history, consumerist society and even total subjectivity in art! Ultimate Truth and Reality are totally self-referential. I’m lost inside myself. Trapped inside the cosmos.
What can make the ghost in the machine come alive? What becomes the criteria for what is real? That which impacts me existentially – the criteria of which is the sensational. The intense.
This can be seen in religion. The sociologist, Hugh Mackay writes in Advance Australia… Where?: “While many people express a yearning for clearer articulation of non-material values without resort to institutional religion, the whole idea of spirituality has acquired new currency. This may be an inevitable reaction to an over-cooked materialism, but it has also arisen from our sustained epidemic of anxiety and an associated desire to find a still point in the midst of swirling uncertainty.” Is this any clearer than in the rapid growth of meditation, pagan worship, and experiential religion in western society today?
But now, what about self-harm? What is the link between the forementioned ‘loss of connection’ and self-harm? Well at that very moment of cutting yourself you cease to be a ghost. The intense experience transcends the self. I do exist in relation to something outside of myself. I do touch reality. I am connected to something out there.
Further, I believe that eating binges bring a similar physical sensation in order to bring the ghost alive. Not only that, but drug trips, bringe drinking, danger sports, eroticism, modern film (think Tarentino!) – all new and frightening heights of experience to feel alive. To bring the ghost alive!
Intense experience is something which I believe our narcissistic culture relies on like a positive reinforcement model to find the Self some point of contact with the Other. To be found inside myself and the cosmos.
There is a hope for reconnection to God, mankind and yourself in reality. The disconnection is in all of us, but there is a hope in the Christian cross. I’ll write soon about this place of restoration.
Michael Horton and friends over at the White Horse Inn and turning this week’s focus to NT Wright and the position known as the New Perspective on Paul.
I’m beginning to come to a better understanding of the issues at stake here, so this week at the White Horse is quite timely indeed.
Michael Horton is an excellent theologian from Westminster Theological Seminary and will certainly bring good light to shed on this important topic. I might even post up a few thoughts throughout the week.
Here’s the place to check: http://whitehorseinn.org/index.htm
