South Africa IV

So here are some notes I've jotted down to myself about some preliminary thoughts about the progression of the congress....

Day 1
Arriving in the plenary hall at Cape Town on the first day was close to overwhelming - a massive hall, with rows and rows of tables upon tables - like a sea of chairs by a shore of enormous Jumbotron screens. Just the sheer vastness took my breath away - to believe that this many people from all over the world were coming to celebrate Christ!
The opening ceremonies were beautiful. I loved how the dancers marched into the hall, not bearing the flags of all nations, but a variety of mono-coloured flags instead, demonstrating that the gospel is not an issue of nationalism, that no nation can take credit for the gospel, that we should not be divided based on citizenship or geographic location, but that we reflect the beauty and diversity of the globe. Wow!
Dancing, music, singing and a brief video of the history of Christianity swept across the stage and refreshed my memory at what a heritage we share, how God has constantly been moving amongst His people, even before Protestantism even existed, and how He continues to move today, despite history, despite humanity, despite various periods in time when we were convinced that the end times were nigh.

Day 2
The theme for the second day was truth and the notion of truth. This is where internal conflict started to rage. It was a very good challenge for me to be reminded of the exclusive truth claim that we make about the nature and person of Jesus Christ, and that we, loving this particular truth, should be eager and ready to speak of Him who loves us so. However, the subtle differences in the presentations of all the speakers that morning either left me with a bad taste in my mouth, a reasonable medium, or extreme guilt.
I suspect for those in the family who are most concerned about “truth” care most about the kernel, the core, the narrow centre of truth of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And yes, when they speak of absolute truth claims, then they are correct. However, wandering into the margins of the orb of truth, it gets a bit murkier. In what forms does ‘transformation by the gospel’ present itself? There are many who are ‘transformed by Jesus Christ’, but still are corrupt, still divorce, still consume much more than their share, and rationalize that they are covered by grace, and, in addition, do not consider deeply the effects of their everyday lives in the proclamation of the gospel. (Seriously - changing one CFL lightbulb in your home, thinking that that is creation care is spurious, at best). Others still emphasize the avoidance of only certain sins count (ahem, sexual sin in all its manifestations), and completely ignore others (inequity, injustice, etc) claiming either that these are covered by grace (aren’t all sins covered by grace?), or even moving towards the occasional detour into pseudo-prosperity gospel… I have always found that difficult; simply because I don’t watch porn and am not homosexual, yet perpetuate and participate in economic systems that insist on keeping the poor ‘in their place’ or allow systems for slavery to occur, or allow orphans and widows to fend for themselves, that I’m an “OK” Christian, or that God has blessed me so that I wouldn’t have to suffer too much hardship?
One speaker noted that the will to win others can lead to an arrogance of claiming every aspect of the whole truth as exclusively ours which leads to the danger of hatred and mistrust of the other, and, in many contexts, leads to violence. The reality is, beauty, goodness, care of the land and people are not exclusively the domain of Christianity, though we act like we own it all (though it is, in fact, Creator God who owns all beauty and goodness in all its forms). In our arrogance, we tend to diminish the beauty that already exists, considering it inferior if it does not directly proclaim Christ to everything around it. I suppose this is partially why many artist friends find it hard to find their place in the church.
Following this was our initial regional gathering, where we met with the rest of the Canadian delegation, which was fabulous, though there was still too many of us around to meet everyone. The evenings were designed to highlight different areas of the globe, and the first night was Asia. Personally (uh, not that I’m biased), I thought it was the most well done of the regions. We had a very moving time of prayer for our brothers and sisters in China who were not allowed to come to join us, and we in turn were blessed with a song sent from them that was played for us. Furthermore, a moving testimonial from a young North Korean girl, whose parents fled with her when she was a child, but who subsequently died for the gospel, left me weeping and shaking. I don’t think she left a dry eye in the house, but I am sure for those of us of Korean heritage, it was all the more moving. Her father, so convicted by the power of the gospel, returned twice on suicide missions to tell his countrymen about Jesus. The first time, he was imprisoned for several years and managed to escape. The second time - well, this young lady had not heard from her father in over two years, so presumes him tortured and dead. Gosh, just thinking about her family’s love for each other, for their country and for God makes me all teary all over again.
As you can see, there were many high and low lights, already in one day. Swinging from, “Oh, how God loves humanity! How great His love, His purposes and His plans!” to “What on earth is with the arrogance, the distrust that some in the church have for everything that is not exactly according to their narrow understanding of theology? How maddening!” That’s how it was, but the extremes became even more so over the course of the week…