FFT

May God bless you with a restless discomfort
about easy answer, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression,
and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for
justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer
from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you
may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that
you really can make a difference in this world, so that you are able,
with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

And the blessing of God the Supreme Majesty and our Creator,
Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word Who is our Brother and Saviour,
and the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide, be with you
and remain with you, this day and forevermore. Amen.

-Franciscan benediction

Finding light in the mud and hay

So, barring the massive snowstorm engulfing the northeastern USA, I am heading back to Haiti. I've kind of left it low-key, and even a few of my close friends didn't even know I was going.
Some have wondered why I wanted to go back, especially at this time of year, when there are many more fun things I could be doing in the city. There are several reasons: some pragmatic (like, it's warm! I figure I didn't want to leave December out as a month that I didn't ride on an airplane. They need people on the ground. It'd be good to see my Haitian friends again. I need to see with my own eyes how progress has been made, or not, in the time I've been away), some not. Certainly, in light of various current events, I felt it was much more poignant to spend Christmas (originally I was supposed to be there Christmas Day, but for various reasons that didn't happen) literally in the mud and hay with the same poor, displaced, potentially illegitimate children that our Lord Himself found Himself in when He arrived two thousand years ago, rather than sitting around at feast after feast, gorging myself on my family's abundance. My emotional and spiritual angst cannot compare to the angst that continues, one year after the earthquake.
A Haitian friend of mine that I was chatting with online the night of the election riots told me, in real time, how she could hear the gunfire, and could smell the tires burning in the streets of Port-au-Prince. That clinched it for me. How we could sit back and allow such horridness, such despair to continue just five hours away (just as close as Vancouver is) is inconceivable. To rationalize that this is God's judgement on these people makes me want to vomit.
We are to put feet and wings to the gospel. It is good news. It can change lives. It can change nations. It can transform hearts, people and entire societies. To keep it in our heads or our hearts disinvolves the rest of the body, keeping it an inward-looking faith. And so, off I go again, to try to put hands and feet to my Jesus, and trying to find Him as well in the faces that I will see...

FFT

Our Christian habit is to bewail the world's deteriorating standards with an air of rather self-righteous dismay. We criticize its violence, dishonesty, immorality, disregard for human life, and materialistic greed. "The world is going down the drain," we say with a shrug. But whose fault is it? Who is to blame? Let me put it like this. If the house is dark when nightfall comes, there is no sense in blaming the house; that is what happens when the sun goes down. The question to ask is "Where is the light?" Similarly, if the meat goes bad and becomes inedible, there is no sense in blaming the meat; that is what happens when bacteria are left alone to breed. The question to ask is "Where is the salt?" Just so, if society deteriorates and its standards decline until it becomes like a dark night or a stinking fish, there is no sense in blaming society; that is what happens when fallen men and women are left to themselves, and human selfishness is left unchecked. The question to ask is "Where is the Church? Why are the salt and light of Jesus Christ not permeating and changing our society?" It is sheer hypocrisy on our part to raise our eyebrows, shrug our shoulders, or wring our hands. The Lord Jesus told us to be the world's salt and light. If therefore darkness and rottenness abound, it is largely our faults and we must accept the blame.
- John Stott

FFT

Being recently labelled an 'extremist' (by those within the Family, not without, sadly), I found this passage helpful:

"But... as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label [of extremist]. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime - the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
- Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr.

FFT

" 'If God created us in His image, we have more than reciprocated.' That's what French philosopher Voltaire said of the human tendency to mould God into our own likeness. Similarly, God's son has been adapted to a great variety of human-created roles. To capitalist Christians, Jesus was a model entrepreneur. To socialist Christians, he was a hard-core socialist. To eco-Christians, he was a lily-loving environmentalist. To self-help Christians, he was motivational guru. And to Christian activists, he was a revolutionary....
...there was always some uneasiness about such a specific and selective interpretation of Jesus' life... How can the story of Jesus shape me if I am so busy shaping it?...
...instinct tells me that it's more valuable to focus not on what I want to see but on what I may not want to see. It is the latter that can stretch me."
- Will Braun

"Obviously Jesus was a hippie. Just look at the pictures of him, all earnest and long-haired. With his sandals and his groovy tunic. Always going on about peace and love and expanding people's consciousness. No doubt he could do wonders with a hacky sack.
For a long time I really embraced that caricature - well, except for the part about the hacky sack. I had Jesus pegged as a peace-loving, social justice advocate with no time for the rich. So, he was kind of like me. But then it struck me that it was just a bit too convenient that Jesus' political and social views mirrored mine so well.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm still convinced that Jesus was a lefty. But I'm not so arrogant as to believe that anyone who has a different take on him is necessarily out of line....
Contrast, for example, my hippie-Jesus with the Jesus of Revelation... whoa.
There are other less dramatic contradictions, of course...
All of this is open to interpretation, of course. And therein lies the key to our propensity to project all kinds of characteristics on Jesus to suit a chosen image of him. We fashion Jesus' sayings and teachings to fit our line of thinking, and if we don't like the face value of his words, we can always add the caveat: "what he really meant when he said that was [insert theological interpretation here]."
Because Jesus is such a potent symbolic figure for religious and non-religious people alike, he's constantly used as an instrument to further a point of view - political, religious or other-wise.... most of the time, characterization of Jesus that rub us the wrong way can't simply be written off as disingenuous or duplicitous - no matter how unreasonable we may find them.
This point struck me a few years ago while listening to a right-wing preacher use Jesus' Sermon on the Mount to justify the war in Iraq. Seriously...
A warmonger. A guerilla. These examples show that when you take the complexities and contradictions of the figure of Jesus himself, and combine them with our presumptions and contemporary sensibilities, he can end up being whoever you want him to be. A superhero. A revolutionary. A magician. A carpenter. All those things and more...."
- Nicholas Klassen

Theological dictionary

All references, as quoted, from wikipedia:

Heathen: Also, pagan. "typically used to refer to polytheistic religious traditions, although from a Christian perspective, the term can encompass all non–Abrahamic religions", "an all-embracing, pejorative term...with overtones of the inferior and the commonplace"... that is to say, everyone who is not good enough to be 'one of us'. That is also to say, everyone not of the "in" crowd, and able to be easily excluded because of perceived inferiority or inability to be "special" enough to be included. In contrast to the vast table of God's grace, where those least likely to be called are those invited to dine at the table, and those who assumed that they deserve to feast based on merit, or even a misunderstanding of grace, find themselves alienated from those at the table.

Heretic/heresy: "a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma, distinct from apostasy". "Irenaeus.. describe(d) and discredit(ed) his opponents during the early centuries of the Catholic Church... the Catholic Church holds Protestantism as espousing numerous heresies... some Protestants considered Catholicism the "Great Apostasy"... Church leaders (held) the power to, in effect, pronounce the death sentence upon those whom the Church considered heretical...Protestant churches were also known to execute those whom they considered as heretics.... The subject of Christian heresy opens up broader questions as to who has a monopoly on spiritual truth"... that is to say, heresy is in the eyes of the beholder. Those who hold the power (at the time) get to determine who are the heretics; it is an abuse and misuse of power in order to remove all legitimate alternative voices. In reality, all are heretical, as any who claim to have the monopoly on truth in effect claims that they are God, possibly the greatest heresy of them all.

Evangelical: I can define this one: There are four distinctives that differentiate evangelical Christianity from other streams of Christian thought, as outlined by Bebbington. 1. Personal decision/conversion to Jesus Christ. 2. The need to share the narrative of Jesus and of evangelism. 3. The high view of Scripture. 4. The centrality of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That is to say: There are many who are evangelicals in this world. These are our central unifying distinctives (and even within them, there is a wide diversity of understanding of those four distinctives and their implications). Everything else becomes a bit of gravy. Unilateral decisions on all other issues of what is orthodox and what is not, and then being able to draw lines in the sand as to who is 'evangelical' and who is not based on all other issues is again, another demonstration of theological arrogance.

Cult: "the totality of external religious practice and observance, the neglect of which is the definition of impiety... (it) has come to connote the total cultural aspects of a religion... (it is also) considered subjective... in reference to groups seen as authoritarian... The word implies a group which is a minority in a given society." That is to say, the original usage of the term was to denote all the practices and traditions that were particular to a specific understanding of a religious tradition. Now, the term is a bit more sinister and unfortunately thrown about like candy when labeling those who are different. However, there is also the reality that many people prefer the safety and the black/white dichotomy that many more rigid frameworks offer. It is often too difficult for people to live with uncertainty, mystery and faith; the safety of the rigid, inflexible worldview is often an easier retreat from dealing with society.

Hypocrite: "the state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie." That is to say, people who smile politely at you, and pleasantly chit chat and pretend to be your friend, while meanwhile backstabbing the best they can without having the balls to say anything.