A Conversation: Tim Keller, John Piper, D.A. Carson (2 of 6)

A Conversation: Tim Keller, John Piper, D.A. Carson (1 of 6) — Ministrie...

A Conversation: Tim Keller, John Piper, D.A. Carson (4 of 6)

Roots and Shoots in growing the Kingdom of God

Capitalism.  It is the ocean we swim in, whether we like it or not.   The Darwinian business and economic model is so entrenched in the world system that it seems a Christian business is almost a contradiction in terms.  
But God desires growth:  His Kingdom come is not some naive wish-fulfilment but a real and concrete growth in righteousness in every area and relation.  He takes the broken things in the world and redeems them to something beautiful, and scripture (especially places like Malachi) warns and threatens against immoral use of wealth and growing monopoly.  The warning has an aim: that His people should TURN from those practises to something more in line with His Kingdom purposes, more in line with His character, more in line with imago Dei.  To stop what they are doing, and generally to do the opposite.

I know that, in Morecambe as in a great many other places, hope is hard to come by when your highest legitimate aim is to join the ranks of the working poor.  This might be why so many people live week to week on the pounds worth of hope that the lottery provides.  It, along with other forms of gambling, offers the hope not just of a limited burst of pleasure, but a radical change of lifestyle.  It is, of course, a false hope.  Statistically you are more likely to be hit by a lightening bolt, and it doesn't take much research to unearth the sad tales of those who have won but not prospered by it.  This limited achievable aspiration leads to many looking to less legitimate ways of raising their game: simply put, crime does pay, as anyone who knows a local drug-dealer can see.  Money, cars and fresh clothes, if not lasting security.

Our God is the King of hope though, a lasting hope.  One that starts as small as a mustard seed but grows continually until eternal life.  The certainty of things unseen.  So what hope can He bring to Morecambe, in real, measurable and practical ways, or indeed to any area of the world?  Mercy ministry?  Yes, sure.  But that is not enough.  In Proverbs it says "there is much profit in the fallow land of the poor, but injustice sweeps it away".  We as Christians are not just to feed the hungry, but to bring about justice for the poor.  The fact that this country even has a label for "the working poor" is a shame on us.  Our government subsidises Big Business in the form of tax credits:  ensuring that corporations don't need to worry about their workers starving, and maximising their profit margin through tax-payer support of their negligently poor wages.  

Christians need to offer a realistic alternative to this.  We have to see business as mission; wealth creation a purposeful blessing to be shared; profit for the community rather than from it.

This is something I am presently trying to get to grips with, as we need, as a house, as a 'project', for lack of a better word, some more structure within which our church family can grow.  We need jobs for the jobless, purpose and vision and hope, encouraging entrepreneurship, growth and giving people more to aim for than yet another temporary, part-time, minimum wage, zero-hour or unlimited hour contract nonsense.  People need security.  They need a row to hoe of their own.  God gave each family in OT Israel their own land:  they were to work it, blessing him for the increase, sparing what they could for the poor.  How can we do that as Christians, so we are not simply sharing the good news that Christ came to save sinners, but showing something of the new heaven and new earth that will be ours through the perfect life, agonising death, and glorious resurrection of the Son of God.   How can we both pray and act towards bringing the Kingdom of God here, in part and shadowed as it may be, now?

I will let you know what I find.  More on this again I suspect!

interesting article

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/25/has-capitalism-become-incompatible-with-christianity/morality-should-not-be-priced-in-the-marketplace

This is a topic that I am wrestling through at the moment.   The world, dropping rapidly into the bed it has made, and the Christian neo-Con right seem to be attempting to salvage something God hates:  not profit per-se but the inordinate pursuit of it, the maximizing rather than the optimizing of profit.  What does a Christian Business ethic look like in opposition to the corporate model responsible for so much inequality and pain look like?  How do we make all this nonsense look as ridiculous and self-defeating as it actually is?  This is a brief article I found interesting, from a secular point of view.

Where we have come from part 3.

Flash forward several years:  my wife and I are commuting to a church plant in Morecambe (a place I formerly loathed as I saw the worst it had to offer as a bin man in the area, battering my way up and down filthy back alleys, but now Christ has worked a deep and real love into my soul for the place and the people who call it home).  I was coming back from a leaders meeting and felt a real sense of pressure, or 'burden' in Christianese, to pray for more detail about the vision God had given me all those years ago.  I prayed a long time, deep into the morning hours, and felt a strong sense of direction in a more specific way than I ever had before.

I went after work to share with my good friend and pastor, Richard Scholes, what I felt God had put in my heart and mind:  a shared house where people, disconnected from family or from dysfunctional and destructive family backgrounds, could come and be a part of our family and the wider church family.  Richard was not home, but his wife was, so I described this renewed vision to her.  No sooner had I finished my speechifying than Richard walks in. 

He had just come from a meeting with a young man of our church who desperately wanted help to move on from destructive cycles.  He had asked if it were possible for him to move in with any church family that might take him.  Richard mused "woulden't it be great if there were a place like that, a family home where people could move in and be discipled in a family context?"

I nearly fell of my chair at this confirmation from God that I was not mad (okay, not just mad.  Okay, not isolated in my madness).

If God tells you something, share it with others.  Many people will try to put you off, but I do believe that when it is His will, He will encourage, nurture and provide for His Kingdom growth. 

Where we have come from Part 2

We were, at one point in our tempestuous history as a family, homeless.  Don't get me wrong:  not the 'living on the streets, begging for food, sheltering under an overpass' kind of homeless.  We were sheltered by the family we inherited as part of joining God's Kingdom, church family, family by The Blood rather than blood family.  With two kids, both under three, it was not an easy time, but I don't want to make out it was that difficult either.  It was the discomfort of close community, of being guests, of having no space to call your own, of uncertainty and anxiety about the future and the pride-breaking charity of others.  It was good in the way that the gym is good: hard work, discomfort and results you cant see immediately but you feel down deep in the fiber of your muscles.

During this time I was confused and not a little dismayed.   We looked at housing but my wage only allowed us to consider places that literally made my wife cry.  Dripping, black and furry damp, cold with no internal heating, single glazed windows where the breeze visibly lifted the curtains when the window was shut  Not good.

So I went out one day on the farm we were staying at, took my Bible and, like Jacob, said to God "I'm not moving till you bless me", sitting down and struggling in prayer as I asked God what He wanted me to do.  An hour passed, then two, and all I was getting was bone cold and further discouraged.  I attempted to build a kind of alter, realizing as it collapsed that I was still trying to do something to reccomend myself, my cause, to God.  To blackmail Him really.  Finally I surrendered, sat, opened my Bible and read, ignoring my own voice, ignoring the doubts and fears that battled with my faith.  I read and read.  Another hour passed.

But by now I was not seeking God for what He could do for me.  Nor was I trying to recommend myself to Him with my actions.  I was just seeking His face, seeking Him for Him.

At that point, 7 years ago, he asked me clearly what I wanted, then gave me a vision for "a house of many rooms, that The LORD would build, where the orphan would find sanctuary".  His vision, my heart's desire.

This did not answer my questions.   It did not get me and my family a home of our own immediately.  It seemed impossible.  But He spoke, and the rest became suddenly less important.

We have been praying about this vision ever since then.  Asked others to pray.  Asked Him to bring about what He said He would, never moving a step in our own strength to attempt to make it happe, as we had no strength to bring it about without His action on our behalf.

Now I sit in a 'Kingdom built' house, many roomed, and one we hope to make a peaceful place where anyone abandoned by family can find new family.  We offer it as sanctuary. 

And this is just the beginning.