I am me or we are us

There is a key question to which we need to address ourselves. In our 'worldview' do we think of ourselves more in terms of 'I am me' or more in terms of 'we are us'. This core difference affects everything we look at. I believe we see a definite east/west split on this. Starting with the USA, which is 'I am me' and heading eastwards there is an observable shift towards 'we are us'. Easterners are more community or tribal or corporate orientated, whereas westerners are more individualistic.

The USA has a highly developed 'every person for themselves' culture, which they love and cherish. Illustrative of the change moving eastwards is the involvement in the shop floor of the directors of Ikea. As we move to Europe, societies tend to believe they have a responsibility towards their communities for health care and so community health care (which Americans tend to call 'socialized medicine') is common. Further eastwards to the Middle East and we begin to see tribal values come to a head. Even in urban Jordan, most Jordanians will know to which tribe they belong and proudly tell you about it. Traveling right out eastwards to Japan, the corporate rules almost exclusively, with companies taking the place of communities. Japanese live and die attached to the company.

Globalization has shrunk the world so we see on our computer or TV screens what is happening in other parts of the world in real time. However, it has not removed the cultural differences between the 'I am me' and the 'we are us'. Understanding what we see is still coloured by our worldview.

There is a Chinese curse 'may you live in interesting times'. My lifetime has certainly been interesting. The latest interesting phenomena being what is called the 'Arab Spring'. In a CNN article an American Arab writes how Arab Spring nations don't yet grasp freedom of dissent. In that article the author states:

It is hard for younger Arabs not born into freedom to understand how individual liberty works in real life.

Note the author is talking about individual liberty, whereas for many Arabs the Arab Spring was about corporate freedom. Hence the preceding paragraph:

Little wonder, then, that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has called for the prosecution by the U.S government of the filmmakers, and Egypt's top cleric, Mufti Ali Goma, has called on the United Nations to forbid denigration of faiths. Morsy studied in the United States and Ali Goma regularly visits the West on the interfaith circuit, yet both men don't yet grasp that religious freedom and the freedom of expression are inextricably linked in America.

The Egyptians are thinking in terms of 'we' and the author, although himself of Middle Eastern origin, thinks in terms of 'I'. Mostly westerners and many Europeans don't get the we/us. Our models of corporate bodies are very non-Eastern and often illustrate individualism rather than community. 

I was the only non-union member of the Audio Unit for the BBC at one stage. It's kind of interesting to be the only member of a unit working when all the rest are on strike! Was I acting 'I' and them 'we'? No, I don't think so, theirs was not a concern for the corporate we, but a concern for the multiple I. When we think 'we', we are still not understanding true community.

As followers of Jesus, part of the corporate body of Christ, how does this work for us? The early believers 'held everything in common'. For many brought up in the 20th and 21st century this smacks of communism and for some even turns the stomach. Yet it was taken seriously in the early church.

There is the story in Scripture of the couple that tried to hide the truth about the sale price of a piece of land from the apostles and were struck dead for it. I've not heard that happening in too many churches recently!

Middle Easterners can have a lot to teach us, from the West, about 'we'. They also have a lot to learn about freedom and responsibility. Many in the western church are totally coloured in their thinking by their experiences of corporate bodies like the unions. At the beginning the unions were struggling for freedom. In the UK the unions were started by followers of Jesus wanting to stand up for righteousness and justice. Because of the drift towards individualism it appears they have lost the community side of their identity and become beacons of self interest. 

Freedom, whether individual or corporate, bears responsibility. The two Egyptians quoted were calling for that corporate responsibility. In giving us freedom, our Father, looks for responsibility. We often abuse it. We turn freedom into liberty. In a search for freedom from the person they saw as the oppressive dictator King of England, the US enshrined liberty as a core value in the Declaration of Independence. It has lived with that since. 

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It might be interesting to note that the crafters of the Declaration of Independence did not cite Scripture, nor Christian values for these 'unalienable Rights' but that it was 'self-evident'. In other words, the argument put forward by the Founding Fathers was that it was logical to believe these are human rights and illogical to believe otherwise. It was not born out of a exegetical Bible study as Evangelicals might expect today. Thomas Jefferson, in fact, was somewhat anti-Christian, but pro-Jesus. For instance in a letter to Benjamin Rush he wrote:

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other.

When we confuse doctrines and teachings for the person Himself we confuse the very core of what being a follower of Jesus is about. He said 'By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another'. Loving one another is not something you can do independently or alone. It requires community. 

Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves. That is something we, who are followers of Jesus, can demonstrate to the world. Honouring one another above yourselves doesn't mean making films vilifying others, nor does it mean rallying against the films when they are made and killing people.

I don't believe in independence, but in inter-dependence. I don't believe in liberty but freedom. That, I believe, is the Way of the Master.

The short and long of it

"Jesus was short on sermons, long on conversations; short on answers, long on questions; short on abstractions and propositions, long on stories and parables; short on telling you what to think, long on challenging you to think for yourself; short on condemning the irreligious, long on confronting the religious." - McLaren, _More Ready than you Realise_ 15

The truth is out there... or is it?

During the ‘Arab Spring’ I got emails from some Christian friends in Egypt purporting to describe a huge pro-Mubarak protest that the western media were hushing up. Because I knew the location they were describing and having been involved in large scale events management I knew the number of people described couldn’t fit into the location described. I asked for photographs of the event in question. I never got answers to my emails. I’m sceptical the events were as described in the rather strongly worded emails I was receiving.

More recently I had emails about a news report claiming Egyptian Christians were being crucified...

‘Middle East news media have reported that the Muslim Brotherhood has “crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others.” Those opposing the new radical Islamic regime include Christians, and experts have suggested that “extra brutality is reserved for Christians.”’  

This was widely reported including the summary above. There are loads of references to this but this is a good example:

http://aclj.org/radical-islam/egypts-christians-grave-danger-muslim-brotherhood-crucifies-opponents


I admit I was instantly skeptical. I used to work in TV news for the BBC and I was struggling to believe there was no photographic evidence for huge numbers of Christians being crucified in front of the Presidential Palace in Cairo. I researched further and found that all the articles...

‘...base their claims on reports from Sky News Arabic — a recently formed joint venture between BSkyB and Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp.’

Jonathan Kay, a professional investigative journalist traced the source:

‘Sky is supposedly the original source on the story, everyone agrees. Yet neither algemeiner nor WND nor any of the other sources supply the original Sky reporting that purportedly outlines the facts. 

That’s because there is no Sky report on the subject.’

This is his report:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/22/jonathan-kay-how-egypts-crucifixion-hoax-became-a-classic-internet-urban-legend/

I would have let it drop but for three other stories that are significant. Last week I was encouraged to sign a petition by a couple of intelligent friends of mine to ask Facebook to block a page entitled 'Soldiers deserve to die'. I'm staunchly pacifist but I don't believe soldiers deserve to die!

It seemed bizarre to me so I researched further, only to find ‘Soldiers deserve to die’  is a rather silly advertising campaign from the Lung Cancer Alliance, where they suggest all sorts of groups including cat lovers deserve to die. It's not anti-military at all. It's a US campaign, not related to Europe. There is no page on Facebook with this campaign. Signing the campaign just shows that the person concerned has not done the necessary research to check it out. Here’s the source to the debunking of this story.

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/state/story/Controversial-ad-campaign-says-you-deserve-to-die/wtD747okcUynBc-CP57aNA.cspx

Now I’m currently reading a book by Jeremy Scahill called ‘Blackwater’ about mercenary armies and their operation around the world. Every assertion shows careful research and citation. It’s a fascinating book. Well worth reading because if it's true the world as we know it is changing more that we might think. Countries have lost their power to corporations.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blackwater-Rise-Worlds-Powerful-Mercenary/dp/184668652

But there has been another issue going the rounds in the last few months and came to a head in discussions over the last few weeks. That is the issue of ‘Heaven and Hell’ or more specifically those believing in ‘eternal conscious torment’ and those believing in ‘annihilation of the soul’. There’s a well researched and well cited book debunking the annihilation theory. Or so it seems. The book cites writings by the pro-annihilation lobby and shows them to be in error. Except... the writings don’t exist and the citations are fictitious. How often do you check citations? I usually do if they feel suspicious as I showed above, but how many creep through unnoticed because the citation agrees with my deeply held belief?

So where is my citation for this? No, that is your task to check it out. It exists I promise you, and as they say... Google is your friend.

‘The Truth is out there’ was the catchphrase of the X-Files, a science-fiction conspiracy theory TV series about a hush up on UFOs. Good TV series. Well made drama. 

I really enjoy the CS Lewis science-fiction trilogy and would love to dramatise that contextualised for the Arabic audience. But that is an aside. In one scene Lewis reports how Ransom, the central character in th books, is discussing with an eldil, or angel. In this scene he describes how the angel appears to be at a strange angle to the room... and then the observer realises that the angel is upright and that the whole room is at an angle. The truth is out there, our perception of truth however is filtered through semi-opaque glasses... ‘Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.’

Response to a video made by Israel's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon

Original on Tuesday, 20 September 2011, updated 9 March 2012

This is a response to a video made by Israel's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon which purports to explain 'the historical facts relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict'.

Like most subtle propaganda it is not what is said in the video that is significant, but what is omitted. In the video Danny Aylon says he will not go back to Biblical mandate, but I believe that in order to see the current conflict in context that is exactly what you must do. I have tried to summarise, and although I may have left something out myself, the intention is show that neither side are actually striving for peace, but both using and abusing systems of power in an effort to control the opposition. Danny Ayalon's point that we should not refer to 'occupied territories' but 'disputed territories' is at variance with the language actually used in UN resolutions related to Palestine.

BC 2100: God promises land to 'descendants of Abraham'. The description of that land includes what we currently know as parts of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and the whole of Israel/Palestine. Abraham had two children and from those two siblings are both the Jews and the peoples who currently inhabit Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the whole of Israel. Thus the creation of the two semitic peoples: The Jews and the Arabs.

The promise to Abraham was displaying our Father's heart. It was not merely a promise to bless, but showed His heart for the world: I will bless you so that you can bless the nations. It is not blessing for it's own sake, but blessing to communicate the love of our Father to the whole earth.

BC 1900: Joseph expresses this promise to the Egyptian people. As he is blessed so he blesses those he is in contact with. The twelve brothers eventually learn this 'blessing others' and become the fathers of the tribes who make up that side of the family.

BC 1446 to BC 300: The family feud continues with the twelve tribes battling with those from Abraham's other son over which part of land belongs to which side of the family. What is noticeable during this time is that for most of these 1100 years neither side of the family remember the clause to 'be a blessing' but are very happy to be on the receiving end of blessings.

BC 1150: Earliest record of Palestinians by name (Peleset People) in Egyptian writing during twentieth dynasty of Egypt. As a people they were sufficiently large to invade Egypt during Ramses III’s reign. We can assume therefore they have been around for hundreds of years to have grown to a number sufficient to invade Egypt. This is obviously at variance to Israel’s claim that Palestinians are a recent people group in the area and some misguided people assuming Palestinians were the Philistines mentioned in the Bible. Nor is the invasion a blessing to the Egyptians!

BC 300 to AD 0: The silent years. Our Father is brooding over the planet preparing for a major change.

AD 0 to AD 33: Our Father sends His son to reiterate that those who are to receive His blessing are those who should bless. He demonstrates that His way is not the way of power and might and that those who follow the way of power and might are against our Father. The twelve tribes are hoping for something rather different and so disinherit the promise by rejecting our Father. No longer is the promise for the physical children of Abraham but for the spiritual offspring: Those who chose the path of peace and who share our Father's blessing with the world. These are called the followers of the Way.

BC 64 - AD 324: The Roman's use power and might to subjugate the whole Mediterranean basin including Palestine.

AD 313: The Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, while at the same time maintaining the Empire by power and might and not promoting blessing of others. Whether this was the intention of our Father is open to debate.

AD 324 to AD 636: Byzantine rule of Palestine, where Eastern Orthodox control was maintained by power and might. Very few Jews lived in Palestine (10%-15% of the population). This diaspora, which continued till the 20th Century, should have allowed the Jews to demonstrate being blessed in order to be a blessing around the world. Sadly they failed to do so.

AD 636 to AD 1096: Rule by power and might changed control of Palestine, demonstrating again the way of those opposed to the Way of our Father. This time it was those claiming a revelation of strict adherence to law that used the sword to crush the people living in the area.

AD 1099 to AD 1260: We see the Way of peace trampled by those claiming to be Christians. Battling with swords and horses they sought to liberate land rather than hearts and thus entirely missed our Father's commendation to be a blessing.

AD 1260 to AD 1517: Power and might succeed in ejecting the 'Christians' and rule of Palestine is by an Egyptian Sultan. During this time the Jews, having failed to demonstrate our Father's call to be a blessing are significantly persecuted by those who claimed to replace them in the promise and have now, themselves, forgotten the call to peace and to be a blessing to others. It is a bloody awful mess.

AD 1516 to AD 1917: Palestine was conquered by power and might by the Turkish Sultan Selim II and was a conquered state being a province of Syria till Britain, the new world power demonstrated it's might.

AD 1897: The 'Zionist Organisation' was founded with a specific aim to 'to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.' One of the slogans used was 'A land without a people for a people without a land'. This totally ignored the large non-Jewish Palestinian population living there. However, Christian 'Restorationists' decided, somewhat arbitrarily, that despite their numbers, these Palestinians were not sufficiently coherent to be considered a 'people'. This was definitely at variance to our Father's call to be a blessing to the nations and showed how they had become corrupted by power.

AD 1916: Three great powers connived together to control the area. This came out in what is known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. It was, at the time, a secret agreement between the governments of the UK and France with the assent of Russia. The aim was to define their influence in what we call the Middle East. Hence the French influence in Lebanon, Syria and Turkey and the British influence in Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. They were planning how they would carve up the Middle East and control it pending the downfall of Ottoman control in the region.

AD 1914 to AD 1918: TE Lawrence (a British Army Officer) honed and developed urban guerilla warfare techniques throughout the region, working with the Arabs. He is hailed as a hero, but had the victor been the other side, he would have been known as a terrorist. These techniques were embedded into the psyche of the people of the region.

AD 1917: The British foreign minister sent a letter to Lord Rothchild. That letter became known as 'the Balfour Declaration'. It included two significant phrases, that the British Government viewed with favour 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people' and that it was 'clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine'. It could be construed that this demonstrates a desire to be a blessing, both to the Jews and to the Arabs in the area.

AD 1922 to AD 1948: Britain wished to establish it's power and might and so after the First World War, the League of Nations was established in Europe. Unsurprisingly the 'British Mandate' which gave them control of the region called Palestine was confirmed by the League of Nations, which included the Balfour Declaration. The USA, staying clear of the League of Nations, endorsed this mandate. During the whole interwar period, the British, keeping in mind power and might, rejected the principle of majority rule or any other measure that would give the Arab majority control over the government of Palestine.

AD 1919 to AD 1923: Many thousands of Jews migrated to Palestine. This created stress between Jews and Palestinians. The family feud started some 4000 years earlier has still not been resolved.

AD 1920 to AD 1921: Jewish immigration and the way the British implemented the Balfour Declaration/British Mandate led to Arab riots. The British then started a system of immigration quotas. Attacks on Jewish settlements, which the British failed to protect, led to establishment of a Jewish militia to attempt to defend those settlements.

23 and 24 August 1929: Sixty-seven Jews were killed in a massacre in Hebron by Palestinians. This was the tipping point to violence for the Jews who formed the group called the 'Irgun Tzvai Leumi', which itself carried out many terrorist activities, as a result.

AD 1939 to AD 1945: The second world war, which became known as 'the war to end all wars' raged throughout the world. Sadly, it was not the war to end all wars and some people claim there has only actually been 26 days of peace since that war. During the war Hitler raged against both the Jews and the Christians killing them in roughly equal numbers in camps like Auschwitz. The Jews appropriated this to themselves, calling it the 'Holocaust', a strange name for it since they were killed not by fire but by gas. Rather than being a blessing to others they saw themselves in the role of victim.

AD 1945 to AD 1947: The British Empire was severely weakened by the second world war and the power base moved from the League of Nations, which it somewhat controlled, to the United Nations, somewhat controlled by the USA. Power and might had moved its centre from Geneva to New York. In Palestine, Jews were secretly smuggled into the country (about 110,000 of them) and a terrorist group similar to al Qaeda called  'Haganah' waged war on the British.

July 1946:  92 British people were killed in the King David Hotel when it was bombed by Irgun Tzvai Leumi. The result was that Tel Aviv was placed under curfew and over 120,000 Jews were questioned by the police. Since power had moved to North America, when the USA criticized British handling of the situation and delayed loans which were vital to British post-war recovery it forced the British Government to refer the Palestine problem to the United Nations. Terrorism by Irgun Tzvai Leumi continued using techniques similar to those developed by TE Lawrence in the First World War.

29 November 1947: UN General Assembly ratified a plan to create two states: Israel and Palestine, partitioning the land between the descendants of the two brothers who had the squabble some 4000 years earlier. Jerusalem would be under direct UN control since it was such a sensitive issue. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip plus some land in both the north and the south of Palestine was to be the Palestinian homeland. This was significantly more than is currently under dispute as being 'occupied territories'.

AD 1947 - AD 1948: The partition never happened because the struggle for power between the Brits and the Americans (through the UN) meant the Brits failed to withdraw in time. Though ratified, it was thus never implemented. Three way hostilities continued for two years between the British, the Jews and the Palestinians. Eventually enough was enough and the Brits withdrew. None of the three protagonists seemed to recognize a desire for peace or to be a blessing to others.

14 May 1948: David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of the State of Israel, in accordance with the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Ben-Gurion became Prime Minister of the new state. Both superpower leaders, U.S. President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, immediately recognized Israel. At this time the Jewish population of Palestine was approximately 650,000, the Arab population around 1.2 million. Hence, had it been a single state the Arabs would have outvoted the Jews 2:1. The Palestinian state was not formed at that stage.

AD 1948 to AD 1967: Two significant, but short conflicts between the Arabs and Palestinians on one side and the Israelis on the other. The Israelis did better than the Arabs. In part this was because they were significantly better trained, but also because they were better navigators. There is also the reason that they were supplied with extra armaments in direct violation of a UN Security Council Resolution. The 1947 partition line became confused and it was clear that both sides wanted 100% of the land. The Israelis ended up in control and the United Nations passed resolution 242 which required Israel to withdraw 'armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict'. This is the context of what we now call the 'occupied territories'.

AD 1948: During the conflict many Palestinians in areas occupied by the Israelis were forced from their homes and fled to other countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. In every other situation people fleeing for their lives are referred to as 'refugees'. However, Palestinians are not treated like this and are not dealt with by UNHCR but by UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). There are now three or four generations of Palestinians who cannot return to their homeland, who have no passport and for whom it is illegal to work with aid provided for education and health care by UNRWA.

AD 1982: United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) defined piracy as 'any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship… on the high seas… or against persons or property on board such ship… against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State'. The aim was to protect individuals sailing in 'International waters'.

AD 1987-1993: The First Intifada. The ‘shake off’ began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinian actions primarily included nonviolent civil disobedience and resistance, and it was the first time that Palestinians acted together and as a nation. There were general strikes, boycotts on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, graffiti, and barricades, but the Palestinian demonstrations that included stone-throwing by youths against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) defined the violence for many. However, intra-Palestinian violence was a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of alleged Israeli collaborators. While Israeli forces killed an estimated 1,100 Palestinians and Palestinians killed 164 Israelis, Palestinians killed an estimated 1,000 other Palestinians as alleged collaborators, although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities.

15 November 1988: The Palestinian Declaration of Independence, written by Mahmoud Darwish and declared by Yasser Arafat which broadly similar to the 14 May 1948 statement by David Ben-Gurion. It does not of itself recognise the state of Israel, but an accompanying document citing UN resolution 242 was considered enough to invite Arafat to address the United Nations General Assembly. A UNGA resolution was adopted ‘acknowledging the proclamation of the State of Palestine by the Palestine National Council on 15 November 1988’ 104 states voted for this resolution, 44 abstained, and 2 – the United States and Israel – voted against. By mid-December, 75 states had recognized Palestine as a country, rising to 89 states by February 1989.

September 2000 - today: Second Intifada or ‘shake off’. Palestinian terrorists launch attacks against Israel and Israel launched attacks against Palestinian territories. Like two teenagers squabbling… but with much more serious effects. Wikipedia lists the casualties as 719 Israeli civilians were killed and 334 Israeli security force personnel were killed, 2,204 Palestinian civilians were killed and 1,671 fighters were killed, a further 870 Palestinians were killed and it is unclear if they were civilians or fighters.

Somewhere between 2005 and 2008: It is possible that it changed to what is known as the Third Intifada, but this definition, along with claims it is a battle of words not of violence is disputed. During that time Israel has blockaded parts of Palestine refusing to allow sufficient food and medical aid into Gaza. Followers of the Way, including at least one highly qualified doctor who I personally know, tried to take medical supplies in by sea and were chased out by Israeli gunboats.

31 May 2010: Israeli Defense Forces attack a flotilla of ships carrying aid supplies heading towards Egypt in International Waters. International waters starts where territorial waters cease, which is approximately 14 miles from the coast. At that stage they had not turned towards Gaza which was their announced destination. The ban on entry to Gaza by sea was made by the Israeli military after the flotilla were already en route. Initial contact was 120 miles northwest of Gaza and 80 miles west of the southern border of Lebanon. Under the 1982 definition this is International Piracy, however, the power base in the United Nations refused to condemn the action as such, though a UNHRC fact-finding mission described six of the nine passengers' deaths as "summary execution" by the Israeli commandos.

AD 2011: Palestinian Authority declared it wished to have full membership of the UN. At that stage it was reported that 126 (65.4%) of the 193 member states of the United Nations had recognised the State of Palestine. A successful application for membership in the UN would require approval from the UN Security Council and a two-thirds majority in the UN General Assembly (128 states). On the prospect of this being successful, the USA alluded to possible withdrawal of UN funding, which would destabilize the whole UN. This is power and control without blessing. However, when addressing the UNGA directly President Obama proposed a more conciliatory approach,  ‘Each side has legitimate aspirations -- and that's part of what makes peace so hard. And the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in the other's shoes; each side can see the world through the other's eyes. That's what we should be encouraging. That's what we should be promoting’. That is the Way of truth and reconciliation.

18 July 2011: Syria announced that it had formally recognised the State of Palestine. Events in 2011 and 2012 suggest that other nations may no longer recognize the Syrian administration who made this declaration.

23 September 2011: Mahmoud Abbas delivered to the UN Secretary-General the official application for recognition of a Palestinian state by the UN and a membership of the UN. The UN Security Council began deliberations on the matter on 26 September. 


31 October 2011: The General Council of UNESCO voted in favour of admitting Palestine as a member state. 

4 November 2011: Israeli Defense Forces attack a flotilla of ships heading to Gaza carrying aid supplies. Initial contact was made 48 nautical miles from the coast, well into International waters. The crew of the boats didn't help themselves by failing to observe correct maritime radio protocol. They were boarded soon after. Under the 1982 definition this is International Piracy. Blockading Gaza and stopping delivery of medical supplies is also in direct violation of United Nations Security Council resolution 1860.

15 December 2011: Iceland recognized Palestine as an independent and sovereign state. For two thirds majority of UNGA Palestine needs 128 states to recognise them. In theory, they now have that number, however there is some dispute about the list of countries.

TODAY: Some areas of the 1947 partition are under Israeli control and others under Palestinian control. Millions of Palestinians, possibly in the order of six million, live outside of Palestine, not only with no hope of return to their homeland, but many of them as stateless persons, without passport, without right to work and totally reliant on UN aid for education and health care. More than three million Palestinians live inside Palestinian controlled areas and are struggling for education and health care blocked by Israel. As many as eight million Jews live outside of Israel, with the right to return to Israel and with legal passports both from their host country and from Israel.

My comments: What we observe is a spin on stories from both sides of the dispute, often playing clever word games on whether 'occupied territories' are 'disputed territories'. We see power play between super powers, minor powers and micro powers. We don't see either side seeking blessing for other nations. Thus both sides have forgotten or are ignoring our Father's blessing and his call to be a blessing to others.

But that is not the whole story. Behind the scenes there is a small group of followers of the Way who call themselves 'Musalaha' which is the Arabic word for reconciliation. It is a group who take protagonists from both sides out to the Negev desert, not to play with words, not to argue who is right and wrong, but to try to bless. Individual followers of the Way in other countries like Lebanon have also tried to bring about musalaha/reconclliation and have been persecuted and in some cases forced to become refugees as a result. There are also individual followers of the Way trying to be a blessing. I have a British friend who is a surgeon in Gaza and tried to take in needed medical supplies to her hospital by sea on a 36 foot catamaran. She was turned away by the Israeli Defense Force.

As followers of the Way ourselves, our brothers and sisters working for Musalaha and others, like my doctor friend who are bringing blessing are the people in need are those we should specifically bless and pray for. Also, despite everything, we should seek to show our Father's blessing to protagonists on both sides. However, Propaganda is propaganda, spun to gain power and control. That is not the way of our Father.

Real men don't eat quiche…

Today I was thinking about the phrase 'Real men don't…' and all the ideas of conformity that we follow. The book 'Real men don't eat quiche' by Bruce Feirstein characterises all that makes my stomach turn about conformity to the male stereotype. Peer pressure affects our children, being expected to conform to whatever stereotype their sub-culture demands, whether it's the type of music to listen to or the type of sneakers to wear.

The trouble is, I feel I have been locked into another stereotype. The stereotype Christian. Or maybe I should say the stereotype white English Evangelical Christian.

You may have read 'So you don't want to go to church anymore' by Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman, if not I highly recommend it. However, what started me thinking about this was a phrase buzzing round my head all morning: 'Real Christians don't go to church'. Before you hang me for a heretic, listen to the logic…

My family name is Fairhead and there are times when we gather as a family. When we do we don't say we're going to Fairhead. So the concept of 'going to church' somehow separates the relationship into either a place or an organisation. I don't go to church because I gather with the church. But even that doesn't really work. It's more I don't go to church because implicitly I am part of the church.

But Paul commended us not to stop meeting together. So what does that really mean. We can look at the example of the early followers of Jesus and we would realise how important eating together and fellowship is in building the family relationships. We could look at Paul's letter explaining how the family works, with different family members each bringing something to the meeting…

I hear stories about family gatherings of different families and realise how many of the church meetings also show diversity. Some families when they get together make music or sing, for others the last thing on earth they would want to do is sing but they do enjoy a game of basketball or baseball, for others a hike in the woods is how they gather. Almost all would involve some form of meal together. Then there are dysfunctional families for whom a meeting is a battleground.

The same is true for gatherings of God's family. Or should be. My concern is that we have turned gatherings of Christians into some sort of socio-political organisation. The Bible records how the early believers ate together - frequently. Real Christians don't go to church: They church together - they are the church.

Discipleship, family and the theatre

I have been having a discussion on Facebook about discipleship.

A friend of mine posted to his wall

The difference between theater and Church is discipleship

to which I responded, slightly tongue in cheek

Careful… you can often learn more at the theatre than in many churches!

to which he responded

But the goal isn't just learning, it's following.

And then started a discussion about the meaning of discipleship, both semantic, etymological and what followers of Jesus today mean by the word... along with what Jesus meant by disciple - try Luke 9:23 and Luke 14:26 for example. So what does it mean to 'take up our cross daily' and 'hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters...' This seems to have little about learning in the sense that we in 21st Century know of learning.

Looking at what Christ said, the first thing to realise is that he almost certainly is using hyperbole. Actually the first thing to realise is that Jesus probably spoke either in Hebrew or Aramaic and that Luke is translating what he said into Greek. So we don't actually have a record of Jesus words to base it on.

But back to the idea of hyperbole... Middle Easterners use what Westerners would consider hyperbole a lot. Consider the word habibi in Arabic. Translated it means beloved or sweetheart or my baby or my darling. Hardly the word or phrase a man would use for a casual male friend, yet in Arabic it would be used that way, as hyperbole that is understood to mean my friend or my mate.

Hyperbole is something I use continually. I am sometimes criticised for using it as people try to interpret some of what I say literally. So reading the passages in Luke's gospel in context I just read them as hyperbole.

There has been much discussion on the interpretation of these passages, a lot of it online. I'm not going to quote it, you can just Google for it if you are interested. However the context is enough to convince me that being a disciple is a learner, but not a student.

When we were trying to find a phrase in Arabic for a follower of Jesus that was more neutral than the normal one we came a phrase of 'mourideen el masih' meaning disciple of the Messiah. The word mourideen is close to the Hebrew word talmidim. It is thought that when Jesus called the disciples he was engendering the concept of talmidim in contrast to the western idea of student.

In an article Rabbi and Talmidim on the followtherabbi.com the author claims:

Being like the rabbi is the major focus of the life of talmidim. They listen and question, they respond when questioned, they follow without knowing where the rabbi is taking them knowing that the rabbi has good reason for bringing them to the right place for his teaching to make the most sense.

In the Nooma DVD Dust, Rob Bell starts from the scripture record that it wasn't the disciples choosing Jesus but Jesus choosing the disciples that is significant. From that he asserts that it is more about Jesus believing in us than us believing in Him. It means that in Christ He can accomplish great things through us. But it's really the work of Christ. Grace. We can't do it without the call of Christ, the empowerment of Christ, the knowledge and wisdom of Christ, and the perseverance of Christ. It is something infused from rabbi to talmid.

But I think its much more than 'doing amazing things for God' but rather that as we are created in His image, as redeemed creations, with His power working in and through us, he calls us to follow in His footsteps, even to death. But it's all about relationship, His call is not about function but about our Father longing to express His love, His Grace in and through us.

A student at UNCA wrote, when discussing theatre:

...children wholeheartedly pretend. They become so fully immersed in their imagination they act "truthfully under imaginary circumstances." 

My concern is that church has become imagination under truthful circumstances. Sometimes services have become like theatre, but theatre without questions and without life. 

Thinking more about this whole subject of discipleship, I have come back to our family. We home-educated our kids. I am deliberately using the english rather than american phrase home-schooled, not because we are English, but because the meaning is different. Our aim was not to create school at home, but to create an environment at home where our children would catch the vision to become lifelong learners. I think they have. School develops students, education develops disciples.

I am growing in conviction that the two words church and disciple are increasingly incomprehensible in 21st century western civilization. However, in the context of home-education, they seem to make more sense: In the relationship of family, we encourage our children to catch our way of life, to become life long learners following the Messiah.

Part of the problem is that the church has become more like a school and less like a family. At church we sit in rows watching the teacher, at home we sit around in the living room or the dining table discussing. One thing that guests to our house used to remark upon was the number of times at the meal table we would get out a dictionary while discussing the meaning of a word or phrase. We were and are continually listening and questioning each other. That is true learning not the idea of teaching we have today.

My concern is that the church has mirrored the secular way of teaching rather than encouraging learning. Rarely do was hear a pastor say 'Hey guys, I'm going to the mall to tell people about the good news Jesus came to share... want to come too?' Rarely do we see meals as the central place they appeared to be from the New Testament. Meals are great place for relaxed discussion and learning.

TS Eliot said 'A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.' Jesus parables frequently resulted in the disciples asking Him what they meant. Ralph Richardson, a contemporary of Lawrence Olivier, described the difference between theatre and music: 'In music, the punctuation is absolutely strict, the bars and the rests are absolutely defined. But our punctuation cannot be quite strict because we have to relate it to the audience. In other words, we are continually changing the score.' 

My concern is that we have regimented following Christ and converted it into a religion. But I am sure Athanasius did not intend closing of Biblical Canon in 367AD to change following Christ from a relationship into an equation: A + B = C. Cross + Repentance = Salvation. The problem is that in a sense it is that simple, but it completely ignores the underlying motivation and relationship. It is almost more John the Baptist's message than Jesus'.

In none of his parables does Jesus reduce the Kingdom of God to a simple equation. The parable we call the 'Prodigal Son' has the son doing nothing except returning to his father. The centrality of this story is the love of the father for the son and the desire he has for relationship with the son. It's not strict punctuation. It is not a simple equation. It's a relationship.

post-what?

It's my birthday, I was born 54 years ago. Though that makes me technically 'post-modern' most of the 'baby boomers' tend to be more modernist. I'm not sure if I have always been post-modern (I think I probably have) or whether I have grown more that way as I have grown older. Whichever, I am now who I am. Sometimes I wish I was more modernist and able to be more sure of 'facts' rejecting 'dialogue' or 'narrative'.

Years ago I had a Nigerian friend who took me through another post-*, this one slightly more complex. We  had been talking about colonialism and the rejection of this concept, hence colonial and anti-colonial. Timothy's perception was that we should now be embracing post-anti-colonialism. What he meant was colonial = white man boss, anti-colonial = black man boss, post-anti-colonial = white and black man partners.

I think in using the term post-modern we may be missing similar logic.

Modernism tends to have a mechanistic or deconstructionist approach - everything can be known even if we don't know now and that everything is fitted together into a giant mechanistic entity. Life, the world and the universe are all rule driven. Modernist theology is propositional and using it we interpret the Bible in terms of it being a rule book for life. I remember as a teenager that people described the Bible in terms of a 'manual' like a  car maintenance manual.

My perception is that some of what we call post-modernism is actually anti-modernism; a rejection of the modernist propositional logic in favour of a fuzzy, wooly 'we can't know anything really'. However, in reality, I believe most people who are labeled post-modernist are actually post-anti-modernist. In other words, they live in partnership between ambiguity and propositional reality. Narrative and propositional are not the antithesis of each other but are complementary ways of looking at life.

This lack of understanding the complementary nature of modern and post-modern is why some modernists totally reject post-modernism. Take 'Why we're not Emergent' by Deyoung and Kluck, for example, a book my son Daniel, who incidentally shares the same birthday, showed me today. The authors see the 'Emergent Church' as being the 'liberal' rejection of the Evangelical Church. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As a teenager I was wooed to the Evangelical Church not by the modernist approach of Evangelicalism but by the 'God can be known' experiential approach of the the Evangelical church which was antipodal concept to the idea that 'God is a hope'. Thus the certainty of approach, which is very modernist, was appealing not because of the empirical but because of the relational. God can be known. As person to person.

This relational aspect of Evangelicalism seems to be more and more diminishing in light of the increasing post-modern, so called emerging or emergent church. The modern Evangelical is reacting to the post-modern which they perceive to be anti-modern. If we had approached it not as post-modern but post-anti-modern, I think at least some of this dichotomy could have been reduced.

To some degree the dichotomy is one sided - the modernist Evangelical rejecting the post-modern Emerging whereas post-moderns tend not to reject the modernist so out of hand. They embrace Information Technology, which is in some ways the ultimate expression of modernism. Most post-moderns readily enjoy computers, Androids, iPhones and iPads. Thus in reality, unless they wish to return to yellow slips of paper for aid-memoires, post-moderns are not mandating exclusively using post-IT notes! (I'm sorry, I couldn't avoid using that one, it has been haunting me all day.)

Nor are they mandating post-evangelical, though many might embrace post-conservative evangelical. God can still be known. God was, is, and is to come. The dialogue continues... as does the narrative.