Ben Wilson: Pride

I love this church, but there are issues I wish it dealt with better. We talk about nurturing the beaten, the hopeless and the weak. We never give thought to those on the other side. What about those who are just plain awesome - too awesome for their own good? You think life's easy for us too.

Imagine how we feel. We burst at the seams with intellect but we cry ourselves to sleep because most cannot even comprehend our thoughts. We're despised for the good looks we were born with - segregated from the commoners and left to fend alone. We're idealised and placed on pulpits, but when we recognise ourselves we're told it's 'narcissism'. We sacrifice parties and get-togethers in the pursuit of perfect aesthetics so you people have something to look at. Being an adonis is hard...

Lols.

Pride is one of those things people can tell I struggle with, but probably wouldn't tell to my face. According to Catholicism and the 'seven deadly sins,' it's the one vice where all others originate. Needless to say I wouldn't have made a very good Catholic (though apparently I was meant to be). You don't see many people eager to share about their pride, probably 'cause it sounds a bit like, 'I'm a cocky bastard who thinks he's better than you'. Maybe it's time we gave this some limelight. Maybe it's time we blow our trumpets a little and confess our theatrics.

Well, I’m a cocky bastard - and I probably thought I was better than you.

My endeavours on the U.S.S Jackass began at the end of high school. I had been working-out for two years. The double Ds on the chest were developing nicely and I realised something - I was quite good-looking. It came with a feeling of power, confidence and security - and I liked it. I'd strut down public places wearing one of many small-sized shirts feeling like a king. No one was gonna take this away from me, I could call on it any time and it seemed to be magnetizing people.

I enjoyed my childhood. I was well-loved, had many friends and had a lot of things going for me. I always felt clumsy however. Somehow I got the idea in my head that I didn't know anything, or couldn't do anything properly. Much of the time I felt a spectator to life than an active participant. It was a mental block that stopped me from initiating, from trying and being generally productive. I felt like things always had to be done for me.

With a myriad of insecurities, pride gave me power. It numbed many of the feelings I had conjured and gave me a reason to lift my head. People started to notice. My friends started calling me, 'Ben Wilson', like I was a famous person who'd achieved some Hollywood milestone. I saw no reason to give it up, I saw no reason to stop. I wasn't hurting anyone.

You start feeling sorry for people. Sorry because they don't have the aura of limitless achievement. Sorry because they hold their heads to the ground. Sorry as if they'd be lesser for it.

After a few humbling experiences, I began to realise the foolishness of my hubris. What reasons did I have for thinking I was better? None. There weren't any. It was a front. I was trying to make myself feel good. We all try to make ourselves happy - this was my way. There no was legitimate logic behind it.

In retrospect, I suppose I was trying to avoid measuring myself against people. If I was always better I wouldn't be tempted to compare myself and therefore couldn't be disappointed - and I wouldn't have to feel like that little boy who didn't know what he was doing.

Nowadays my pride remains mostly in remnants. It lives on in cute quips made for the greater good of comedy. I still make overtly arrogant comments as a throwback to yesteryear - like a strange in-joke with myself. I'm know where I'm from. I can smile and poke fun at it. I can look back on Pride Rock and laugh at myself.

I don't need to compare anymore. I'm given worth by a maximally-great being who juggles stars and reads the laws of physics like a children's book. If that Person sees me as I am and finds it to be valuable - there's no need to look further.

I have qualities you don't have, and you have qualities I don't have. We're entirely different beasts. I'll help you where I'm strong and you do likewise. You have every reason to love yourself, and love me.

I believe I'm intelligent. I believe I'm capable. I believe I look great. I believe any woman would be lucky to have me. I believe I'm lovable.

But that doesn't make me better than you.

Phillippians 4 - Amanda

Amanda at her best. Get into it!

the cross.

Take the word ‘focus’. Say it 20 times. Now say it 20 more times. Listen to yourself saying it. Most of us at this point will have become weirded out by the word. It becomes simple a small collection of syllables and vowels, a meaningless sound because of its relentless bombardment. We can’t even use the word. For a little while we are confused by it. All meaning has been sucked out.

In our church café we have a whole wall dedicated to the display of crosses. Some are bare and simple, some are floral, others are almost comedic in nature. It seems appropriate that the symbol we Christians are defined by takes such a prominent place in our worlds. We want to give it attention because it is so central to the story we endorse. But the frequency in which we use it in church life can sometimes have a detrimental effect. We can become desensitised to it. In the same way that we have become used to graphic violence in media without even giving it a second thought, the cross is basically lost to us. It simply represents a cold transaction of sin or something. A religious icon divorced from reality.

One of the most telling experiences I ever had was as a student teacher in a local primary school. One Thursday morning an enthusiastic young woman from a nearby church came to give the class I was in a Bible in Schools lesson. The class was made up of 6 year olds and most of them knew very little of the Bible or Christianity.  This young woman proceeded to tell this group of young children the crucifixion story. Of Jesus being nailed to a cross by his hands and feet. The listeners were wide eyed and one scared child had to leave the room in tears. What this young woman had failed to realise was that the crucifixion story is not a child friendly account of history. It isn’t even really PG. It is brutal and horrific.

To put it bluntly, we have domesticated the cross. We have turned it into a get out of jail free card in our evangelistic methods or a piece of poetry unique to our belief system. We have turned it into a “Jesus thinks you are to die for” bumper sticker without actually giving too much thought to what the experience would have actually entailed. Sometimes non-Christians recognise the barbarity of it more than Christians do, due the fact we’re so used to talking about it.

But the cross. It possesses profane horror and godlessness.

Jesus died as a rejected blasphemer.

Crucifixion was the most degrading form of punishment.

It is totally inappropriate for God to go through something like this. It is bad taste.

It is a total scandal.

It is in conflict with anything humane and rational.

Jesus endured nakedness, powerlessness and senselessness and alienation to all.

God experienced God forsakenness.

On this cross we behold a crucified and defeated God.

For God so loved the world.

Domesticate that.

Rant Night Number 1

The rants are up! For those unaware, a couple of weeks ago we hosted our first 'rant night' - an evening involving three people presenting a rant of their choice. 10 minutes to rant, 10 minutes to discuss.

We've got quite a diverse range of topics here, comment away and have some discussion that we didn't get to have on the night!

Also, I apologise for my laugh making such a big appearance in all of them.

Peter Rope: Anzac

It was the morning of the 25^th of April, and five people scrambled out of bed at 5:30am and into the darkness. The reason for this auspicious awakening was Anzac day. And my flatmates and I were scrambling to make, what I thought was a small, beachside dawn service.

Having driven to the beach in question we were forced to park a far stretch away. I expected a turnout of two hundred or so people, but the scarcity of parking suggested otherwise. It was surprising in the half light at such an early hour to see so many cars sitting in the cold dark dawn as we walked.

By the beach we joined the gathered throng. Mothers and fathers, children and grandparents, young people, and couples. All demographics in the country represented it seemed, and in various states of zombified alertness. I was impressed and surprised by the vast numbers of people who were sacrificing their morning rest to get up so early on what has become a public holiday, and was proud to count myself amongst that number.

We ended up a vast distance away from the memorial all the crowds were converging towards, with hundreds of people between us. But could luckily still hear the proceedings due to a speaker on a pole that had been erected only ten metres away from where we were standing. We stood upon the beginnings of a concrete boat ramp, leading from the grass to the water at high tide. The masses were silent, reverent.

The service had already begun. The minister was giving an introduction and a short talk about the sacrifice the Anzac soldiers had made which next transitioned into a prayer. He mentioned Jesus, he mentioned the Holy Spirit, in his prayer. And it seemed to me the mood in the crowd was tangible. People looked away, people tuned out his words. They were indifferent, they were tolerant, and they didn’t care. These were words the crowd didn’t relate to, and didn’t want to hear.

And it seemed to me this sort of language hits people’s ears like a foreign language even in my own homeland. The sacrifice of our soldiers is much more real and tangible than the sacrifice of Christ. And the comparison is a comparison that seems oddly out of place. It echoes on the periphery of New Zealand society, the place were we relegate such infrequent occasions as weddings and funerals.

After the prayer is over with, silence. There are no sounds coming from the speaker nearby, the crowd seems still and reverent. In the silence I can distinctly hear the high tide lapping upon the beach close by, slowly, sadly, and the rhythm reminds me of some poetic lines by Matthew Arnold, lifted from his poem Dover Beach.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant southern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

We sing the national anthem. God save New Zealand. The bagpipes play and the crowd disperses to café after café, lit by the light of the new day. And all I am thinking is, God, where did we go wrong.



The poem Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold in it’s entirety (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/doverbeach.html

Interview with Fraser Browne

Ladies and Gentlemen, Fraser Browne. Fraser came to speak to us about his experiences with cancer, anxiety, depression and the way that God has continued to be with him. We also got to hear two of his amazing songs. Give him a listen!

More on Suffering: Who is God?

Do these questions feel familiar?

“There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal, most just, and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.” (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 2.1)

The god described in this passage of writing is essentially the god of classical philosophy. God becomes the idea of perfection, separate from creation in the way he is so different, so impenetrable, so transcendent above us and so impossible to comprehend. And all this is true of course, but not in the sense that there is no way of knowing him beyond an idea of absolute perfection. Getting there somehow by reason and talking lots about ideals tests the limits of our imagination and helps us to sort of conceive of a divine, but it doesn’t help us to know that divine being.

The cross has always been the central symbol for Christianity to draw attention to the sacrifice Christ made on the behalf of human beings, and a reminder of God’s grace. However, to have chosen to communicate His love and grace through this particular sacrifice says much more about the nature of God. However, in most popular writing around this, it does not go beyond the sentimental or symbolic. In his book, Drops Like Stars, Rob Bell muses "Perhaps that's why people... continue to identify with the cross. It speaks to our longing to know that we're not alone, that there's someone else "screaming alongside us." Is the cross God's way of saying "I know how you feel"?”  Even self-confessed atheist theologian, John Shelby Spong sees it as the ultimate expression of who God is, saying “"...the cross is not a place of torture and death; it is the portrait of the love of God seen when one can give all that one is and all that one has away. The cross thus becomes the symbol of a God presence that calls us to live, to love and to be."

But if we are to formulate a more complete understanding of the relationship of Jesus within the Godhead in suffering, we must go beyond divine empathy and using symbolic language around the cross. How is God Himself located within the suffering of Christ and the crucifixion? Nicholas Wolterstorff briefly explores this tension in saying:

"God is not only the God of the sufferers, but the God who suffers. The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart... Though I confessed that the man of sorrows was God himself, I never saw the God of sorrows. Though I confessed that the man bleeding on the cross was the redeeming God, I never saw God himself on the cross, blood from sword and thorn and nail dripping healing into the world's wounds."

How exactly is one to see God suffering in Jesus? This becomes a highly problematic task when God is understood primarily in terms of transcendence, impassibility and distinctiveness without a strong appreciation for His immanence.

What does the cross actually say?

God dies an excruciating, shameful, humiliating, painful and bloody death. What do we even do with that?

Have we become used to the idea of the cross?

Has it become an empty symbol, a shallow trinket?

Why does it not shock us anymore?

How is this God Himself?