Christchurch Mosque Attacks

The massacre on Friday, has deeply affected New Zealand. 

On the killer’s guns and ammunition magazines, he had listed a number of conflicts dating back several hundred years before the crusades between Christian and Muslim societies.

Historically many Christians and Muslims have considered themselves enemies of the other. 

Hundreds of verses of the Koran incite its followers to violence against those who refuse to acknowledge Islam as the only one true religion.

Today the majority of terrorist attacks reported in the Western world are carried out by Muslim extremists.  

Consequently Muslims have often been stereotyped  as untrustworthy, vulnerable to being radicalised  and potentially dangerous.

On the other hand, few Islamic believers know what the Koran says because it is written in Arabic, most are unaware of its incitements to violence and genuinely believe that Islam is a religion of grace, kindness and compassion.  

Even amongst many that do know of them, there are efforts to spiritualize them as allegories and metaphors, to discard them as commandments meant to be literally obeyed.  

Let’s read from Matthew 5:39,

Do not resist the one who wrongs you.

But if anyone who slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.

And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

You have heard it said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.  

For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.

So to summarize:

If the person is an enemy, Jesus said to love him (Matt. 5:44). 

If he persecutes you, you are to pray for him (v. 44). 

If she publicly humiliates you, you are not to retaliate (v. 39). 

If someone takes advantage of you, you are to give even more than he asks (v. 41). 

The world preaches “Assert yourself.” Jesus taught, “Deny yourself.” 

The world warns that you will be constantly exploited.

Jesus' concern was not that His disciples be treated fairly but that they show unconditional love to others regardless of how they were treated. 

Can you sense the crisis of belief as you consider the practicalities of following these commandments?

These words seem absurd even to our ears today.

Jesus says love those who wrong you.

Brenton Tarrant thought he was exacting revenge on those who had wronged Christians and Western Civilisation for centuries. 

Remember, few Islamic believers know what the Koran says because it is written in Arabic, most are unaware of its incitements to violence and genuinely believe that Islam is a religion of grace, kindness and compassion. 

Men spat upon Jesus and nailed Him to a cross. His response was our model: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34).

With that in mind, how then should we live?

In Matthew 5, Jesus re-affirms the commandment to love our neighbour without saying who that neighbour is, because our neighbour is all around us.

The bible is replete with examples of Jesus crossing lines of prejudice and intolerance to carry out the will of God.

Some prominent examples include the healing of the Syro-Phoenician woman, the healing of the centurion’s child, and the conversation with the Samaritan woman come to mind.

This theme is carried on by God as he reveals his, to the Jewish mind, radical, plans to bring salvation to us “dirty” Gentiles. 

Though we may be separated by language, culture, belief, worldview, ethics and history from our neighbours, we are still called to love as we would love ourselves.

Therefore what Tarrant has done is not just a crime against a mosque, nor a crime against the Islamic community, nor just a crime against Christchurch, nor a crime against the people of New Zealand, nor a crime against humanity but a crime against God.   

Land monopolies

Every so often, Christian leaders in churches all over the world, gather together in leadership meetings to discuss how the church might become more relevant.

It has concerned me that many Christians don't realise that the bible has much to say about issues that are top of the mind in society today.

Let's take concerns over housing and the property market.  

All over the world, low interest rates, lax lending policies and globalization have resulted in rising land and real estate prices as cashed up investors look for bargains, bolt holes from potential conflicts or just to launder ill-gotten gains.

This has created enormous pressures for those who are entering adulthood, want to find cost effective housing for their families and increasingly the lower and middle classes are feeling like hard work is not going to allow them to own their own homes.

For example, in New Zealand, for most of the 20th Century, the average home was worth between 3-5 times the average salary.  Now it is sitting between 9-10.  The OECD reports that NZ housing ranks amongst the highest nations with overvalued housing when compared to long term averages price to income ratios. 

The social result is alarming:

1. Young families crammed into garages, living out of cars, 3-bedroom homes with a dozen or more people living together; no surprise that respiratory diseases such as colds, flus and pneumonia are common amongst these households.
2. Young couples putting off having families until they are well into their thirties, when their bodies are best suited to bear children in their early twenties.
3. An increasing gap between the haves and the have nots.
4. An increasing number of absentee landlords living in foreign countries.
5. Rising numbers of land bankers evidenced by an increasing number of unoccupied households and undeveloped land.

Social commentators are talking about generations of people who will forever be tenants, with no chance of owning their own homes, with an air of acceptance and inevitability.

This is not God's view of how life should be.  Consider these scriptures (hover over them with your mouse to read them:

1. Isaiah 5:8:  Land monopolies are a wrong.
2. Leviticus 25:8-13:  In God's society, people were allocated land, and every 50 years, land transactions were unwound, so that each family had their allocation returned to them.
3. Micah 2:2: Permanently disengaging a person from their land (their heritage) is an act of oppression.  

We have all played the game of monopoly.  We know how it ends.  It never ends well.

When discussing this problem with Christians the responses are less than encouraging:

1. I saved for my house, no one helped me, why should I help anyone else?
2. Everyone can own a house, said one Christian, it just needs good budgetting.
3. It's a free market, the incentives are there for all to work hard and progress in the world.
4. They should have saved, spent less, worked two jobs, used birth control...

But centuries of feudalism, class societies, aristocracy, slavery and oppression tell us unfettered free markets do require moderation and even intervention.  Without it, experiences such as the French Revolution and the rise of Communism, tell us that the inequalities become so severe that civil anarchy breaks out with much deadly violence.

The genuine Christian should be inspired by the bible to act vigorously to counter-act this great wrong.

Sometimes Christians throw their hands in the air, frustrated that though they might like to see social justice done, they are perplexed and clueless on what can be done about it.  In fact, the actions required are well developed and have been for many years.  They are not difficult to implement where there is a will:

1. Vote for land value taxes and reduce income and company tax.  In 1891 more than 60% of freehold land in New Zealand was held by fewer than 600 individuals or companies.  The Liberal Party of the day broke those land concentrations via land taxes.
2. Introducing standards of abandonment.
3. Adopting principles of usufruct eg Leviticus 19:9-10 and Leviticus 23:22.
4. Other ideas that include the application of easements, and real covenants.

How to cut down Logos 8's start up time

Faithlife's Logos 8 was released just before Christmas.  

One of the first thing's I noticed after installing it was how long it took to load up.  I don't have a huge collection of books (about 7GB) but it took over a couple of minutes to load.  

Painful.  

Logos 7 was sometimes slow too but I noticed this mostly around searches, I'm glad to report that searching resources seems much slower in 8.  

Here's a fix for greatly speeding up Logos's start up time:

1. Open Program Settings, find At Startup Open to and select Most recent layout - local


2. In the Command Box at the top of the Logos Window (with green GO in Logos 8), type Set Use Ngen to Yes and hit Enter.

My load up time fell to around 20 seconds.  Nice.

Logos for Children

Logos, was originally intended for serious adult bible students, seminary students, church and home bible study leaders.

What is serious?

I've come to realise that we take a very casual view of the bible and its study as Christians.  Jews and those who have been discovering the Hebrew roots of Christianity, this was not always the case.

Even in Constantinople in the 15th century, it was said that one commonly heard people discussing and debating theology in the markets of the city.

Small wonder then that we don't know what the bible has to say about how to deal with life's problems.  For example, during the recession, how many people heard sermons from the pulpit about how to solve it?

Does the bible have nothing to say about Collateralized Debt Obligations, Subprime Lending, Fiscal Expansion or Land Monopolies?  It's there.  If Christianity can't meaningfully contribute to a discussion about these kinds of topics, then this is a clue as to why Christianity's relevance to a modern society is in doubt today.

I want my children to have a deep knowledge of the bible, be confident to investigate the bible whenever they meet a life issue they haven't encountered before, be confident and respectful in discussing life and society's issues from a biblical perspective and be a part of society's attempts to solve life's problems.

By this, I hope they will be able to be guided by the bible so that they meaningfully contribute toward setting government policy, ethically conduct themselves within their families, jobs, businesses and voluntary organisations.

Giving them a 21st century tool to be able to study the bible is a big step forward.

Faithlife, the producers of Logos, have an eBook store.  These eBooks can be purchased and they are automatically included amongst the resources in a given Logos account.

These resources are then indexed and searchable from within Logos.  Material from them will then appear in Passage Guides, and Topic Guides.  Terrific.

Their eBook store has an abundance of material intended for children.  Just use keywords such as "Kids", "Children" and "Student" to get you started.

As a way of introducing my children (aged 7-14) to Logos, I signed them all up for the free version of Logos, Logos Basic, which they can all access from their respective user accounts in Windows 10.

My 12 year old daughter has already set up her own prayer list and a reading plan.

I have set them up with some prioritized resources: Lexham English Bible, Lexham Bible Dictionary. 

They are OK for the 12 and 14 year old but not so much for the 7 and 10 year old.  

Each have their own favorite bible translations so I'm gifting them (oldest to youngest) ESV, CEV and for the two youngest, GNB.  

To make Logos more usable, attractive for them and to reduce the chance they would be overwhelmed, I: 

1. Changed all the fonts to san serif
2. Zoomed the program so that everything was 20% bigger.
3. Prioritized the Lexham Bible, Dictionary and Study Bibles
4. Modified one of the standard layouts to have two panels with the bible on the left and the Lexham Resources together with a Notes tab on the RHS.  Saved the layout.
5. Bought them suitable/preferred bibles
6. Set these as their preferred bibles
7. Cleaned up their home screens to reduce the stuff they wouldn't be interested in
8. Started looking in the Faithlife eBook store for suitable resources to add.

If you're a parent and you use Logos, I hope this blog entry is thought provoking.

Discipleship, Parenthood and Children

Over on the Logos.com forum, there is a thread that started this week about Logos for Children.

It touches on a subject dear to my heart:  how to raise my children in the ways of God?

Where I started with, was the thought, what would I like my children to have in their figurative "spiritual kitbag" by the time they were at an age where they might leave home to study, start a job or just to go flatting?  I thought 16 was a good target age.  They might stay home for longer, but from the age of 16, the risk they will leave home starts to go markedly up.

My answers to the question:

1. Be able to confidently find a church to join
2. Be able to join in with the youth ministry in that church.  
3. Know what a good church was from a bad one; and to reason that out
4. Know how to deal with pain and disappointment
5. Meeting God and talking to God through prayer, for themselves
6. Know how to discuss confidently and respectfully their beliefs with people who live different lifestyles or follow a different religion; eg LGBT community members, atheists, or Muslims.
7. Know his responsibilities as a parent to teach his children and his children's children to walk in the ways of God.
8. Know what are healthy relationships from unhealthy ones; such as relationships with the opposite gender based on respect and engagement rather than objectification and personal gratification.  

The list goes on but hopefully this conveys the idea.  

Then I started working backwards from there to find age appropriate material for my children, different stuff depending on their age and tweaking it for things that pop up through the course of their lives. 

A routine seems to work best so we put aside an hour or two each Saturday.  

When my children says how come nobody else can read Hebrew or study Leviticus, I just say "that's what we do in our family."

Atheist Delusional: A short review

Atheist Delusional is a warm series of interviews of Atheists in which Ray Comfort exposes how Atheists aren't quite so "open-minded" as they say, and find it difficult to admit they might be wrong.

Comfort does well in positing their true motivations behind why they resist acknowledging "a higher power" creator when he leads them to acknowledging that they are morally deficient and resist the idea:  They realise to do so, would mean that they would be accountable to someone else for what they did.

I don't follow the Atheism v Christianity debate in great detail but I have heard of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins before.

It was therefore an eye-opener for me to watch the clip of Dawkins try to argue that life would come from nothing, realise that that was logically unsustainable, and then try to ridiculously argue that nothing was something after all.

He seemed genuinely surprised when the audience laughed at him.

The video is informative for both non-Christians and Christians alike, who are unfamiliar with the arguments within the debate and want a high-level summary of the issues that count.  The rest are red-herrings.

Living Waters, the organisation that produced the video have made it freely available in its entirety.  Here it is:

Israel at 70: A miracle in disguise

A J Heschel

To mark the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the modern state of Israel, here are some of Heschel's thoughts on its establishment.

Unprecedented.  A people despised, persecuted and scattered to all corners of the earth, has the audacity to dream of regaining authenticity, of being free in the Holy Land.

For nearly 2,000 years and many times a day in joy and sorrow we pray for you, Jerusalem, and our prayers never turned pale.  What is it we implore the Lord every Sabbath as we are about to open the Ark to take out the Torah?

Merciful father,
Deal kindly with Zion,
Rebuild the walls of jerusalem,
Truly, in thee alone we trust
High and exalted king and god, eternal god.

Despoiled and dispersed, abased and harassed, we knew we were not estranged forever.  We mourned you, we never wept you away.  Hope was hatched in the nests of agony.

The love of this land was due to an imperative, not to an instinct, not to a sentiment.  There is a covenant, an engagement of the people to the land.  We live by covenants.  We could not betray our pledge or discard the promise.

When Israel was driven into exile, the pledge became a prayer; the prayer a dream; the dream a passion, a duty, a dedication.

Intimate attachment to the land, waiting for the renewal of Jewish life in the land of Israel, as part of our integrity, an existential fact.  Unique, sui generis, it lives in our hopes, it abides in our hearts.

It is a commitment we must not betray.  3,000 years of faithfulness cannot be wiped off.

To abandon the land would make a mockery to all our longings, prayers and commitments.  To abandon the land would be to repudiate the Bible.

Israel reborn represents a breakthrough into whole new areas of experience and understanding stop it defies conventional conceptions, ordinary expectations.  Its essence is a proclamation.

This is why the return to Zion is a source of embarrassment to so many of us who depend for intellectual efficacy upon conformity with mental habits.  In our scientific investigations, we use conceptual models in order to characterise an empirical situation under investigation; we are guided by the principle of generalisation, seeking to fit a particular object to a universal model.  The relation between model and things modelled is a relation of analogy.

In other words, our mental habit is to think in terms of sameness and to assume that things under consideration are mere copies, repetitions, and to disregard the unprecedented, distinctness, uniqueness.  We operate with established forms, with rubrics.

This is indeed the modern religious predicament.  The mysterious events so central to Judaism and Christianity seem so strange because they are unprecedented.

The return to Zion is an unprecedented drama, an event sui generis for which there is no model, no analogy.

The State of Israel is a surprise, yet the modern mind hates to be surprised.  Never before has a nation been restored to its ancient hearth after a lapse of 1,897 years.  This extraordinary aspect is bound to carry some shock to the conventional mind, to be a scandal to the mediocre mind and a foolishness to the positivists.  It requires reordering of some notions.

Here lies a lesson of importance.  It is the homogenisation of history that often deprives us of understanding.

Genuine history is not mere repetition, moving in a circle.  It is a fresh attempt, a new arrival.  The Bible begins with the words “At the beginning…” To Greek mythology, for example, where the assumption is that the world has always been in existence, the concept of beginning was inconceivable.  Jewish understanding further implies that also in history there can be novelty, beginning.

Israel is a miracle in disguise.  Things look natural and conceal what is a radical surprise.  Zion rebuilt becomes a harbinger of a new understanding, of how history is intertwined with the mystery.

Israel is the opposite of a commonplace, it is an extraordinary place, and it is on the verge of the extraordinary that we may encounter the marvel Israel as a novelty is not an absolutely new beginning, but a resurrection in Ezekiel’s sense.  It is in accord of a divine promise and a human achievement.

Source: Heschel, A J (1967).  Israel: An Echo of Eternity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  New York.  Pages 43-44; pages 49-51.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was active in the American civil rights movement.