Was William Wilberforce bad for the churches?

I am am fed up with dear old WW.  It has been impossible to avoid him and I am sure many a church member is tired of the “topical” references to his 200 year old Act by lazy preachers.  Nearly half of all references mistakenly credit WW with abolishing slavery when all he did was to make the trade illegal.

He may have been (marginally) good for some oppressed people but I think he did the churches considerable harm.  They began to see their mission in terms of civilising the British through publicity campaigns and social engineering.  The moral crusading of the 19th and 20th centuries continually hyped and lauded the achievements of the Clapham sect (while generally ignoring the work of quakers and rationalists) as it rushed down the blind alley of social meddling in the name of Jesus.

Everything was cast in terms of abolishing the next “slavery” (child labour, votes for women, even banning alcohol in the name of setting free the slaves of drink).  The current application of the slavery model is things like forced prostitution and chinese manufacturing.

Am I in favour of these bad things?  No, but we already have a criminal code which should be able to deal with wrongs done in our jurisdiction and I doubt whether we can do much about China.

And I do not remember Jesus  calling his disciples to do all this stuff.

The liberation of Black Americans came when THEY began to insist on taking their freedom.  Most liberties have to be taken rather than given.

Entering the 36th year of the noodle epoch

The world has been shaken by the death of the man who introduced us to the glorious age in which we now live.  I refer, of course, to Mr. Momofuku Ando, who has died in Japan, aged 96, of a heart attack.

His BBC obituary is here.

If it is has slipped your mind he is the inventor of the Pot Noodle (sometimes called the Cup noodle).

“He was a self-made man who developed an epoch-making instant noodle product and spread it to all corners of the world,” Akio Nomura, chairman of the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Kyodo news agency.

“Epoch-making”.  So has the Year of Our Lord 2007 been replaced by the Year of Our Noodles 36?

And the gospel of the “boil in the carton” noodle has apparently reached the whole earth in the previous 35 years.  Is this the end of history?  Surely, he was the perfect modern man (”self-made”) who managed to make the perfect modern food.  No cooking, no washing up, no nutrition, no history, no fuss.

Is it only in Japan, where embarrassment has effaced history and triviality is the only meaning, that epochs are made by noodles?  I fear we are only ten years behind.  Some of the “celebrities” we celebrate in the UK have achieved far less than the Colossus of the Cup Noodle.

May I wish you a blessed New Year and happy hot noodles.

What is so good about a career?

In the modern world a man or woman with a career is a somebody.  It is the same in modern churches.  Some of the Pentecostals are up front about this - they will tell you 2007 can be the year of your spiritual victory and this will be proved NOT by being found worthy to suffer shame for Christ (Acts 5:41) but by being found worthy to be honoured by promotion.

In other churches career idolatry may be more subtle but is still there.  Who really believes this saying:

You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God. [Luke 16:15]

 There is a fascinating article in the London Review of Books on the legacy of Hannah Arendt  which is packed with interesting observations and points out how careerism inspired Adolf Eichmann and so many other energetic servants of evil.  Whenever a career is seen as good in itself then the careerist becomes a danger to himself and other people.  He ceases to walk with God and walks in the light of his own good image.  He is pursuing promotion instead of virtue.

Please note, I am not saying that the mark of a faithful disciple is a failed career!  Self-control and conscientiousness are a sign of spiritual fruit and a repentant believer may be a model employee.  In some organisations these are highly prized qualities which are rewarded with higher status and pay.  But the character is what matters and not the recognition.

May the good Lord save us from the career bureaucrats, the career politicians and, above all, the career Pastors.

Whatever you do, don’t overtake!

There is a narrow road with cars parked on both sides near my house. Buses and lorries often try to thread their way through and hold-ups are frequent. Sometimes careless drivers get stuck half way along the 200 yard “gauntlett” stretch facing a vehicle attempting to come the other way. The resulting standoff can last several minutes as cars queue up behind in both directions.

The result is fuming exhausts and even more fuming drivers while smirking pedestrians try not to show too much amusement at the resulting display of fallen human nature.

Yesterday, I pulled into a gap to let a delivery van pass in the opposite direction and a driver (gender unspecified to avoid prosecution) selfishly overtook me and blocked the way to oncoming traffic. I leapt out and tried to share a few choice insights about road etiquette but she pressed the central locking and stared straight ahead.

She is doubtless convinced she escaped death from road rage by a whisker and that my shapeless anorak was shielding at least a murderous axe or possibly a suicide bomb belt. My wayward beard may give the impression that I am a fanatical Jihadist after all.

Yes folks, overtaking in London can seem dangerous. Overtaking in Baghdad, however, is lethal. There was a news report about six months ago about a carful of men being shot up by US troops as they overtook them. Ironically, they were going home from a funeral but they all died because the nervous Americans thought they might be lining up for an attack. I was reminded of this story by this article on the BBC site.

So little real news is coming out of Iraq now and we have to thank one brave Iraqi reporter for this story. If there is one thing more dangerous than overtaking in Iraq it is truth telling.

Why no time?

All my friends in ministry seem so busy. They rush from place to place, bolt their meals and often have no time for conversation. It is understandable for those who are not paid but this is just as true for those who have the privilege of being paid ministers.

There must be many reasons but one is, I think, because they feel guilty just reading, meditating, praying (and chatting). It seems so passive and lazy. So unproductive.

Everyone else in the congregation seems busy. Sometimes busyness seems to be the only commonly recognised virtue in London. All else is relative. And our role as the Pastor/Teachers of churches is easy to despise when secularism rules. If only people realised how busy we are we would feel justified and so we become busy. We dress and act as busy professionals. “See my diary”, “Hear my phone ring”, “Sorry, have to dash!”

So who will do the work of hearing God speak in scripture? thinking through its implications in a world going mad and churches going adrift? working out what lives we should live in consequence of the faith delivered once for all by the Apostles and Prophets of Christ?

Who will put the Gospel of God in the language of the City of Men? Who will stand before the Lord?

I’d like to think about these things when I am less busy.