kindness, justice and righteousness

We read this passage in parenting class last night:

...but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight...

-Jeremiah 9:24

We were discussing this within the context of family and how there needs to be a balance, but is this not part of our mission? Kindness, justice and righteousness is what we should be seeking, not only for ourselves, but others. Be kind to others, Seek justice for others, bring righteousness to others (not the best way to say that…).

Holiness

Sorry we missed class Sunday, we were helping out in Sarah’s class. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now, since I took us down the rabbit hole. What I was TRYING to do a few Sunday’s ago was NOT derail the class on a non-essential tangent, but discuss maintaining holy lives in the midst of participating with “the world.” (natives as Clint would say). I was thinking how could I express what I mean by holy living? Why would I need to do that? Why, because we tend to assume a plain moral-centered idea of holiness, and that’s not strictly what I mean by holy-living. When we don’t interact (I mean go to movies with, eat with, talk with) with non-Christians our idea of holiness has that obey the law feeling to it. So as long as I do these things and don’t do these other things I’m living a holy life. The problem is we tend to need a clear rule rather than a guide and embed our cultural preferences within the message of holiness. Is this not the issue Jesus took with the Pharisees.

Joel Scandrett has a great article in the current Christianity Today (May/07). He makes the point that the word for holiness has more to do with belonging to God, not to neglect our moral responsibility, but to keep us from an unhealthy moral-ism (see John’s thoughts).

“To be holy, to be set apart to God, is never an end in itself but is always for the sake of the world.”

Everything, for me, comes back to church (I need to identify what I mean by that…another post). Our closest brothers and sisters help keep us in check, not in a moralistic way, but in a relational way, so that they just know “somethings not right.” A friend of mine put it this way: Would you every say, I’m going to relate to my wife today? No, you just do. If you relationship is hurting, you know it. You may not want to face up to it, but you know. It’s that way with church, we have people that help remind us who we belong to, And that anchors us. If you agree with me you might like listening to this and enjoy reading this. If you think I’m way off, it would still be worth your time to listen/read/think/pray.

In preparation for Missions Conference

I thought it might be useful to look at a book almost a century old. Roland Allen was a missionary in China for just a few years before illness forced him back to England. His experiences changed his thinking about missions, and his thoughts are still valuable today. I’m just going to post a few passages every couple of days. I’m pulling quotes from Missionary Methods: St. Pauls or Ours?. You can read it online or borrow my copy if you’d like to read it.

…people have adopted fragments of St. Paul’s method and have tried to incorporate them into alien systems, and the failure which resulted has been used as an argument against the Apostle’s method. For instance, people have baptized uninstructed converts and the converts have fallen away; but St. Paul did not baptize uninstructed converts apart from a system of mutual responsibility which ensured their instruction. Again, they have gathered congregations and have left them to fend for themselves, with the result that the congregations have fallen back into heathenism. But St. Paul did not gather congregations, he planted churches, and he did not leave a church until it was fully equipped with orders of ministry, sacraments and tradition. Or again, they have trusted native helpers with the management of mission funds, and these helpers have grievously misused them; But St. Paul did not gather congregations, he planted churches, and he did not leave a church until it was fully equipped with orders of ministry, sacraments and tradition. Or again, they have trusted native helpers with the management of mission funds, and these helpers have grievously misused them; but St. Paul did not do this. He had no funds with which to entrust anyone. These people have committed funds in trust to individual native helpers and have been deceived; but St. Paul left the church to manage its own finance. These people have made the helpers responsible to them for honest management; but St. Paul never made any church render an account of its finances to him. Or again, Europeans have ordained ill-educated native helpers and have repented of it. But they have first broken the bonds which should have united those whom they ordained to those to whom they were to minister, and then have expected them to be ministers of a foreign system of church organization with which neither the ministers nor their congregations were familiar. St. Paul did not do this. He ordained ministers of the Church for the Church, and he instituted no elaborate constitution. When these false and partial attempts at imitating the Apostle’s method have failed, men have declared that the apostolic method was at fault and was quite unsuited to the condition and circumstances of present-day missions. The truth is that they have neither understood nor practised the Apostle’s method at all.