Ownership

Owning but not possessing

As having nothing, yet possessing everything
(2 Cor. 6:10).

Those words are challenging, from the one who wrote that though poor he was making many rich. Fast forward, and I guess many of us are nearer to ‘owning everything’ and so I suggest we need to do a little reversal of the above:

As owning everything, but possessing nothing.

Our relationship to what we own, now there is a challenge. ‘It’s mine and don’t touch’ just does not cut it for those who follow Paul as he followed Christ. ‘It’s mine and I am going to steward it’ is a major step forward, provided stewardship does not remain in the realm of control.

GIFT. That seems how God operates. He gives. Gift is not charity, though there are many times we need to be respond with ‘charity’, increasingly so as so many have lost jobs and accommodation, and at times with no questions asked. But gift is something beyond that. It is given freely to help a person toward their destiny. Given without guarantee of something coming back personally, even though given with prayer and consideration.

The Jericho principle. At the point of entry to the land that was abundant gift the people received an instruction that was not repeated later. TAKE NOTHING, DO NOT PROFIT at all from the conquest of Jericho. We know the issue that ensued through Achan’s disobedience.

At the point of entry a strong decision not to profit is I believe very key. This has shaped me over years when making an entry to a place. I try to find what I might have profited from and then not touch it. For example, and such a small issue, not to profit from any books sold in another nation, not to receive royalties, nor an author’s fee. (Not being in the John Grisham league there is no need to be impressed!)

So up to date. A couple of days ago while we were praying over our re-entry to Madrid as to when and how, we were given a very helpful prophetic word over a zoom call from someone who knew nothing about our prayers and deliberations. This put a pause button to our plans. Then a couple of days later we were put in touch with a Colombian-born woman who we had never met who was losing her accommodation at the end of September and needed a place for 3-4 months. Owning everything…

Paying attention to any check in our spirits (not paying attention to the ‘what if’ questions in the mind), we knew that we cannot own everything and possess it as well. Keys in post. A gift to her… a small contribution to her destiny.

Yesterday one of really good friends and neighbours had his birthday. We had the afternoon together. He freaked out (not good on your birthday) when he found what we had done. His wife explaining that he finds it very hard to trust people.

Our gift to him? We believe in people, their destiny. And we believe in him and his destiny.

It takes time when the paradigm is one of witnessing not evangelising (yes there is a chapter in Humanising the Divine on that, but you all know that cos you have all bought a copy – right?!!!!). But the time witnessing takes is so important. A relationship is built and it is not one-way.

We do our small part, and you do yours, and together we can own but not possess so that what we do not own we can possess.

Humanising the divine

VOLUME 1!

Book is available… or ever so nearly so!

To download the eBook – two versions, one which will be for kindle products, the other for other readers; check out the site:

https://www.bozpublications.com/humanising-the-divine

To order the hardback version – either use the above site, or your normal in-country store (Barnes & Noble; Waterstones… and all the others). With most of those book store sites you will currently be able to do a ‘pre-order’ as they will say the publication date is 29/09/20. (The book is print on demand so will not be on the shelves of those stores, but available by mail order, or ordered into the store.) I am not making the book available directly on Amazon simply as my tiny protest against the nature of such organisations. My tiny protest will of course cause a great quaking in the boots of Amazon and Mr. B!!!! I appreciate that will be a slight inconvenience to some of you – such is life.

I am opening up discussion and engagement by zoom and in a forum.

Forum link.

Contact form to join a Zoom group.

I think the above pages are clear. I expect that it will be mid-October before the first Zoom group begins, and I plan for as many as are needed. My suggestion would be to get hold of the book in either format and if you consider there would be value in joining such a group to then send me your details via the contact form.

Kenarchy!

A short while back Roger Mitchell (as lead editor) launched The Kenarchy Journal. Here is the link:

https://kenarchy.org/

Volume 1 has been there since the start, and now there is the drawing together of articles for Volume 2… and they are also welcoming submissions for that volume. (There is also a forum for the interaction with all current articles.)

Here is a short note from Roger:

If you are not aware of it already would like to draw your attention to The Kenarchy Journal, www.Kenarchy.org, a new online academic resource launched this summer embracing a wide and interdisciplinary perspective relevant to the politics and theology of love. Its purpose is to advance applied research, and it includes a forum that we very much hope will provide the opportunity for thinkers and activists beyond academia to engage with the online material. Volume 1, Starting Points, deals particularly with the theology of Incarnation, Trinity and Lament and then focuses on reinstating the feminine, advocating for the poor and reintegrating humanity and the creation. Volume 2, Spring 2021, will continue to explore Starting Points focusing on the remaining themes central to kenarchy, namely the priority of children, welcome for strangers, justice for prisoners, and health for the sick. We are currently inviting submissions exploring the theology of the child, immigrants and asylum seekers, restorative justice, and health and wellbeing. Please encourage students and colleagues or fellow researchers to consider submitting an abstract for an article relevant to these themes via the website, or to let us have sight of an unpublished article they may have already prepared on one of these themes. We would of course, be delighted to have a submission from you!

A little closer

A few days ago Gayle and I went away for a few days. Those times have often been very fruitful with time to reflect, question, and pray. For sure the COVID lockdown has been good for us from the perspective of reflection. A while back I had (and thankfully still have) a connection with Authentic Business, who have an approach that is very people focused. Change is focused on the personal not the structural. One of the exercises they engage clients in involves discovering core process. So Gayle and I did this together.

It basically involves recounting three happy stories, then from them pulling out verbs that describe action involved in the stories and then nouns. Eventually it is narrowed down to one verb and one noun. Our process took us a couple of days, not constant, but ruminating. At the end of the two days we settled on (different) core process descriptions. It really had quite an impact.

It is great to be a little closer to discovering why one is on the planet (no need to say, ‘and you were born in 1955, what have you been doing all this time?’). Yes takes a little longer for some of us than others.

The three stories were very interesting for me. Gayle could pull out as many as you wish, I got to one story and couldn’t think of another one! The tendency was to pull on ‘when God did this’ kind of response, reflecting more a need to feel significant than discovering the happy time! With her help one of the stories I managed to get to was when she said – what about the time the police with armed rifle insisted on moving you on when you entered the zone they were guarding at the Congress building that had the barriers up? You came back from that bouncing with happiness.

What a great moment. I remember it well and it still brings a good smile to my face. The day I helped the police man be a good law-enforcing officer. My calling in life – or close to it.

Anyway… the verb I came up with was ‘provoking’. Gayle had the same verb.

A Taster

Been a while since I have posted here. I have been writing… Just completed the fourth of a proposed six-series set of book(lets). Below is the opening paragraphs, followed by the closing paragraphs, from the third volume and a chapter entitled, ‘A necessary chapter’. This volume seeks to engage with some practical areas of society, so the first chapter was on the Arts, others are on Health and Education, Business (as Unusual) and the Media.


A chapter on the arts was a nice gentle way to highlight how any communication needs more than words to bring about change. In that chapter I said that art has often been commodified, becoming the collector’s piece, sometimes because of a deep appreciation of the art but often because of the perceived investment value. One piece bought for monetary reasons while other artists, who put their heart and soul into something (not to mention many hours), cannot make a living from their gift to society. It leads me to this chapter, a necessary one, on money, work and value.
The archaeologists report that between the 10th and the 8th century BC there were many economic changes in the land of Israel. Over those two centuries a huge discrepancy grows between the size of houses. We might view it that prosperity abounded and that this was evidence as to how God had blessed, but the 8th century prophets viewed it very differently. This is the rise of the critical voices of the prophets who connected social inequality to a faithlessness to the covenant. A poignant example is in Amos 4:1-4,

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria,
you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy
and say to your husbands, “Bring us some drinks!”
The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his holiness:
“The time will surely come
when you will be taken away with hooks,
the last of you with fishhooks.
You will each go straight out
through breaches in the wall,
and you will be cast out toward Harmon,”
declares the Lord.
Go to Bethel and sin;
go to Gilgal and sin yet more.
Bring your sacrifices every morning,
your tithes every three years.

Continuing to tithe and sacrifice in the appointed way was exposed as a farce as there was no justice, no semblance of an egalitarian society. In the life of Israel the law stipulated an intentional levelling through the system of Sabbath, the seventh year Sabbath and a radical Jubilee every fiftieth year when there was a reboot to the whole of society.

Before wading in to some of these major issues a gentle proviso that I will try and pick up in a later chapter. The gentle proviso is, ‘but we have to be practical.’ Agreed! We are not looking for something that is perfect for we wait for the day ‘when the perfect comes’; we live in a fallen world and in that world we have to learn how to compromise. The compromises that we are to be involved in though are to be redemptive. Redemption does not bring us to perfection in the immediate but re-aligns us so that there is a before and an after, so that we are not left the same, and the after is better than the before. Jesus quoted the Scripture that ‘the poor you will have with you always’ (John 12:8 quoting Deut. 15: 11), and that surely is true.

However, we cannot use it as if Jesus intended us to be unmoved or inactive about inequalities. The Scripture that Jesus quoted, Deut. 15: 11 says:

There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.

There is a reality that there will always be those who experience poverty, and in the light of that there has to be a spirit of generosity, for such was the commandment God gave them. The wider passage exhorts us to be generous, to cancel debts, to help liberate and to truly work toward the goal of eradicating poverty.

The gospel sets out the eschatological focus, and then deals with the present in both real and redemptive terms. It does not call us to live with a utopian vision, nor does it allow us to be passive. The ekklesia is present in the world to bring about change, and we are in a world that is all-but a runaway train hellbent on destruction. The original sin of consumerism, of moving boundaries for personal gain has to be addressed. This chapter is focused on money (or maybe better put as Mammon), but it could equally address the ecological crisis which is yet another sign that we have, as a race, been consistently moving boundary markers for personal gain.

………

The age to come, the one we are preparing for, and the one that we are preparing the materials for, will not be an age when there will be segregation along financial lines. Yet this age has increasingly sown into that financial divide. In closing this chapter, one that had to be written, let me simply ask how we should best sow into that glorious future. If I am privileged to own my own house should I pursue an even bigger stake in bricks and mortar? Should I look to store up more for myself with a pension scheme that will only increase the money distortions of society? Should I look to leave money to my descendants so that they might have the potential of moving further up the scale than I was able to?

Hard questions? Or looking at the reality that there is an age to come and how should we live in that light of that?

What remains clear is the concept of simply encouraging believers to rise to the top 3% of the mountain of influence without any critique of the existence of the ‘mountain’, could indeed release an influence, but the influence might not be an influence for the kingdom. The mountain remaining is not a signpost of the age to come.

We do not live in a perfect world and we await the age to come. While living in the in-between time, while we inhabit this imperfect world, we have to make compromises, yet we cannot simply compromise while refusing to look at the issues that pollute our world. Mammon and consumerism have been here since the beginning, but will not be here at the end. We live in between those two points. If we allow ourselves to be dragged back then, for sure, we are not of those who are contributing to the transformation of this world, and the preparation of the next.

Perspectives