Peace on Earth - Yeah Right

As we enter the last days of the Christmas season, my thoughts turn to previous Christmases. Some of the Christmas’s that are imprinted in my memory are the ones I spent as a Counsellor. I decide then to always remember that Christmas is not the season of hohohos and wonderful times with the family for everyone. This is loosely related to my thinking about authenticity. I think that it is a time of year when it is easy to become inauthentic, we can easily get caught up in the false jollity that is expected of us.

I want to call us to remember those for whom Christmas is not easy, those under financial strain who cannot afford gifts, those whose family is full of pain, tension and hate, those for whom Christmas brings back memories of past trauma or abuse, those who are having a first Christmas without a loved one or after a divorce, those who are alone and lonely, those on the other side of the world who could be fed for a month on what we consume in a day. Above all I want to call Christians to remember that this is not the season of overeating and overspending rather it is the season to remember that “the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14). Immanuel – God with us. There are many people this season that need reminding that God is with them. As Christians we must take this call seriously – I want to encourage you to make an effort to not become overwhelmed with the expectations and tasks that are on you, take the time to stop and look at what’s happening in the lives of those around you. Take the time to remind them that God is indeed with them this Christmas.

Living in an Unreal World

In a world where reality is fake and a commodity on which TV shows are based, how do we understand what it means to be authentic? Culturally and generationally authenticity is crucial to those I work with, but what does it actually mean?

I’ve wanted to blog about authenticity for a few months now. I either seem to get stuck or end up going off on a (sometimes significant) tangent. I’m hoping if I share with you some of my thoughts, you can respond and hopefully we can help each other think through some of the issues. I have been as guilty as anyone who works with young adults of overusing the word (partly because it is in all the trendy missional books I read) without stopping to think through all the meanings and implications of it. I was challenged to think a bit more deeply about this because I needed to explain what it was and why it was so important to my students to my colleague (who is from the US). He is particularly interested in who gets to decide what is authentic and what is not, and how that happens. One thing I have noticed is that authenticity is not simple, it happens on a myriad of levels all at once, this makes it hard to explain and hard to understand.

Let us start with the dictionary definition of authenticity: not false or imitation, true to one's own personality, spirit, or character[1]. I’m happy with that definition, which is generally what I mean when I use the word authenticity. The reason I have picked up on this from my reading and use it so often is that it resonated as important for me and those I work with. Part of this is a reaction to shallow pop culture, and mass production and mass marketing (thanks Richard for pointing this out). Michael Frost claims that “In a world of hyper-reality, there is an emerging search for authenticity, the championing of real food, culture, politics (rather than Realpolitik), and entertainment.” Kiwi cultural traits also cause us to value authenticity, we love informality, equality and down to earthiness, (what can be more authentic than camping!). The result of this is that we see formality, hierarchy and euphemistic speech as inauthentic. It’s fascinating however that our authenticity only goes so far (probably some of our inherited English reserve), we like to call a spade a spade as long as we are talking about a spade and not our feelings! I get to this point and I am left with the question: Why is the longing and search for authenticity more pronounced among post-moderns (or young adults) than other generations? Perhaps it is just what they have been exposed to and reacted against, I sense it is more than that however.

So the questions I am pondering are: What is authenticity? Why is it important to post-moderns, (Ys, young adults whatever label you want to give them)? Who defines what is authentic or inauthentic?

That’s a start. Next week I want to post some thinking about authenticity and our faith and the presentation of our faith, and what the longing for authenticity means for organisations and churches.

Christina

[1] Merriam-Webster online dictionary

How Well Do I Know You?

What does it mean to be an authentic Christian friend in a world where we are faced with advertising such as the Shortland St billboard that asks – How well do you really know them? This line hangs above pictures of two of the main Shorty St characters at an intersection where I am often stopped at a red light. I find myself sitting there pondering this concept. How can I know them? They are just characters in a TV show. It raises this question for me -Are our neighbours so lonely that they think their friends are those ‘people’ that they see on the TV screen five nights a week? I am challenged to ask myself -Can we honestly say that we see any of our friends as often as we see the characters in our favourite TV show?

My students were discussing what the implications of being a radical Jesus follower means for our friendships. We are coming together each week to challenge and support each other to live more radically Christ centred lives. We feel that part of this is considering the way that Christian friendships are different from those who are not yet Jesus followers.

One of the challenges for our Christian friendships is how we use modern communication technologies well. Is scoring 10/10 on a facebook quiz about superficial aspects of people’s lives really knowing them? Rather it is through those late night conversations about disappointments, hopes, dreams and experiences or absences of God that we get to know someone. Our friendships now often revolve around communications technology and they can be wonderful ways of connecting us to people in between face to face contact, yet I worry that facebook is taking over from having coffee with someone and that texting is taking over from going to visit someone. The result of this is that friendships are remaining superficial and never getting to the deeper level which enables lives to connect. People are desperately searching for community and friends yet they don’t want or don’t know how to make the commitment and effort needed to reach beyond the superficial.

As Christians we need to be challenged by the action of our God, who loved the world so much that he amazingly chose to become human, to be incarnated, to be able to stand face to face among us, so that the world could see and know God at a deeper level and to connect our lives with his. In turn, how do we live among our friends in such a way that our lives connect with theirs, and in turn we are able to connect their lives with Jesus?


Christina

Leading in Creativity

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to image God, and to be fully alive (inspired from the Leadership block course I did in May). I have been relating this to the creative arts, as our God given ability to be creative comes as part of our imaging our immensely creative Creator-God. Now I have to be careful here as my involvement in the creative arts is mainly as an appreciative audience (our ability to appreciate beauty also images God who was able to look at the world and say it is good). I don’t think as Christians that we are really living up to our full potential in this area. Centuries ago the church was in the forefront of creative arts: “From the church proceeded philosophy, music, art, and literature.” (Robert Webber).

Why are those days gone? As Christians we should be delighting in our creativity and leading the field in innovation in music, art, poetry, sculpture, architecture and anything else. . However our music tends to be boring and derivative. We have a tendency to see that a certain thing is popular and then try and jump into the trend. For example there is a lot of hero worship of Brooke Fraser, (and she makes a strong stand for her faith which is admirable) but frankly girl with a guitar fluffy pop music has a certain following so she has managed to enter that rather safe and dull market but without changing anything or increasing the interest or quality of that genre of music. Over and over I see Christians being reactive instead of proactive, as Christians our call is to set the trends to lead the way in creativity, not to follow the existing trends. Why are we as Christians so often just plain boring? What is stopping us living up to the fullness of creativity that God had placed in us?

Christina

Lighten Up!

Do we have enough fun as Christians?

Sometimes it is hard to have fun as a Christian – I know for myself that as a Christian I am more engaged with the pain of the world than some non-Christians are. Sometimes that can prevent us from having fun. Predominately however I see Christians sitting at one extreme or the other. Either we are too deeply intense and serious, or we come across with a superficial Hollywood style –Christians are Happy all the time attitude.

I have been thinking about this in the context of evangelism. Do we actually have fun sharing our faith or is it something we do because we think we should? Often the people who share their faith are the ones who come across as overly intense and serious. I’ll never forget being out with a Drug Arm team and one of the women that we were serving a hot drink too, said that she never understood the trinity – The body language of the three people I was with changed immediately. I think the best simile would be that they were like a pack of wolves moving in for the kill. How intimidating for the poor woman who had a question about the trinity! Often we talk about challenging people to ‘move out of our comfort zone’ to do evangelism. I think we should be talking more about how we can share our faith having fun rather than scaring people out of where they are comfortable.

I have also being thinking about this in relation to the bible. Why don’t Christians find studying the bible fun? Recently I heard of a Christian who discouraged a non-Christian friend from going to a bible study ‘because studying the bible is boring’. As Christians do we find the bible less exciting than non-Christians? This is a challenge to those of us who teach the bible. How well do we express how exciting it can be to discover things about God in its pages?

Our task then is to have fun with evangelism and the bible, but without going to the other extreme of thoughtless superficiality.

Christina

The Challenge of Our Favourite Things

Fabulous shoes and gorgeous cakes are some of my favourite things, so I was delighted by Sofia Coppola’s latest film creation: Marie Antoinette. It is a visual extravagance of shoes (Manolo Blahniks), cakes and colour. Over the weekend I have been wondering if there is more to this film than first appears. There has been some criticism directed at the film as it treats Marie Antoinette sympathetically as a naïve child, it doesn’t attempt to portray much of the political situation at the time or contrast the poverty stricken situation of the peasants with the excesses of the royal court. Some critics have seen this as a Hollywood celebration of its own excesses. . I don’t know whether Coppola’s intentions were to simply celebrate lavish spending and partying, or whether something deeper is occurring. Coppola’s use of modern language and modern music connected the film firmly into our time and this left me with some heavy questions. It is so easy to be critical of the excesses of 18th Century Royalty because we would never waste money fighting a war overseas when there were people starving around us would we? Even more personally there is a challenge to our ignorance of poverty - are we living in our protected little bubble while people around us are struggling to find enough money for food? Are we more concerned with what is happening overseas and unwilling or unable to see the (emotional and physical) poverty that is closer to us than we think? Just before Christmas I helped deliver food parcels for church and I was struck again by peoples genuine struggle to survive even here is Auckland and particularly how close to me they live and yet how little opportunity I have to interact with them and hear about their lives. The final challenge for me and although amusing is also very serious do I really need another pair of shoes when so many people in the world don’t even have one pair?

Christina