James Henley one of the students on CYM had a great reflection as we sat around the dinner table so I asked if he would put it together as a guest post. James blogs here Monster-in-Law move if you want to check it out.

I had some interesting thoughts (mainly questions) during a conversation over lunch at CYM about heaven and hell, and in particular to do with universalism. Although I’m not completely sold on the concept of universalism, I also equally think that our conventional reasoning around heaven and hell needs to be thought out more thoroughly. So here are some of my thoughts…

The conventional Christian understanding of the end times is that God is so perfect that he can’t have sin – evil, bad stuff, imperfection – in his presence. So by accepting him and the cross we are purified of this sin and so as perfect, complete people, we can enter his presence.

But if the major theme across the whole gospel is self-sacrifice – the sacrifice of God sending His son to be confined to a human body, and then the self-sacrifice of Jesus dying on the cross for us – then why would the same God not make the sacrifice of allowing sin into His presence? Surely, that wouldn’t be one sacrifice too far? If we believe in an omnipresent God whose presence is all around us in the world – then surely He is already in the presence of sin in the interactions he has with us. Even if God isn’t “walking amongst us” as he did in the garden, in order to be with us – in everything – he also must have to be in the presence of all the bad stuff in the world?
James

The Good Night on dvd

I have an inkling that much of what we call mission (youth or otherwise) in the UK (west) is not rooted in sound missiology but rather unconsciously influenced by western culture. In an individualistic consumer driven society where people gain identity from brands and their positioning in the world, much of the mission we undertake is individualistically focused and even some of the service based community initiatives are consumer driven they can consumed either by the participants or those receiving. We have lost the missionary call to go to communities and grow expressions of church within the community, we have lost the art of balancing our service to the community with the building of intentional relationships, lost the balance of speaking of God and being Christlike. There a number of possible reasons:
– the cumulative effect of culture on the church
– it is short cut and costs less in terms of time and commitment
– we are in the in-between time where there are still churches so the focus is on the individual and calling them to join existing communities of faith
– in a similar vein a failure to embrace the reality of the current state churches/ and most denominations resulting in a rearranging of the deckchairs on the titanic

• The Lion in Winter ipod

mentality rather than a willingness to get out of the boat
– existing communities of faith wrongly think that they reflect the wider communities they are placed in
– a lack of discipleship and cheap christianity
– a focus on teaching and singing rather than space for mission and experiments in being inclusive faith communities
– a selfish desire not to been seen as hypocritical that dis-empowers us from action and challenge.

The reason for the title for this post is that we have lost much of the raw reality of Christianity (VERY aware I am sitting in my comfortable house on my laptop typing) and as such the raw missionary impetus to go and be and see what happens. More that this the need to deconstruct our faith before we go, and to go whilst we are still deconstructing, to go with our questions, so that our being reflects our questions and so allowing what happens to be fresh and raw.

I sit here thinking okay so how does this work in the real world? If i brought this to a local church what would the response be? Well first if they were up for the challenge the focus would be on the deconstruction bit; as teaching is overly loaded in most churches and familiar and comfortable – I expect they would opt for a series of teaching weeks to get their heads around it and then maybe something would happen. This is not raw Christianity, it would be sanitised, packaged. After the death of Moses God tells Joshua and the people (all xxx thousand of them) they have three days to prepare and then they will enter the promised land. Can you imagine trying to prepare to go to war, emigrate, move your whole family and community in just three days? All the time still grieving for a leader who has died and being unsure of the guy taking his place. These people went with questions, they went with their whole worldview turned upside down, they went with little preparation all of which caused them to go with faith.