Bristol CYM is hosting Pete Rollins in March, unfortunatly it is smack in the middle of when the baby is due so it is unlikly I will be able to attend. I have heard Pete speak twice and read his book and blog, and am really impressed by what he has to say. There are a few people who are saying anything that new, but Pete does bring a challenging paradigm of thinking and I think he is one of the people we really need to listen to. Find the flyer here
and come and hear, engage and question.
Great post over on youthblog on Whose the Daddy? using the metaphor of fatherhood to look at churches approaches to young people.
Following on from my previous post on theology and control I have been thinking about the type of resources we need to ensure that our thinking is not restricted or controlled and yet linked with the wisdom of the past. A basic model many use is the triangle of Culture, Scripture, and Tradition. However my practice encounters recently have challenged this and I wonder if the pull of theological norms that come from the traditions are too powerful. As I further reflected I was drawn into thinking about personal change and if this change is to be real and lasting how this stems from self awareness.
Now I have a conundrum in that I am more aware of the issue and the pull of the theological norm, but also aware of my own desire for change and self tendencies to push for this. There is an issue for me in the static nature of theological norms verses the dynamic nature of scripture. Whilst I recognise that tradition does change and evolve it is more gradual, whist culture is far more dynamic. Can scripture be a way to hold the tension and what role does self awareness play? It is bit like all three (Scripture, Tradition, Culture) are moving at different pace and yet I am also moving, so in order to do justice to the model I need to aware of my own tendency for change and this desire, and make sure that this does not mean I make too many jumps in my thinking (which would be easy as I am emerged in the fast moving culture) but work harder on the tradition to slow me down and the surplus in scripture to hold the tension.
Another issue for me is a growing awareness of how modernist and logical this approach is, which in itself causes me issues around control as I firmly believe that by working with different disciplines and traditions and engaging in mission progress is made and God moves in paradigm changing ways rather than in a gradual process (see redefining church
) and that borrowing from different perspectives other than the christian tradition and reflecting this with scripture can help us see the changes needed. Yet this often leads to orthopraxis and the logic and knowledge base takes time to catch up.
After some thought and reading I’d like to post a follow up to this last post on money and debt.
Debt money, which is basically based on an assurance from one person to another that the debt will be paid (you may wish to re-read the above mentioned post) can suffer from a confidence problem.
When you accept a promise from someone you are trusting that it will be kept in the expected manner. However, over history many governments (the largest promiser of IOUs) just attempt to print their way out of trouble, creating more and more ‘IOUs’ (credit notes/cash that doesn’t have intrinsic value) thus making the existing money more and more worthless.
So the promise of efficient money by using promises to repay (debt money) is tempered by the risk that the promise will be undermined.
On the other hand using valuable assets as money is far less risky – what is the risk that an asset that is considered to have worthwhile value will plummet to a tiny fraction of it’s current worth? However, it can happen, asset values do vary. So what kind of asset would you want to bank with – something which is useful perhaps, something which is rare?
Ultimately, it is a speculative choice either way – debt money (promises) or asset money (valuable commodities).
With regards to yesterdays post “Having All in Common” I’m tempted to imagine that money isn’t something that would exist in the full on coming (and here) Kingdom of God. After all isn’t money something that gives us ownership of something, something we use to trade something we own for something someone else owns?
So, does God prefer asset money to debt money? I don’t know! He says don’t owe others stuff, but then he says that we should continue to return the debt of love…
Ah well, maybe the above discussion is irrelevant? Maybe I’ll have to give it some more thought…
Acts 2:44
All the believers were together and had everything in common.
I was thinking for a few moments about this today and I found myself framing this issue with a question:
What is it that worries us about sharing possessions?
I think it is the fear that our contribution will be abused – that our generosity will be taken advantage of, that we will not be able to count on others to be fair and considerate.
In itself, sharing your possessions or having shared possessions is quite a joyous practice. You get a heightened sense of usefulness, a sense of giving, as sense of helping. The sharing is a positive, it is the abuse that is negative.
Why is it that we cannot trust our brothers and sisters, that we cannot rely on them to be considerate? Is this a shortcoming of our relationship with them. Is our fear of having common property simply an indicator about the state of our relationships?
If so, what can be done? I’m challenged to be closer and more involved with the people I call my Christian friends.
These thoughts have sprung my considerations about what is private property and what is ‘common’ property. Are even our labours (perhaps our most personal and private resource) common property in the new Kingdom?
New occupational and professional standards for youth work consultation – events NCVYS is holding two free events this month to discuss the New Occupational and Professional Standards for Youth Work, currently being developed by the Sector Skills Council Lifelong Learning UK. Events will be held in London and Birmingham; book online here.
I have been at the IASYM conference for the past few days and whilst hearing some good stuff and having some great conversations, it has raised issues for me around the academic paradigm and theology as a tool for control and reinforced some questions I had around Grenz and Franke model for re-imagining within a triangle of Tradition, Culture and Scripture. Andrew Root presented a paper looking at christopraxis, and how this takes place within a bracket – on one side Theological and Biblical Norms and on the other side a cultural perspective (that any action must not do harm to another person) so you seek to work out the will of God for a given situation swinging between the brackets. You can download the papers here. Whilst I agree in part with the brackets (the cultural perspective which I link with orthopraxis) the question for me is how these models can restrict change through a restriction of the heretical imperative or the surplus in the theological text, because this is outside the theological side of the bracket. Can we widen the bracket as there is no one theological norm or tradition. How can we protect the imaginative practice and creativity and give this space and do theology?
I know this may be a slightly confused post but I hope you get the idea
I’ve recently been reading some books by Paulo Coelho including, ‘The Alchemist’ and ‘By the river Piedra I sat down and wept’
I have found his books a great inspiration written from the heart and I would certainly recommend them. The latest book of his I’m reading is called ‘The Zahir’ which is all about love and what it means to follow your heart. Below is a passage from this book on relationships and communication.
“The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don’t talk any more, they don’t sit down to talk and listen. They go to the theatre, the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather round a fire and tell stories�
The advent reflections James posted helped me prepare for Christmas and now my thoughts move the the birth of our baby due in March. I am left thinking thinking how do I prepare myself for this event. The practicalities seem to dominate, not least because we are having an extension built on the house, loosing the kitchen for a while, so the house is in chaos. In many ways this disorder provides me with impetus to find peace and solace, yet this is a place of refuge for me rather than a place to explore my feelings, to think how to prepare myself for the birth of our baby, or to confront my inner life and break up my fallow ground. To find the inner reserves to move from the chaos through the place of refuge towards the fallow ground, is a challenge that I will need all three months till March to confront.
This is a post that continues a casual series about debt (here is the previous post).
Most money in circulation today only exists because someone took out a debt from the banking system, which promptly created the money from nothing. The simple way to express this is it is just like giving someone an IOU: If you want to trade with someone and you have nothing you can promise them something in return – so your promise is a debt to the person who gave you something of value in return for your promise. This is the concept of debt money.
Alternatively we can have money that is based on the value of something that is stored away. For example at one stage money used to be issued when you stored gold in a ‘bank’ (a bank being a store where things of value could be kept). Let’s call this ‘banked asset money’ – when you give the money to someone, they effectively become the new owner of the item kept in store.
I’ve commented on the problems of debt – that you become endebted to someone, you owe them and you are therefore controlled to some respect by the need to pay them off. However, most of our money in circulation is based on debt, by holding some money you are either in debt to someone (because the money is a loan) or someone else is (because the money is a loan).
It is my preference to not owe the loan myself, but to hold money that exists because someone else took out a loan and spent it and the money came to me (eventually). Is this a tacit acceptance of debt? Hmmm. I’m not sure that it is, but how about using ‘banked asset money’ where there is no debt at all?
The problem with ‘banked asset money’ is that there are loads of assets sitting in a bank doing nothing! Rather unproductive and inefficient. In this scenario it costs a lot more to have money because of the overheads of storage and the fact that stored stuff doesn’t get very well used.
I just had an email in about gold and the ethical problems of gold production. Much gold is basically stolen from the people of the country that it was mined in and also a lot of pollution is produced to create gold. If you have gold based money you are necessarily causing gold to be mined – as if you mine some gold you can exchange it for money. Using precious things as money tends to stop that material being used for useful purposes as it has an exchange value far in excess of its useful value (value to do something useful).
Most gold spends its time being valuable either as ingots or as jewellery (which has status because of its value) – only a small proportion of gold spends its time being useful – perhaps in electronic goods or dental fillings. (I’m basing this judgment of how gold is used based on this info: http://www.goldsheetlinks.com/production2.htm which states there is probably 3/4 of an ounce of gold per person and I reckon that an average person does not typically use that much gold for utilitarian purposes – I know that I have some electronics, but it won’t have that much gold in – therefore most gold must be used as a store of value instead.)
If gold is used to back money then we are poorer because it reduces the amount of gold being used for more useful purposes that would make us wealthier (in a practical way).
Storing grain instead of gold isn’t an ideal answer for ‘banked asset money’ either as storing grain has costs, unless you happen to be storing it anyway.
So using asset based currencies aren’t necessarily the right answer to the debt question.
To be continued…