patmos

I spent last week in Malaysia, rounding out my studies considering all things economic.  As always, the world is much bigger (and stranger and scarier!) than I’d previously thought, and there are some intriguing alternatives to the dominant economic narrative we tend to hear in the Australian context.  One thing in particular struck me as I listened to the teaching and insights of C.B. Samuel: I have a lot of work to do before my understanding of biblical stewardship and my penchant for private ownership are reconciled.

I mean, ask any half-baked evangelical as to how they’ve obtained their wealth thus far, and you’ll likely get a reply along the lines of ‘it’s a blessing from God.’  And I’d agree.  If I’m really honest, I can’t really claim ownership over the things that I ‘own’ because there’s been too much input from others.  I can’t ever return the vast resources my parents, family and friends have put into my life; I can’t return the sunshine that grows my veggies or repay the trees for cleaning the air I need to stay alive; I can’t trade my particular talents for others or buy more on eBay.  In short, my existence is a gift from a holy trinity of sorts: without others, the earth and God, I’d be nothing and have nothing.  What I am and ‘have’ is a gift entrusted to me.

However, between my understanding and practice of stewardship – the task of carefully disbursing what’s under my care – there seems to be a space about as wide and as smoggy as the Malaccan Strait (which we also visited last week).  I talk about stewardship of God’s resources, but then go on to describe my finances, gifts and resources using first person pronouns (c.f. the sentence just gone).  Consider the dichotomy I live: I’d never allow our Church treasurer to keep the annual income and expenditure under wraps even though she’s my lovely wife who I trust. Her job is to ensure that the funds under her management are tracked and disbursed along the lines of our vision and mission – and we hold her accountable to that task and audit her work every year.  We do this because we know that money without accountability does funny things to a steward’s head and habits.  But the resources (financial and otherwise) given and entrusted to me?  Well, apparently they don’t need tracking or auditing.  They don’t muck with my head or my habits.  You can trust that I’ll disburse the whole lot in keeping with the vision and mission of Jesus who I claim to follow (c.f. Lk. 4:18-19). [Insert the gentle waft of a sewer rat].

Ahem.

Allow me to give you one very real (and hopefully concerning!) example that occurred to me in these last few days.  My wife and I are planning to build a house in the next year or so.  We estimate that we’ll spend about $250,000 on it – a huge sum of money – all of which will be loaned.  The house will be made from the earth’s resources and will contribute a bunch of landfill even if we make considerable efforts to reduce the amount of waste generated.  The debt will necessarily limit how much freedom we will have in terms of giving of our time and money to others (the bank will help us to make sure our repayments are our highest priority in life).  Not only that, building a house throws up numerous temptations like greed and pride (how big, what colour, what will people think?).  So this decision will necessarily impact all those we are inextricably linked to – God, others, and the earth.  Yet in the Australian context, we are permitted to make this decision entirely on our own without having to give account for how it aligns with God’s desire and design for humanity and the earth we share.  Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar and a little disconcerting?

(To be clear: this could be extrapolated out to any situation where we are disbursing the wide range of resources under our care – from daily spending habits to the why, what and for whom of our consumption).

C.B. Samuel pointed out that Jesus spoke about the dangers of money an awful lot while his modern followers don’t; in fact, C.B. went to argue persuasively that money is a spiritual power (it’s not evil, but it has undeniable power – and which other power would we ever argue is best left unchecked?).  If either of those statement is correct, then why do I want to remain behind the safety of the taboos we’ve created around wealth?  How might I transition from the lense of ‘my shi**’[1] to a biblically grounded and lived ‘stewardship’?  How might we hold each other accountable to the task of disbursing the gifts given to us towards ‘the restoration of all things’?  How might we do that in a way that is grounded in love and grace, producing Spirit-shaped fruit and avoiding the creation of laws and coercion and guilt?

I don’t know, but I’m happy to be a guinea pig.

So help me friends: I need your wisdom, gifts and assistance. Again.

[1] Ships.  Of course.

These past two weeks in West Timor and Sumba have been rather challenging.  My young family came with me this time, and they did incredibly well considering that we moved house every two days, met countless new people and spent long hours on rural bumpy roads.  Throw in a few late nights, upset bellies, a dog bite (Elijah), a head wound that probably should have had stitches (Chester), and if you have or have ever had young kids, you’d probably agree that makes for a challenging trip.

Yet last night as I lay there under a Waimarang mosquito net, I couldn’t help but feel strangely encouraged by our time here.  And as the clock snuck ever closer to 2am, I reckon I figured it out.

I think it was Robert Chambers who wrote in the ‘70s that the power dynamics of aid and development relationships are largely unacknowledged – particularly by those providing funding – and I reckon his words still ring true today.  Perhaps in a reflection of the depth of influence which neo-liberal economics has on us in the West, power tends to follow the money trail from donor to beneficiary.  While this might often be the way things work in the Australian context, I would argue that it’s certainly not always the best way to get things done – particularly in the aid and development sphere.  For example, while I have a very high level of influence over which proposals sent to Amos Aid will get approved, in reality I really have no idea what people need in Kuibaat, West Timor – or how to best address those needs.  Should I really have that much power over a decision I have so little information about?  Probably not.

But it’s hard not to get sucked into the tempting lure of having that sort of power over others – and on bad days I undoubtedly abuse my position.  There’s an uglier part of me that wants to play god in the lives of others, that wants to have them clamouring for my approval, my influence, my presence – perhaps because it gives me the brief illusion that I am loved.

And so I’m highly appreciative of the challenge laid out to me in Amos Aid’s mission: serving the poor as equals before God.  Serving the poor is – in some ways – easy.  Serving the poor as equals before God is significantly harder.  It shifts the goalposts from service delivery to relationship.  It means that my job includes attempting to address historical, deeply rooted power imbalances.  It means that I need to get over my pride and desire to pay for everything and instead learn to accept the incredible generosity of rural Indonesian hosts – as they in turn accept Amos Aid’s generosity.  It means that I request their advice and assistance for my life as they request ours.  It means that I need to repeatedly re-calibrate my inherently racist brain so that I am able to believe – deep in my bones – that each person I meet is truly my equal and an incredible being uniquely hand-crafted by God.  It means that I need to be more interested in people than their poverty.  On good days I’m able to do some of the above, though I wish it came more easily.

This is perhaps why these challenging weeks developed an encouraging quality under that 2am mosquito net.  As I reflected on the past two weeks, I saw glimpses of equality; one partner giving a helpful critique of and creative solution to another project we’re designing; the tentative sharing of vulnerabilities and fears with another; just last night, the division of project decisions and design according to giftedness – not according to bank balances.  It felt more like friendship than the manoeuvrings of chess that I at times turn my job into.  And in those moments this past fortnight, I believe the kingdom of God grew ever so slightly; in their lives, in my life and the lives of the people we’re attempting to serve.  For that I’m thankful and left hungering and praying for more.

Ubud, Bali, language training week 1 of 12…

So I was having trouble falling asleep the other night – something was bugging the dog next door, and he decided to share those concerns with us by barking intermittently for a few hours while I tossed and turned.

Now, I readily admit that this might be a rather strange phenomenon, but I find that the twilight sleep zone (probably not its technical name) often becomes a time of theological reflection for me.  (Some of you are nodding at this point and thinking, ‘aha, the reason for his wacked theology suddenly appears…’)

So theology and barking dogs.  I figured that a good way of getting to sleep while Barky did his thing was to somehow make the yapping fade into the background noise filtering into my room; the humming of the fan, the croaking of the frogs in the rice paddy over the wall; the whirr-tick-tick-whirr-tick-whirr-tick-tick of the leaking pressure pump; the motorbike wandering past.  If I could somehow fade the barking into that part of the evening’s soundtrack, it might even lull me to sleep.  The trick is to not focus on it, and before long, the barking is just white noise.

[Start strange theological reflection].  Leap with me here from barking dogs to the prophetic role of the Church: I’m convinced that a lot of the time we use the dog-bark-to-white-noise conversion on those who argue that we should stand against injustice; who say that those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus must not remain silent when injustice occurs; those who keep yapping on about refugees and world peace without violence and corporate tax dodging and rising inequality and ethical investing and climate change and yap-yap-yap-bark-whirr-tick-tick-brmmmm-[snore].

We fade their voices into background noise, morph them with the croaking of the hippies in the forest over the wall, write them off as ‘leftist’ or utopian or lump them with our political opponents.

Because if we can do that, we can maintain the comfortable, knowable, boundaried walls of the status quo.

But if we do that – as followers of Jesus – we also need to ignore or (at very least) significantly play down the ‘utopian’ ideology and practice of Jesus who drew from and perfected the tradition of the Old Testament prophets.

I believe much of the Australian Christian community has lost its prophetic voice.  We don’t just ignore the barking of those mentioned above – we’ve forgotten how to bark ourselves.  And so for my final paper of the MTD, I wrote a paper on those Abraham Heschel dubbed ‘some of the most disturbing people around’.  If you are interested in how the prophetic tradition in the Bible might shape the way in which Christians address issues of injustice, you might appreciate this one; if you think Christians should always honour the law of the land, stay out of politics and keep their heads low, let me tempt you with pages and pages of cannon fodder for the next time we meet (honestly, I’d be particularly keen to hear your thoughts if and where you think I’m off the rails).

Have a read of it here.  I’d be super keen to hear any critiques large or small; it is very helpful for me to hear differing opinions as I learn and grow in my walk with Jesus.

Doggedly and prophetically yours,

Clint.

In this line of work, it’s easy to get caught in a web of cynicism that binds you tight, wondering whether you’re actually making any difference, any headway against the monster of poverty.  It can be difficult to sleep when you add up the costs of flights, accommodation and food, and weigh that against the distance it could go in buying seed or pumps for hungry and thirsty people.

But this past week, we had the (strangely) wonderful experience of being made partially redundant.  We had been asked to look at assisting a community with another hydram.  Their community had expanded significantly in recent times, and water was running short for these folks on a hill.  So we arrived, armed with GPS, altimeters, sunglasses and clipboards – a perfect picture of external consultants, experts of nothing local.  We made our way down to the new hydram location, and found not one, but four hydrams plodding along, clicking and clacking, spraying their water and doing their thing.

And our chuckle was added to their thumping and splashing, a beautiful cacophony, an unusual orchestra.  We laughed at our shallow importance and our small, meagre efforts; and we smiled with joy at the Good News in front of us.  We gave thanks for President Jokowi and his rural agenda, we stood amazed at the impact of government done well.

Later we re-climbed the hill to discuss where-to-next, and were greeted by a rusted ambulance with no sirens or lights flashing.  A mother had given birth that morning to a still-born, and so we sat in silent reverence while her cries and the cries of her family rang out.  Poverty doesn’t dull the senses to heartache; it just makes it a more regular experience.

So celebrate with me our partial redundancy this past week, and keep working – in the multiplicity of ways that you already are – towards that day ‘when God himself will wipe every tear, and death will be no more.’

Sack me by Christmas, I pray.

A metaphoric picture of the difference a small NGO and a government can make; the small hydram in the background was part of Amos Aid’s previous assistance.

I didn’t ask her name, so let’s call her Gereja. She’s slightly stooped, white-haired, quite frail, her right eye a cataract, her left leg limping – probably in her eighties, an old lady for sure.
We were travelling from Waimarang near the Eastern coast of Sumba, to Nggongi near the south – about 70kms, a 3-4 hour journey due to the rough condition of the road. I arrived earlier than my companions because I was travelling by motorbike, the others by 4wd; I get car sick on the bumpy, winding roads.
And so I stopped to wait at the only place I knew in Ngonggi – the house where the well liners were being made. No-one was home and the place was locked up, so I stood there in the blazing mid-day sun, a bit tired and sore, thirsty, hot and rattled from the hours on the road, a little confused as to what I should do, where I should wait; a gangly, pale-barked tree wilting in a brown, burnt landscape.
Gereja beckoned me from her house, and we shook hands outside the red, locked doors of the local church. She sent her grand-daughter scurrying to fetch me a chair, and Gereja shuffled off and returned ever so slowly under the burden of a small table. She smoothed a worn table cloth and invited me to share some siri – bettlenut – with her.
I was only there for 15 minutes or so, but experience tells me that Gereja would have willingly prepared a meal, kept me watered and given her best bed if I had decided to stay the night. She didn’t know my name, I didn’t speak her language, she didn’t know why I was there, who I’d come to visit, how long I’d be staying, whether I’m friend or enemy, my political or religious preferences. She just welcomed this ‘stranger in the land’.
She’s slightly stooped, white-haired, quite frail, her right eye a cataract, her left leg limping. But let’s call her Gereja* because she is a beautiful metaphor for what the Church can be – despite its cataracts and limps – on a proverbial Wednesday in the back streets of anywhere, her unconditional hospitality juxtaposed by the official doors of Christianity that are red and too often locked when strange people need a welcoming place of shelter.

When I grow up, I want to be just like the Gereja I encountered in Nggongi.

*Gereja means ‘church’ in Bahasa Indonesia

During a recent devotion we were encouraged to write a prayer of lament.  I have found lament to be a very helpful way of holding the many paradoxes that arise as I attempt to follow Jesus as a broken person in a broken world.  Yet lament is (often) strangely maligned in many Christian communities.  Anyway – here’s a wee lament in hopes that it might encourage you to pray/write/yell your own.

Oh Lord

I claim to love your earth,

But I rape it with consumption.

My shirts stain Bengali rivers,

My appetite, Brazillian forests.

I claim to love your people,

But I perpetuate slave-labour,

I encourage and disparage,

I build-up and tear them down.

I’m a walking paradox,

On a rope across an ocean

Of hypocrisy in which I often bathe.

Pointing fingers at injustice –

Always outwards, sometimes in.

But you O Lord

Loved David

Post Uriah,

Called Jonah

Post sea-creature,

Sent disciples

Post desertion.

Blind me daily on Damascus roads

That your life in greater measure

Might be brought here

On this day

And at this minute:

Always inwards, always out.

This past weekend ACHEA – the Australian Christian Higher Education Alliance – held their inaugural conference in Parramatta west of Sydney (shout-out to Rayna, the wonderful Airbnb host who saved me from a baguette-and-butter dinner with a delicious home-cooked meal!).  Eastern College – the mob I’m doing my Masters through – is part of ACHEA, and I was encouraged by my course coordinator to submit a paper for presentation at the conference.  While much of the conversation was well above my head and on a topic I am unfamiliar with (delivering higher education), it was a helpful and very gracious introduction for me into the world of academia.

The paper I submitted was accepted, and so I presented a paper called ‘what only the poor can teach’ – a potentially provocative title and topic for the Christian Higher Education scene, asking the question whether current modes of educational delivery at Christian campuses align with God’s apparent preference for revealing himself in the biblical narrative through the people we’d typically pick last.  This paper was based on a previous small study I had undertaken called the road to transformation, a one way street?

The feedback I received from those present was encouraging and helpful; it was suggested that I do some reading on ‘grounded theology’ and dig into some of Rene Girard’s work on the concept of ‘scapegoating’.  I also received an offer to co-author a journal article, and so I need to do some thinking about whether the academic world is something I have something to contribute to.

Anyway.  It was a helpful introduction for me into the world of academia; they’re a highly intelligent, deep-thinking, well-read but gracious mob – well at least these guys were anyway 🙂  Have a read of this if the intersection of theology, modes of education and God’s self-revelation interest you: What only the poor can teach

So I’m in my final semester of my masters studies in ‘transformational development’ through Eastern College of Australia.  The course has been profoundly helpful on a number of levels: the space to explore the interaction between theology and community development, the opportunity to sit under teaching from people with different cultural backgrounds and perspectives, and the encouragement of studying with folks from a host of other countries doing similar work.  I’m going to miss it when I’m done!

Last semester we did a unit on climate change, particularly looking at the impact it has on poor communities who have contributed the least to climate change but are ironically the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.  This unit has probably hit me the hardest and moved me the most.

Evangelical Christians have typically been found in the denial camp on climate change, and we are not leading the way on this issue despite having clear biblical mandates to look after the earth and love our global neighbours through it.   The burden of responsibility lies heavily on those living in industrialised nations like Australia, and yet we seem more concerned about maintaining our lifestyles than addressing this issue.

And so I chose to look at the biblical concept of Christians ‘participating in the redemptive suffering of Jesus’, and how that might shape the response of rich Christians like myself to climate change.  We hold that the cross is at the centre of our theology and lives, and we regularly talk about ‘taking up our cross to follow Jesus’, but my concern is that we often empty the cross of it’s power by spiritualising and sanitising its consequences.  My question is essentially, what kind of cross are we carrying and what might it look like to ‘take up our cross’ on the issue of climate change?

If you’re concerned about climate change and are interested in the intersection between theology and climate change, this one might interest you.  If you’re a Christian and you’re not concerned about climate change or theology, I’d particularly encourage you to have a read 🙂  You can read it here: Reforestation through the planting of crosses.  I’d be keen to hear your thoughts, feedback or response on it.  I don’t own the monopoly on any of this stuff, and I’m keen to learn from you too.

So I found myself reflecting on the biblical narrative of Babel as I wandered past the language school last night on my search for dinner.  I’m in Ubud, Bali for a language proficiency assessment and trial – I hope to do some more training early next year and wanted to see if this might be the place where I hand in my brain for a three month beating.
But I was thinking about Babel, and how if it weren’t for those idiots and their towering arrogance, my cross-cultural work would be significantly easier. I would have got what I thought I ordered for dinner; I might have understood the real reason why that project failed; I would have been able to laugh along with that joke that was made as I wandered through the markets; I would have been able to articulate more gently and graciously why funding wasn’t given for that program and why I’m not so keen on durian.  And so the curse of Babel continues to sow confusion, frustration and relational distance.
But paradoxically there’s another part of me that cherishes the contrast and perspective that another language provides. I love the staccato rhythm of Bahasa, and I enjoy attempting the intonation. I love the use of ‘kak and adik – ‘older/younger sibling’ when addressing someone of a similar age who you are close to. I appreciate the gentle and relational, longer way that Bahasa seems to travel; it appears to be more concerned about the person it is addressing than getting the message across quickly. I am fascinated by the way Bahasa, like English, has words to express things like gratitude, love and forgiveness – isn’t it interesting that these concepts transcend cultures? – and I am intrigued by the particular situations where Bahasa deems it important to have more nuanced words than English does – like the word ‘rice’ – padi, gabah, beras, nasi. I love learning Bahasa’s idioms – buah tangan – ‘fruit of the hands’ – a visitor’s gift. I love the way each local area tweaks Bahasa slightly, so that people know that I have learnt most of my Bahasa in the rural areas of NTT though to me it all sounds the same.  Attempting to learn Bahasa is teaching me more than just how to communicate in another language; there’s so much beauty that wants exploring in the belly of another language.
As I reflect on the Babel story in light of Jesus, it all makes a little more sense: for it’s only here that I can begin to understand how evil intentions might be turned into blessings by a creative and redemptive God. It is only here that an instrument of death like the cross can become the key to eternal life, where God ultimately and creatively turns the devil’s attempts at evil into masterpieces of beauty.  It is in light of Jesus that relational distance through language also has the possibility of drawing me closer, through learning a language, to Bapak di sorga dan saudaraku di Indonesia – Father in heaven and Indonesian siblings – by highlighting and drawing out their unique reflection of His person and character, their imago Dei.  Is this not attempting the two highest Christian goals of loving God and loving neighbours?
And so I head into this afternoon’s language session confident that this too – in an unusual way perhaps –  has the potential to be a participation in the good news of Jesus and the restoration of all things.

Iced coffee, take away

Departure lounge in Denpasar

Engrossed in a book

About ecological damage

By  airplanes, disposable containers

Black coffee in white cups

With Waimarang colleagues

In a language and culture

Of hardly-grasped beauty

Wishing it all black and white

Roadtrip through mountains

Reach ocean to clouds

Buffalo-stare roadblocks

Destination unknown

Sweet coffee in far-flung Kakaha

Twisted limbs eke a subsistence existence

Beetlenut smiles and cataract eyes

Cigarette smoke that rivals Black Friday

Beauty and beast in a room

Hot coffee with wifey over breakfast in Perth

Swap stories with three little children

Mountains of lego and villages of teddies

The shalom of child-crafted lands

Why can’t we achieve the same?

Poverty and paradoxes

Conundrums and questions

Brokenness attacks the emotions

Dapsone for my leprous heart

Mountains of majesty

Sumbanese hospitality

Beauty that makes tired bones smile

Transfusions of hope, joy and love

Quick prayer over coffee this morning:

May beauty and brokenness be my companions

‘til we trade these coffee cups in

For a glass overflowing

With wine that is new

At the return of the kingdom He promised

Oh, I’m ready for that day already.