5 Pieces of Bad Vestment…in honour of Nigel

With all the debate over at 5 Pieces I though I’d show you some extremely bad vestments

Hungry Jacks anyone?

Someones got to have lost some face by wearing this one

Things that make you go "Huh?"

I got nuttin for this one!

The Ecclesiastical Market Garden?

Theology of Glory vs Theology of the Cross

Is this what Margot means by theology of Glory vs Theology of the Cross?  Because if so I think I’m far more likely to accept a combination of the both rather than an either or dialectic.  I have coloured in the bits I agree with in blue, the bits I disagree with in red and the bits I would want to mix together in Orange. Those bits I’m not sure about I have coloured green.

I found this chart HERE and i’m not siure if its meant to be representative or not – so Margot you will have to add your $2.50 worth + GST

Theology of Glory	Theology of the Cross
Key principles
Human beings (though flawed and sinful) are fundamentally capable of doing good and knowing God	Human beings are intrinsically and radically sinful, incapable of doing good or truly knowing God
God is to be sought by ascending ladders of mystical experiences, religious or philosophical speculation or moral achievement (“mysticism, speculation or merit”)	God is to be sought only in the Cross of Christ, with knowledge and communion him being given as a gift, received by faith
God is the Deus Revelatus – he can be known through all things and events	God is the Deus Absconditus – he can be known only through [I GregtheExplorer, would prefer the word BECAUSE of here rather than just through] the Cross of Christ and the witness to that of the Word
Seeks direct, unmediated knowledge of & encounter with “the naked God” (and sees such a direct encounter as an unqualified “good thing”)	Recognises that (for sinners such as ourselves) the “naked God” at the end of the ascent is not salvation, but the “consuming fire”. One day there will be glory, but for now, the Cross – the Cross is both the basis of our righteous status before God and the model of how we are to live for God
Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation
“Looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened”	“Comprehends the invisible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the Cross
“Calls evil good and good evil”	“Calls the thing what it actually is”
Observations by Don Matzat
The gospel is what gets you saved – then other things take you forward in the Christian life. “Once saved, always saved”	The preaching of sin and grace, Law and Gospel, produces sanctification as well as justification
Repentance = sorrow for sin and determination to sin no more	Repentance = sorrow for sin coupled with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation
Christian living is detached from the gospel – reduced to a set of do’s and don’ts, with “rededication” the proper remedy for backsliding	Never gets past the Cross – good works are the fruit of faith
Testimonies focus on the change in the individual’s life	Testimonies focus on the work of Christ in history for us
Sermons lead you to try to live a better life	Sermons lead you to rejoice in forgiveness
Christian life seen as an ascent through different stages (conversion, “entire sanctification”, “baptism in the Spirit” etc)	You’re never “better” than anyone else – a growing appreciation for Christ’s work
“Every day in every way I’m getting better and better”	“Every day in every way I’m not getting better and better” – growing awareness of sin
Encourages inward focus (which is the essence of sin – homo incurvatus)	Turns us away from ourselves, forsaking our own good works and spiritual experiences and clinging to Christ’s blood and righteousness
Other observations
Can contemplate God’s omnipresence and majesty without fear	Recognises our sin, deserving of God’s condemnation. The testimonies of nature etc to God’s glory only confirm in our conscience the verdict against us (The God we see in nature is “One who is angry with us, and threatens evil” [Newman]).
Content with God’s general revelation in nature	Recognises our need of a promise of forgiveness and acceptance
	“What we see as glorious, God sees as shameful; what we see as shameful, God sees as glorious”
Worship as celebration, seeking to ascend to God through our worship	Worship as receiving the mercies of God in Christ, through the means of grace (Word, sacraments, prayer)
Seeks to strike a bargain with God, tendency towards a moralistic works-righteousness	Permits God to do everything to effect and preserve his salvation
Feels it knows God immediately through his expressions of divine wisdom, power and glory	Recognises God in the place he has hidden himself – the Cross and its suffering

The creator of this chart does say in his comments section:

1. I drew up the chart as a means of getting to grips with the theology of the cross as a concept. As such it represents a personal “train of thought” rather than The Definitive Guide To The Theology Of The Cross. As my post indicated, I re-posted this with a certain discomfort at the idea of a “theology of the cross” as opposed to the process of being a “theologian of the cross”.

2. When getting to grips with what was (at that time) a radical, unfamiliar and mind-bending idea for me, I found it most helpful to draw out contrasting propositions from the linked articles. So the left-hand column does represent something of an extreme/caricatured position, but that is because it is intended to contrast with the right-hand column for the purpose of clarifying what the right-hand column is saying. I am not saying, and do not believe, that there are churches or Christians who fall entirely within the left-hand column (though some lean more to the left than others). And I’m certainly not saying that the right-hand column represents “Lutherans” and the left-hand column represents “everyone else”.

Over HERE Carl R Trueman (who is Professor of Historical Theology and Church History and Paul Woolley Chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary) has said:

The “theologians of glory,” therefore, are those who build their theology in the light of what they expect God to be like—and, surprise, surprise, they make God to look something like themselves. The “theologians of the cross,” however, are those who build their theology in the light of God’s own revelation of himself in Christ hanging on the cross.

…a comment I would have to say I agree totally with.

“Calls evil good and good evil”

“Calls the thing what it actually is”

Margot you cite this axiom of Glory versus Cross Theology- and once again I would have to say I agree – however I disagree that homosexuality as we understand it today is listed in the scriptures as evil.

5 Uneasy Pieces: Essays on Scripture and Sexuality

I’m sorry – I know I said I wanted to move on from the whole sexuality debate…and I really do;nt mind if no one comments on this post.  But please read both the article I am posting and the one I link to, which is the forward of the book recently launched by the Honorable Justice Michael Kirby.

I am going to buy this book and do a review here as soon as I’ve read it.

In the Preface to Five Uneasy Pieces, Mark Burton writes;

…none of these scholars [those whose work were drawn together by the editor of Five Pieces]appears attracted to either wooden readings of the texts, nor to knock-down answers to complex questions: that many contemporary Christians in their observation and experience lead lives of devotion and faith, demonstrating what St Paul styled ‘the fruit of the Spirit’—while living lives that are ‘ differently ordered’ in loving, same-sex relationships—will not allow for over-simplification which ignores a living reality.

I implore you to have a read the article and linked prefaces etc, and if you can, get a copy of this book  and have a read of it.  I believe that this book will come otbe known as a very important turning point in the road to understanding and acceptance of Gay and Lesbian Christians.

Here is the Preface by Mark Burton, Foreword by William Countryman and Introduction by Michael Kirby

Cause still has long way to go, says gay priest

Barney Zwartz

November 29, 2011

• Read later

Anglican priest Nigel Wright recently edited a book, Five Uneasy Pieces, on the subject of homosexuality and the church. Photo: Vince Caligiuri

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, in an act of considerable moral courage, Nigel Wright became the first Melbourne Anglican priest to identify himself as gay.

”I came out at a parish council planning weekend when I was priest in charge at Thomastown-Epping. The council said with one voice, ‘tell us something we don’t know’,” Mr Wright recalled yesterday.

A quarter of a century on, he says, the homosexual cause has made considerable progress in the secular realm but the ”Holy Spirit is fettered” in the church, whose influence remains largely ”pernicious”. Mr Wright, 64, believes the church remains stuck with a construction of homosexuality as evil that has created suspicion, prejudice, hatred, suicide and even murder.

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In an effort to overturn that interpretation, he has edited a book,Five Uneasy Pieces, to be launched tomorrow, in which five Anglican scholars look at the key biblical texts usually cited as condemning homosexuality (found in Genesis, Leviticus, Romans, 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy).

”We don’t understand the milieu in which these texts were written. It’s too easy to say it’s about homosexuality because we ought to despise homosexuals. Many are about property rights or hospitality or abuse of power or worshipping other gods,” he says.

”The church needs to do some serious work on this after the 1998 Lambeth Conference [a 10-yearly gathering of the world's Anglican bishops] when the bishops were sent home to listen. I can’t see much evidence that there’s been much listening, to their discredit.”

The worldwide Anglican Church has since almost torn itself apart in its fierce divisions over sexuality. Mr Wright thinks it has gone backwards in the past few years but so, he says, has the Roman Catholic Church.

An expert and published author on clerical clothing, he says Pope Benedict’s penchant for lace and silk, and even a new fur-trimmed cape, is theological evidence that he is ”on a trip down memory lane” into theological conservatism.

Mr Wright’s father and grandfather were Anglican priests and a forebear, Thomas Herring, was an 18th-century Archbishop of Canterbury.

”It’s like going into the family business,” he says.

It is coincidence, Mr Wright says – but a welcome one – that the book is being published two days before the national Labor Party conference in Sydney at which same-sex marriage is expected to be a key debate.

It takes its title from the effect of the five texts – ”uneasy pieces of Scripture for people who are not heterosexual” – and because the method of interpretation will make some people uneasy, he says. It is also a nod to gay Australian literary great Patrick White, who wrote Three Uneasy Pieces.

He plans to send his book to some Labor MPs, when he works out which ones. Also on his mailing list is the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lilydale Baptist Church minister Matt Glover whose church, The Age reported on Sunday, is in turmoil over his support for same-sex marriage.

What Is Freedom – week 1 of our Lenten Study

So today is Ash Wednesday and Lent has begun.  As we begin our study together it is my prayer that we will each bring  the stories of our own experiences, traditions and view on the bible to bear as we take this time to do something that i do;nt thik has ever been attempted before on Signposts – to study together in unity; to listen to one another and learn from each other in an environment of mutual respect!

Lent is the period of time in some Christian Churches when we purposefully take time to identify with Jesus in his suffering and in his preparation out in the wilderness – it is also a time when traditionally people gathered to study and prepare for renewing their baptismal vows on Easter Sunday.

I hope we learn new things about each other as we take this journey with together and alongside one another.

ctbi_lent_2012__week_1

Please take some time to reflect on this study to answer the questions yourself and come back to this thread as you go to post your thoughts, answers and questions.

I’m really quite excited by this folks

Marked by Ashes (Walter Brueggemann)

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the Day…

This day – a gift from you.
This day – like none other you have ever given,
or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day,
for we are already halfway home
halfway back to committees and memos,
halfway back to calls and appointments,
halfway on to next Sunday,
halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
half turned towards you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes -
we begin this day with the taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
of more war casualties, more violence, more cynicism;
we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with
some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you -
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

Lenten Study; The Way To Freedom

As today is Shrove Tuesday and tomorrow (Ash Wednesday) marks the beginning of Lent, I thought it might be good for us all to do a Lenten study together.  Each week I will post up the study for the following week (there are 6 in all) and we can have a chance to discuss the previous weeks readings – what do you think?

The study is based upon a poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer entitled Stations on the Way to Freedom written in prison in 1944 by the German Lutheran pastor and theologian executed by the Nazis for his role in the resistance to Hitler. Twelve years earlier in 1932 he had said: ‘To be free is to be in love, is to be in the truth of God. The one who loves because made free by the truth of God, is the most revolutionary person on earth’; and his last recorded words when being taken away for his final trial and execution were: ‘This is the end – for me the beginning of life’.

The course comprises six weekly sessions, corresponding to the six Sundays of Lent concluding with Palm Sunday.
In weeks 2, 3, 5 and 6 the main themes are suggested in turn by the titles of the four verses of Bonhoeffer’s poem ‘Stages on the Way to Freedom’: Discipline, Action, Suffering, Death.

What do you think? Good idea?  here is an introduction tote study for you to look at.

ctbi_lent_2012__introduction

If we think it worth while I will post up the first study tomorrow

The Psychology of Killing and the Origins of War

Over Here Wazza said:

In WW1 most people did not want to kill others, and their are lots of stories of whole battles where the soldiers fired over each others heads.

It got me thinking – why do we go to war when for the greater majority of human beings the thought of killing another human being ourselves in reality is so abhorrent? In doing a bit of research I found the following article and thought it worth re-posting

Has warfare been handed down to us through millions of years of evolution? Is it part of who we are as a species? At the heart of this question is whether humans have a natural capacity to kill other humans. Some social scientists have concluded that evolution has in fact left us with this unfortunate ability.

Primatologist Richard Wrangham, a major proponent of this idea, developed the “Imbalance of Power Hypothesis” to explain how evolution could produce a propensity for warfare in humans. The idea is that our primate ancestors could have gained access to additional food and other resources by attacking and killing their neighbors. Of course, these deadly attacks would have only been worthwhile if the attackers could ensure their own safety. So, Dr. Wrangham reasons, our ancestors would have carried out deadly attacks only when they severely outnumbered their victims. The conclusion is that our ancestors who were psychologically predisposed to cooperatively pick off their neighbors would have had a distinct evolutionary advantage. Or, in Dr. Wrangham’s words, ”there has been selection for a male psyche that, in certain circumstances, seeks opportunities to carry out low-cost attacks on unsuspecting neighbors.” This trait would have been amplified and passed down through the generations until it was eventually inherited by modern humans, who presumably took this predisposition and ran with it, inventing more and more efficient ways to kill each other.

The “Imbalance of Power Hypothesis” is largely based on evidence of violence in the animal world, particularly observations of violent behavior among chimpanzees, our closest animal relatives. But other social scientists have instead studied modern humans in an attempt to discover whether warfare is rooted in evolution. And, contrary to the predictions of the “Imbalance of Power Hypothesis,” many of these scientists have concluded that humans have an innate aversion to killing others.

Evidence of a powerful resistance to killing has popped up in unexpected places. Many people assume that soldiers in a firefight instinctively respond to enemy fire by shooting back, and that soldiers in a kill-or-be-killed situation will choose to kill. But informal interviews conducted with thousands of American combat soldiers during World War II by army historian S.L.A. Marshall revealed that as many as 75% of soldiers never fired their weapons during combat. In recent years the rigor of Marshall’s research methods has been called into question, but his basic conclusion that the majority of soldiers will not return fire during combat if left to their own devices has been corroborated by evidence and accounts from other wars, including the American Civil War, World War I, and the Falklands War.

So why didn’t these soldiers use their weapons? Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a psychologist and professor of military science, looked at this evidence and concluded “that there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it.” In some ways this isn’t all that surprising. Very few people would seek out an opportunity to kill others. At the same time, you may find it hard to believe that it is sometimes impossible for soldiers to kill others even when their own lives are at risk.

And yet despite this apparent aversion to killing, we still manage to kill each other with alarming frequency. How can this be? For anthropologist Paul Roscoe the answer is that we’re simply too smart for our own good. Humans excel at overcoming our biological limitations using technological innovation: if your arms aren’t long enough to reach an apple in the upper branches of a tree, use a stick to knock it down. Can’t take the square root of large numbers in your head? Write a computer program to do it for you. Similarly, we can find ways to get around our natural aversion to killing if we decide that it’s in our best interest.

Throughout history and around the world people have come up with ways to overcome an aversion to killing, such as dehumanizing the victim, placing distance between the killer and the victim, and using drugs or loud music to induce a trance-like state in a killer. In fact, following publication of Marshall’s findings in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. military embarked on a campaign to more effectively prepare soldiers for combat by employing realistic training exercises. New recruits began to practice shooting at pop-up, human-shaped targets rather than the traditional, stationary bull’s-eyes. More and more elaborate and realistic combat simulation exercises and ’war games’ were implemented. The point of this new training was to make killing an automatic response under combat conditions. And it worked. Interviews with American soldiers during the Vietnam War revealed that somewhere between 80 and 100 percent of soldiers shot at enemies during firefights.

Although we’ve found ways to short-circuit an aversion to killing over the years, this aversion seems deeply rooted in our minds. But where did it come from? Is it an evolved trait inherited from our distant ancestors? Or is it something that we learn and absorb from our social surroundings? Or perhaps it has emerged from an inseparable combination of both biological and cultural evolution. Regardless, this aversion to killing exists, and it reassures us that warfare is not an inescapable part of human life, and gives us hope that one day we might stop fighting wars.

References:

ROSCOE, P. (2007). Intelligence, Coalitional Killing, and the Antecedents of War American Anthropologist, 109 (3), 485-495 DOI: 10.1525/aa.2007.109.3.485

Wrangham, Richard W. Evolution of Coalitionary Killing, in Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 42:1-30 (1999) [pdf]

Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. (1995)

Forgiveness and Reconciliation; bringing together the un-together-able!

The Rev Canon Susan Cole-King gave a homily at the 1998 Lambeth Conference Conference Eucharist on Transfiguration and Hiroshima.  A different group of bishops preside at the Eucharist at each Lambeth Conference; which is called every 10 years by the Arch Bishop of Canterbury and at this particular one Susan Cole-King was invited to preach the homily by the presiding Japanese Bishops.

So what is the significance of this?

The Rev Canon Susan Cole-King was the daughter of The Right Reverend  Leonard Wilson , Bishop of Singapore during the Japanese occupation of Singapore.  His interment in Changi POW camp is an amazing story of strength of courage, faith in God’s imminence and the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.

It is also a serendipitous accident of timing that the Eucharist was celebrated on the Feast day of the Transfiguration of Christ – it is also the day when the church recalls the horror that occurred when atom bombs were dropped on Nagasaki.

This then is the text of the homily:

Last year I read the statement from the Nippon Sei Ko Kai on their war responsibility. I felt humbled and moved by its honesty and courage. Its acknowledgement of the suffering inflicted by Japan during the war, and their moving apology, had obviously come out of a process of painful self-examination and prayer. It is an example to us all.

The particular reason why this statement from the Japanese Church touched me so deeply was that my father was one of the many Japanese prisoners of war who suffered from the atrocities perpetuated by their captors. His name was Leonard Wilson and he was Bishop of Singapore.

On October 10,1943 (the double10th as it became known), the Japanese military police—the Gestapo or
Kempei-tai—raided Changi and arrested 57 of the prisoners. Among them was my father, the bishop. He
was accused of being a spy and for many days he was subjected to torture. Often he had to be carried back to the crowded, dark and filthy cell, almost unconscious from his wounds.

On one occasion, when seven men were taking it in turns to flog him, they asked him why he didn’t curse
them. He told them it was because he was a follower of Jesus who taught us to love one another.
He asked himself then how he could possibly love these men with their hard, cruel faces, who were obviously enjoying the torture they were inflicting. As he prayed he had a picture of them as they might have been as little children, and it’s hard to hate little children.

But then, more powerfully, his prayer was answered by some words of a well-known communion hymn which came to his mind: “Look Father, look on his anointed face, and only look on us as found in him.” In that moment he was given a vision of those men not as they were then, but as they were capable of
becoming, transformed by the love of Christ.

He said he saw them completely changed, their cruelty becoming kindness, their sadistic instincts
changed to gentleness. Although he felt it was too blasphemous to use Christ’s words “Father, forgive them,” he experienced the grace of forgiveness at that moment.

After eight months he was released back to Changi—one of the few who survived. For the rest of his life hecame to his mind: “Look Father, look on his anointed face, and only look on us as found in him.”

In that moment he was given a vision of those men not as they were then, but as they were capable of
becoming, transformed by the love of Christ. He said he saw them completely changed, their cruelty becoming kindness, their sadistic instincts changed to gentleness. Although he felt it was too blasphemous to use
Christ’s words “Father, forgive them,” he experienced the grace of forgiveness at that moment.

After eight months he was released back to Changi – one of the few who survived.  For the rest of his life he emphasised in his speaking and preaching the importance of forgiveness. How he would have rejoiced to be
here today—as I am sure he is. This year he would have been 100, and it is fitting to remember him now as this
month is the anniversary of his death.

Although he was able to forgive, and I and my family want to affirm that unconditional forgiveness, true
reconciliation can only happen when there is an acknowledgement of wrongs done, when the truth is faced,
and painful self-examination leads to confession and apology.

I and my brothers here with me today want to say to our Japanese brothers and sisters a heartfelt thankyou for what you have done.

The cycle of reconciliation is completed. 

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration. Michael Ramsey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury,
says: “Transfiguration is indeed a central theme of Christianity, the transforming of suffering and circumstances, of men and women with the vision of Christ before them and the Holy Spirit within them.”

My father’s story is a transfiguration story, for himself and for his captors.

After the war he returned to Singapore and had the great joy of confirming one of his torturers. This is how he described the moment:“One of these men who was allowed to march up from the prison to the cathedral, as a prisoner, to come for baptism, was one of those who had stood with a rope in his hand, threatening and sadistic. I have seldom seen so great a change in a man. He looked gentle and peaceful.His face was completely changed by the power of Christ.”

St Paul says in 2 Cor 3.18: “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord the Spirit.”

Today we are also remembering something else. It is Hiroshima Day, when terrible suffering was inflicted
on the Japanese people of Hiroshima, and then of Nagasaki three days later,when 8,000 Christians were killed
instantly, and thousands later as a result of radiation.

How necessary were those bombs?

Why was a second bomb dropped on Nagasaki even as the Supreme Council of War was meeting in Tokyo to decide whether to surrender? Those bombs ended the war, but at what cost! I do not know the politics, or the arguments, only that something terrible was inflicted on the people of Japan by my country and its allies, which the world must never forget.

A few years ago I read a little book called “The Bells of Nagasaki” by a Japanese doctor and physicist,who was
also a Christian, Takashi Nagai. He witnessed the bombing of Nagasaki and describes in detail the terrible
devastation and horror as it unfolded.

Everything was destroyed for him—his home, his wife and family, his hospital, his cathedral, the honour
of his country, and thousands of his fellow men and women. Heroically, in spite of his own wounds and radiation sickness, he worked to relieve the suffering of others. How he survived to write the book and tell the story is a miracle. As Nagai tells the story of Nagasaki, he is also telling the story of his own transformation through suffering and loss.

In his funeral address for the victims of the bomb he said it was fitting that the Church in Nagasaki, which
had kept the faith through 400 years of persecution, should bear the brunt of this bomb, that through this sacrifice peace was given to the world.

He ends his book with a ringing message: “Men and women of the world, never again plan war! From this
atomic waste the people of Nagasaki prostrate themselves before God and pray: Grant that Nagasaki may be the last atomic wilderness in the history of the world.”

It is significant that we remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the Feast of the Transfiguration, which links the
glory of Christ with his suffering. Transfiguration and disfiguration. It is through Christ’s disfiguration on the
cross that God’s glory is revealed. Not only is suffering the means of reconciliation, but the transfiguring of
suffering itself is attested to in the Christian life and experience. My father experienced this transforming
of suffering through the power of others’ prayer.

When two of his companions in the cell, who had shared so much with him, died of their wounds and hunger, he said he felt a terrible loneliness. But, conscious of the prayers of others, he said:“Here again I was helped by God. There was a tiny window at the back of the cell, and through the bars I could see the glorious red of the flame of the forest tree; and something of God, something of God’s indestructible beauty was conveyed to my tortured mind.

“A great peace descended. Gradually, the burden of this world was lifted and I was carried into the presence
of God, and received from him the strength and peace which were enough to live by day by day.”

Many of you have experienced depths of suffering among your people or in your own lives beyond what
most of us can imagine. You will know, too, the darkness and the cloud where God is awesomely present in
the confusion and pain.

I would like to end with some words of Karl Barth: “Thus, our tribulation without ceasing to be tribulation is transformed. We suffer as we suffered before, but our suffering is no longer a passive perplexity but is transformed into a pain which is creative, fruitful, full of power and promise. The road which is impassable has been made known to us in the crucified and risen Lord.”

After having come across this story after our Bishop mentioned it (he was at the Eucharist where this homily was preached),  I am left wondering if we have we lost something of the power of our faith in this era of 1st world problems?

How do you judge online prophecy?

A recent flow of conversation on a Signposts02 thread raised an interesting question when a blogger, conveniently named ‘Anonymous’, gave a partial prophecy of impending doom from God for a well known Australian-based ministry with global connections.

Since the blogger used the most common pseudonym it is appropriate to use it for this post, but the subject matter could refer to anyone, not a specific person, or incident.

In reference to prophecy, Paul the Apostle clearly admonishes:

“Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge”
(1 Corinthians 14:29)

This is an instruction for the Church, but there are a number of questions which come out of this directive, especially when it comes to people who advance prophetic warnings and utterances via the medium of the internet.

Prophecy in church
In a church setting, the person who prophesies would generally be known. If they were not known, and the prophecy were judged to be error, how, then, could they be corrected successfully? The clear implication Paul raises is that prophecy is subject to the prophets, and that each utterance should be judged before it is accepted as from the Lord.

This is simple to administer in a local church. If it is judged to be accurate to scripture (the most basic prerequisite), faithful to the circumstances of the church and congregation, and of the Spirit, not of man, then it can be considered accurate if it is edifying, encouraging or comforting to the church, and to any members affected.

If it carries warning with dire consequences, which would happen on fewer occasions, the whole church can be put on notice.

If, on the other hand, it is judged to be error, it should be dismissed and declared so by the leadership of the church, and the person delivering the prophecy left in no doubt that what they have said is not accurate to the Word, or is delivered in the wrong spirit and not edifying, nor a true warning members can act on. This is only possible where the person prophesying is identifiable.

The person delivering the prophecy can be privately told why their message is not received, and given advice on how a prophetic utterance should be given, and the motives behind it, which always begin, continue and end with love.

Prophecy online
None of these things are possible online, particularly where the person prophesying has determined to remain anonymous, where there are no recognised prophets designated to judge the prophecy, where there is no oversight in place to bring direction or correction when error is discovered, and where no-one can take responsibility for the content.

An anonymous blogger could be commenting from anywhere on the planet, and have any number of motives for their claims without being accountable to anyone.

In examples of online prophecy, say with Danny Nahlia, who has given a number of prophecies which some of us deem to be unbiblical in their content, motives and delivery, we at least know who has claimed to be the one given a word from God. We are able to judge the prophecy. Indeed, Nahlia has been rebuked publicly by some recognised leaders in the Australian church for giving what they saw as wrong prophecy.

On Signposts02 Ian Williams is the most obvious choice for someone who has publicly prophesied doom over New Zealand. The regular contributors here have generally considered his utterances to be conspiratorial, contrived and geographically obvious, and therefore not of God, and to be dismissed as unlikely. Declaring the probability of an earthquake in Christchurch is the equivalent of predicting rain in Manchester or sunshine in the Sahara. Sooner or later it will happen.

Is anonymity valid for prophecy?
But when someone comments anonymously, or using a pseudonym, which amounts to the same thing, why should anyone take any notice of what is being said? How can that person be taken seriously if they do not reveal themselves? How will they be judged as giving false or true prophecy if they are not known to the recipients and therefore untouchable in regards to confirmaton or correction?

Indeed, why would God even use a person who is not prepared to be upfront with the people he or she is speaking to, to be judged for what is being said, and to be possibly corrected for error?

My question is: Should a person giving a supposed warning or prophecy from God to any group online be asked to reveal themselves so that their prophecy can be Biblically judged before being given license to speak on behalf of God on an online forum?

Education in America …. and another photo of Adolf Hitler

Education in Nazi Germany: Modern-Day Parallels? from http://www.thenewamerican.com/

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Written by Bruce Walker

Wednesday, 08 February 2012 09:00

Bishop Joseph McFadden of the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania — noting that the public school system in his state has undertaken to make sure that all students are instructed in the same set of beliefs — made this observation: In the totalitarian government, they would love our system. This is what Hitler and Mussolini and all them tried to establish — a monolith; so all the children would be educated in one set of beliefs and one way of doing things. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith both immediately took issue with the bishop’s remarks. Barry Morrision of the Eastern Pennsylvania/Southern New Jersey’s anti-Defamation League stated, We respect the Bishop and his position in the Church. We appreciate his commitment the education of children and the viability of Catholic schools. However, he should not be making his point at the expense of the memory of six million Jews and millions of others who perished in the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a unique experience. It does not lend itself to inappropriate analogies. We have an obligation to protect the memory of those who suffered because of it from those who would distort it and undermine and trivialize the history of the Holocaust, however inadvertently. Our role should be to honor those who fought to defeat the murderous Nazis, and not to inappropriately draw reckless comparisons. Andy Hoover, legislative director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, called the bishop’s remarks “completely inappropriate.” Bishop McFadden, however, has not backed down. On the diocese website, the he did have this to say: “To those who may have been offended by my remarks, I apologize to them assuring them that I purposely did not mention the holocaust.” But he did not retract his main point: The reference to dictators and totalitarian governments of the 20th century which I made in an interview on the topic of school choice was to make a dramatic illustration of how these unchecked monolithic governments of the past used schools to curtail the primary responsibility of the parent in the education of their children. Today many parents in our state experience the same sort of lack of freedom in choosing an education that bests suits their child as those parents oppressed by dictators of the past. I used the example of the dictators merely to explain how an absolute monopoly in education, where parents do not have a right or ability to choose the education that best suits their children due to economic circumstances or otherwise, runs counter to a free and open society. Our support of a school voucher program has the goal of giving parents something that dictators never would, a choice in which school their children attend by being able to control the portion of the tax dollars that is designated for the education of each child. Writers during WWII noticed particularly how Hitler had tried to force conformity and, especially, to end all religious schools in Nazi Germany. Gottfried Benn wrote in his textbook at the time: During 1936, despite the provisions of the concordat of 1933, the government continued its efforts to enlist all Catholic schools. By pressure upon the parents the Nazis succeeded in reducing registration for Catholic schools in some parts of southern Germany almost to the vanishing point.” He also observed, “In June, 1937, it [the Nazi regime] went so far as to dissolve the hundreds of Catholic schools in Bavaria, converting them into secular institutions. Seven months later the Bavarian minister of education announced that the closing of the church elementary schools was to be followed by the closing of the secondary schools. In late 1938, Benn observed, “The de-Christianization of the schools was being constantly carried through.” Moreover, parents who wanted to keep their children out of German public schools faced terrible risks. The teaching of Christianity by parents in the home was forbidden. Wallace Deuel described what happened to devout Christian parents: “In November of 1937 two more cases were decided by nazi courts in much this same spirit. In the first case, a divorced woman was deprived of the custody of her children because she wished to educate them in Catholic convent schools. This, the court held, was ‘in no way in the children’s interest.’ In the second case, a court in Waldenburg, in Silesia, took children away from their father and mother because the parents were members of the International Bible Students’ organization.” Oxford Professor E. R. Micklem, a close observer of totalitarianism, noted that children were taken from their parents if the parents sent them to private schools. He also related that at the Adolph Hitler School in 1939, all boys were compelled to say, “We, Adolph Hitler pupils, are pledged only to the Führer, but not to the Jewish-evangelical philosophy or church. We cannot serve two causes, the Führer and his greatest enemy. Therefore … I announce my resignation from the Evangelical Church.” In 1939, British Professor Robert William Seton-Watson wrote of education in Nazi Germany, … where school textbooks have been re-written in a strictly party sense, where the teaching of education has become a mere machine for inculcating German patriotism, where entire youth movement are in the hands of party agitators, and where all religious teaching, save a glorification of pagan myths, is deliberately excluded from the teaching. In 1942, expatriate Professor Alfred Wiener described Nazi education: “It is less a non-Christianity — it is anti-Christianity. And the Germans are thoroughly educated to believe in this anti-Christianity and to despise and hate Christianity.… But not only that, these educators of German youth deny Christianity, they teach a hatred to our religion — a hatred which is hard to believe; they use a language against Christianity which cannot be described by the mere world ‘blasphemous.’” Also in 1942, the pamphlet “Footprints of the Trojan Horse” observed: “Between 9,000 and 11,000 Catholic schools have been liquidated.” That same year, Harry Flannery, who replaced William Shirer as the CBS correspondent in Nazi Germany, wrote of the “closing of religious schools” in the country. In 1949, John Rath explained how Nazi textbooks described Christianity in history: “Jews had already become the ruling group everywhere in the empire, while the Christian religion, with its emphasis on the differences between Christians and heathens, and not on national ‘racial-national or social difference’ between people, was spreading the Jewish religious and moral convictions throughout the Roman World.” The Nazification of the pubic school system and the compulsion of parents to place their children in those schools was a grim fact of Hitler’s Germany. The voucher system supported by Bishop McFadden is one method of fighting modern totalitarianism and preserving parental choice in the values present-day American children learn in school.