Behind Invisible Bars

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' "

The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'"

Matthew 25:37-40

Today we spoke with Mr. Kevin Bourne-McRae, a great gentleman (and that's not because he actually paid for our coffee!) who used to be the state director of Prison Fellowship Australia in Wester Australia. Through our meeting we managed to find out how we could be a part of that very important ministry.

The reason that Kevin was and not is the state director of Prison Fellowship WA is because they ran out of funding that the council decided that they could not afford a full-time staff member in that position. When you consider that there are so many committed Christians in this city, many of whom attending churches that can afford huge monthly maintainance and operational bills, one should wonder why such an essential, life-changing ministry can be so lacking in funding. How can this happen? Kevin points to the apathy and the judgmentalism of many Christians as some of the reasons, in whatever form. Whilst he himself is a Christian, he is just appalled by how judgmental Christians are. A sentiment that I can very well relate to. Apparently some 'Christians' have even remarked that ex-convicts should not be allowed into church, lest they steal anything or harm anyone. How arrogant is that! Why, people are people; they can steal, lie or cheat whether or not they have been to prison!

And that is just the problem. So many Christians do not understand -or even choose to forget- that in the eyes of God we are really no better than prisoners: we are sinners. Like us, convicts have also had a life in which they make choices, some are good and some are bad. Just because we are at church singing songs and they are behind steel bars at Casuarina doesn't mean that God loves them less. C.S. Lewis apparently once said something to the effect that it is not that we are holier, but it is that we are more forgiven.

Once we forget the meaning of grace, we lose perspective of our true place as someone undeservedly redeemed into a loving relationship with God, and begin to believe that it is by our own merit that we have become worthy of even being called 'Christians'. When this happens, we begin in a conceited manner to see certain people as spiritually inferior to us because they have not 'earned' their spiritual merit as we have. And this is what has happened to these Christians who regard convicts and prisoners with a sense of self-superiority, if not fearful prejudice, when perhaps in a way those criminals are more urgently in God's heart than we are. After all, it is the sick who need a doctor, not the healthy (Matthew 9:12).

If we had been there two thousand years ago, when that emaciated Man was being paraded through the streets of Jerusalem, we might as well be amongst those who pelted him with rocks because we felt it was the morally correct thing to do (chillingly foretold in Isaiah 53:4). Ironically, of course (I love the world; it's just so full of ironies), He went through all out of the grace that we think we deserve but really don't. Yes, the perfect Son of God, the Judge of the world, became a criminal so that we could be free of our crimes (Isaiah 53:5). All of us!

In many ways prisons are the physical representation of the lowest point of how low humanity can go. Yet we realize that it was to that lowest point that God himself came down and met us where we were, so that He could save us from the pits. This, not self-driven morality or good reputation, is the central message of true Christianity. This is grace.

When we choose to close our eyes to the reality that there are so many people in prisons so desperately needing God, and God desperately wanting to save them, we become imprisoned ourselves. But while convicts are held in their prisons against their will, we choose to remain in ours. While their prisons are made of steel, ours is invisible, a prison made of apathy and arrogance. And we choose to enter this invisible prison when we ignore those in physical ones.

Sadly, Kevin told us that some prisoners, even though they have shown signs of change and repentance in prison, return to their old ways as soon as they go back into the big, bad world. This is because out here they find that they have nothing and no one that would care about them. The easiest way out would be to return to their old buddies. What, then, should the Christian church be in this reality? The ex-prisoners' old friends accept them as they are, but are we ready to do the same? If God accepted us as we were, why can't we do the same for these people?

www.pfi.org.au

www.forgivenforlife.com

www.seansellers.com

Let 24,000 People Die Today. Amen.

A few days ago I saw Costa-Gavras' film Amen., a movie on Nazi Germany. By the end of the film, I had become quite compelled to sign up with Compassion Australia and sponsor a kid. Whu-what? Let me explain.

Amen. (the titled includes the full-stop) tells the story of SS Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein, a real historical character who was both a true Christian and a member of Himmler's 'Death's Head' order. Though a Protestant, he was a tool of the murderous regime of Adolf Hitler. To a certain extent.

What Gerstein did not initially know was that his invention, which was originally used to maintain the health of Waffen-SS soldiers, was also being used to create Zyklon-B, the gas used to mass-murder millions of Jews, Gypsies and other 'sub-humans' in Auschwitz, Treblinka and other extermination camps. As a Protestant, Gerstein was quite appalled by how his creation was being used, and his conscience would not let him allow this to continue.

In the film he uses various ways, including the deceitful use of his position as transportations supervisor for the chemical, to make sure that shipment after shipment of Zyklon-B are never used. Gerstein also pushes his pastor and other Protestants to get German Protestant clergy as a whole to condemn this action. Of course, any student of Nazi Germany would know that most Protestant churches were too busy praising Hitler as the savior of Germany from economic depression. Most had already become part of the Nazi-endorsed German Christian church, save for a few pastors like Martin Niemoller, Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (Incidentally, the actor who played Gerstein, Ulrich Tukur, also played Bonhoeffer in Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace). Needless to say, Gerstein's plea fell on deaf ears with the Protestants around him. Or at least that's how it goes in the film.

But in Amen. Gerstein is not alone in his plight to make the horror that the Nazis are trying to hide known to the world. He is not the only main character in this movie. A Catholic priest happens to hear Gerstein's plea to the Bishop, and joins him in his cause. To death. While Gerstein continues to try to convince his fellow Protestant that his cause is just and worthy, Riccardo, the priest, uses his connections to ask the ranks of the the Catholic church, even the Pope, to condemn Nazi Germany's murder of millions. But again, any historian of the era knows that Pope Pius XII remained silent about the mass murders committed by the Third Reich. Why?

Here comes the true start of my explanation. Bear with me.

The answer Riccardo keeps on getting as he tirelessly campaigns before the cardinals of Rome, the Pope and even the American ambassador is that he should be patient. Yes, the old men in the safety of their palatial religious bastion keep telling him that he does not know the art of diplomacy, and that success is made of patience. And at that very moment thousands of Jews are being deported to the factories of death!

I see a few parallels here with what is happening today. When Gerstein appeals to the Catholic bishop of Berlin, the clergyman initially refuses to see him, ironically saying that it would not be appropriate for him to be associating with an SS officer. And Gerstein is there to give the bishop evidence of the Holocaust! Similarly, a lot of Christians today refuse to associate with 'worldly' people, maybe just because they swear, go clubbing or are living together outside marriage. And these people are the very people that can help us make the difference in our communities! They are the ones with the skills, knowledge, contacts and experience to help us do real life-changing stuff in people's lives! I'm not saying that everything that they are doing can be justified by the fact that they can help us do our kingdom-work. I'm just saying that we should leave the judging to God and accept those people with love. In fact, by doing this and working with them we are showing them Christ's love and even Christ!

Another parallel is the self-righteous advice given by the Catholic bigwigs to Riccardo. (Before I move on, let me make it clear that I am NOT anti-Catholic. I went to a Catholic school and I love Catholics!). They tell him that patience is a virtue essential to victory, but I cannot help but empathize with Riccardo's furious response that while they are saying those words thousands of Jews are being gassed and burned to death. Those people simply cannot wait and be patient. In this case patience is something that humanity itself cannot afford. This self-justifying apathy can also be seen today in the actions of the global Church.

In the six years of war that Germany waged, the Nazis killed six million Jews, as well as millions of other 'racially impure' people. Today, 15 million die each year from hunger and hunger-related diseases, six million of them under 5 years old. That's an average of 24,000 per day, 1,000 per hour and one every 3.6 seconds (http://www.elca.org/hunger/facts.html). A brother of mine once said that Christians 'conspire' to murder these 24,000 people everyday. How? By not caring. With apathy.

The world currently contains 6.3 billion people, but it can actually produce food for 7 billion, or two loaves of bread per person per day. The problem is not that there is not enough food to go around; it is that there is no even distribution of this food. Rich countries produce more food than the poor, and the logic of free market economy has no space for compassion. Poor countries are forced to buy food from the rich, and thus end up with ever-increasing piles of debt. It can be said that the rich are living off the poverty of the poor. And let's face it. Most prominent Christian communities live in the countries that are economically well-off.

Now I will be fair AND honest. Many Christians in developed countries -including so many Catholics!- are even at this moment campaigning tirelessly to help save as many of the dying poor as possible. Some are rich and others are less wealthy, but often they give up the luxuries and even the basic needs that they are used to for this cause. And they are heroes. But there are also too many Christians that cannot see beyond how they can be 'blessed' and see how they can keep the the dying millions alive with what they have been blessed with. Yes, I'm talking about YOU, prosperity theologians! You and your Benzes and condominiums and your televised parody of the true Gospel!

But I will be honest. If anyone were to admit that they have not heeded James' advice to put prayer into action regarding the poor (James 2:15-17), I would be the first to put my hand up. God knows how much money I've wasted this year when I could have kept so many people alive with that money. Those who know me would be able to tell how much I spend on my more expensive hobbies. And I grieve for my hypocrisy. In my weakness I am confused by what I should do and what I would do. And that is why, perhaps, I can start by signing up with Compassion Australia. Having explained this, I would also like to ask others who claim to follow the Man who was rich but became poor for our sakes to follow His example.

At the end of Amen. the priest Riccardo attaches the Star of David to his habit, much to everybody's horror, including the Pope's. The bishop cries blasphemy, just as Caiaphas did at Jesus' trial. Yet I think what Riccardo has done is follow his Lord's example; he becomes one of those who are persecuted so he can help them (Isaiah 53, Matthew 25:34-45, Hebrews 4:15). Like the bishop, there will be people who are too preoccupied with religious protocols, diplomacy and liturgy to understand what we are doing. But if we claim to be Christians -'little Christs'- we would do well to honor our claim. We should put people before profit, world hunger before wealth and sacrifice before success. We would do well to put our own version of the 'Star of David', or any symbol of suffering, on our proverbial breasts and care about the 24,000 strangers dying today, even to the point of death (Hebrews 13:3).

It's Not What You Do, It's Who You (Really) Know

Just like every year, our church is preparing for yet another 'outreach' event into a local college. But as always (being the resident skeptic) I am asking, have we really changed people's lives? Have we truly forged unity with other believers in other churches? Granted, we always learn new things and gain new experience. But no matter what has been done, whatever we do always end up being just another event. Relatively little bond has been forged between our church and others, and quite very few people have been brought to a personal knowledge of Christ and have their lives changed by our efforts.

More often than not, we rely on projects and events as avenues through which God would work, and not the relationships that they build. We often assume that human beings work on the principle of mathematical formulae; if you do certain things in a certain way, then such-and-such goals will be achieved through such-and-such programs. And year in, year out, even if we do change the formulas, we stick to the same paradigm. But especially in this postmodern world, people connect more with relationships than with programs. They crave the warm, human touch of interpersonal contact, not the cold, precise nature of organized systems, including religion.

An example will help.

Our local church has for the past two years or so been trying to reach to college students by setting up a sport society at one of the international colleges in the city. The first time we tried this method of 'outreach', we were met with relatively great success at the orientation event that we used to market our club. Yet later on as the sports society went into operation, we discovered that people were beginning to lose interest. In my view this was not helped by the leadership of our church often pushing for new members of the club -especially Christian ones- to be taken to church almost immediately. After all, for most in the organizing body the club was only a front for an 'outreach'. The visits on orientation days to market the club itself is always called an 'outreach' event. In the end we operate the club only as a way to increase our church attendance and congratulate ourselves. Some real dangers lie in this.

First, we treat people not as human beings, beloved by God, but as commodities. Although a biblical word, it seems that when we use the word 'souls' to mean a people, we somehow dehumanize them. It somehow distinguishes them from ourselves, and even make ourselves sound superior to the 'unsaved souls'. This puts a distance between us lessens our chances of having a true human relationship with new- and un-believers.

The danger with this is that we do not see them as human beings with different needs, wants and pasts that being an individual comes with. We do not bother trying to find out if they have had any past difficulties with the Church. Even worse, we might find out later on that the individual is 'anti-Christian', and slip into that judgmental-mode that Christians are so well known for! A part of the reasons that we 'dehumanize' them is because we are too lazy to do our homework in building a solid, intimate friendship and find out what makes each and every person ticks. We are afraid of having to face the ugliness of humanity that we might discover underneath the surface of each of these people. In the end, they become mere 'souls' that we 'process' through our projects and programs from unbelief to baptism. It takes out the individuality of creation that God made us all with and replaces it with industrial-esque conformity.

The next danger is in great part a result of this.

Secondly, by relying on programs instead of relationships to bring changes into people's lives, we can very easily fall into the trap of insincerity, and in this postmodern world, there is no faster way to make people shut the door in our faces than the slightest stench of insincerity. And we become even more vulnerable to being insincere when we put our programs and 'mission targets' above the people we are ministering to.

A lot of the times our church leadership is in such a hurry to do outreach programs that we very seldom stop to think about why we are doing it. We claim that we are doing it for God, but we forget that God is more concerned about the people we are reaching out to than our outreach programs themselves. Our means has become, for us, the ends. As a result, after people join our sports club, they would soon be bombarded by invitations -and even insistence- to come to church, and they start thinking 'Is this why they wanted me to join this sports club? So they can get drag me to church? Forget it!'. And when this kind of approach fails to increase permanent church attendance, we either blame the outreach team or the 'stubborn, ungodly individuals' that 'refuse to know Christ'. The reason that they refuse is because we present knowing Christ as the end result of a program, and not a relagionship with a loving Individual, and thus treat those people the same way!

Based on these considerations, I have decided to push our sports club into becoming a purely secular sports club with no hidden religious agenda or Christianizing secret mission. This will then push us, the Christians who are in the club, to personally bear that mission.
I hope that by doing so I will force the club members, including myself, to establish friendships with new members instead of 'processing' them based on what they jot down in the 'religion' section of the entry form. I hope that this will change the way we view outreach, and the way we view unity and cooperation with other churches. I hope that we will stop treating unbelievers as 'souls' and start relating to them as human beings. I hope that then we will stop taking the lazy approach into sharing the Gospel, and start doing it by wanting to know each of them as individuals. I hope that by doing this we will truly follow Christ's example in relating to people. After all, my brother told me once, even when all our projects and programs fail, what we can always fall back on is our relationships.

Of Comic Books, Terrorists and Inflight Entertainment

On my return flight from Singapore to Perth a month back I brought into the cabin a Captain America graphic novel, which I wanted to read on the plane. Unfortunately I had a great difficulty when it came to opening the plastic wrapping around the book because Borders, the store where I had bought it from, had obviously made sure that the wrapping could not be ripped open easily. It was bound with layers of thick plastic covering. Obviously, post-9/11 they don't allow knives in cabin baggages, so I had to call for help. I asked the stewardess if I could borrow a knife. She was rather confused about what to do and called somebody else, who ended up opening the wrapping for me.

It would have been an ordinary event if not for the irony that it bears. The reason that I could not borrow a knife was because knives were the weapon of choice of the September 11 terrorists. Ironically, the very Captain America book that I asked them to unwrap deals with how Cap deals with terrorism post September 11. In fact, the opening scene has him in civvies helping rescue workers at Ground Zero. How apt that the impact of that infamous event was felt right when I was going to open the comic book that deals with that very tragedy.

But that was not the end of my reflection that night (it was a five-hour flight). For my inflight entertainment I chose channel-2, featuring perhaps one of the very few fully subtitled films that ever made it to the first two channels of Singapore Airlines' (God bless their souls) Krisworld movies. The film, of course, was The Passion of the Christ. If the thing with the Captain America TPB was a picture of what the world looks like today, then this movie, I believe, is a picture of the answer. In a world where the endless cycle of bloody violence seems to never end, the only solution is Grace. The Passion portrays the ultimate expression of this Grace. It shows how God, by way of a very expensive sacrifice, chose to end the war between humanity and Himself.

Perhaps we can do very well to learn from this. Perhaps we can even learn to end the war on terror not with an uncompromising vengeance for every pain that our human enemies have caused us, for which they will in turn get their revenge on us, but with Grace. How can this practically be done? I am sure there are many people out there who think the idea that we should turn the other cheek to people who killed thousands of innocent people for a sick, twisted ideology is nothing but an empty, naive (and probably even dangerous) idealism in itself, which will probably only end up with more innocent deaths. I am not saying that it will not. Grace is an expensive affair. After all, it cost God the life of His Son (John 3:16). And I'm not saying that our enemies will not step on our battered bodies after we make such a costly sacrifice. Yet if God was willing to risk it all for our sakes, are we?

But I will not lie to you. Am I prepared to make such a costly sacrifice myself? Am I prepared to lose my family, my friends and even my life for the sake of Grace? I can't say that I am at this moment, but I am willing to at least explore the idea. After all, if Martin Luther King, Gandhi and -of course- Jesus Christ are to be believed, it was an idea that has been proven to have changed the world over and over again for two thousand years.

The Ghetto

They built a tower
A palace of iron, plastic and stone
All in the name of the Man
In days long gone of stones and glass
In days passing of fame and name
And on top, a golden cross
From its chimneys, unreachable
Flow sound and light… and glamour
They built an empire
Of plastic discs and paper hopes
Of empty tunes and teevee stars
Of cassette tapes and self-help books
The Man had no place to sleep
Their kings ride limos with sunroof tops
They built a ghetto
And speak a language known
But only unto their own
Jargons and phrases
And over-recycled clichés
What was to be given free
Now kept shut in dusty barns
The voice in the wilderness
Moulding in damp old cellars
While the lost ones hunger…
Fads, trends, something new
Rituals, mindless repetitions
Faith or selfish obsession?
They built the ghetto
Walls of pride, doors of apathy
But for those outside its gates
That Man died too…
And cries.

More Than Sparrows

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.” – Matthew 10:29 NIV

This verse is often used to encourage Christians to not worry about their worldly problems. In its original context Jesus said this to assure his disciples that they are worth more than sparrows; if God cares about sparrows so much, He would care about them even more.

But the original text does not actually say ‘apart from the will of your Father’ or ‘without the will of your Father’, but simply ‘without your Father’. This means that God is, somehow and in some way, present everytime anything bad happens to us, including death, because we are more than sparrows. This is a very comforting thought. But what would it feel like for God? We can only imagine, but since Christians often have the tendency to be egocentric, or even downright selfish, let us try to look at this passage from His perspective.

We see ourselves as loved by God, but perhaps not the guy living wild across the street. We think the idea that God knows and loves us personally as individuals, crafted lovingly in our mothers’ wombs and raised in His sight (Psalm 139), only applies to us. We forget that it also applies to every other human being on earth that has ever been born, whether or not they know Him. He also cares about those ‘lost souls’ as much as He cares about us, and just as much more than sparrows as e are. This is why He wants everyone to be saved (1 Timothy 2:2). Unfortunately, this is one divine will that might never come true, and we Christians are not the least to blame for it. How do you think God feels?

The Father does not only love the multitude of souls that are lost, the millions of human being who die everyday without knowing Him; He is Love itself (1 John 4:16). Jesus tells us that whenever a single sparrow falls to the ground and dies, the Father is somehow present. Would He not only be present whenever one of His beloved human creations die without a personal knowledge in Him? How does it feel for Him to be there as a single human being is dying, knowing that that person that He has lovingly and mightly crafted to be loved would soon perish?

The drug dealer bleeding to death from gunshot wounds.
The teenage girl dying from overdose.
The Aboriginal boy being beaten to death in prison by racist prisoners.
The single mother slicing her wrist out of despair.
The murderer being strapped to the electric chair.

How can we dare to forget that God cares about them? We take comfort in knowing that our Father is with us when we are going through tough times. But we forget that He is also somehow there whenever one of these people is at the border between life and death, fully knowing that soon the someone He loves will be forever lost to Him. Only someone who has ever had someone she loves die right by her side can understand anything close to what this feels like to Him.

And we let our Father’s heart be broken like this time after time for the stupidest of reasons; dispute over who is most doctrinally correct, how worship should be conducted, what we should wear to church, or even outright apathy. We forget that we are not the only ones who are worth to Him much more than sparrows. There are also those who fall and die as sparrows do without salvation, by the millions everyday. They are forever lost to God, and we forget how He feels about that.