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"FAILURE" is a word we often use as a substitute for "Sin". Failure is of course a proper way to speak of sin. Sin itself is a failure to meet God's righteous standards. However, the 2nd season of "The Punisher" (Nexflix) illustrates why substituting "failure" in the place of "sin" is a recipe for despair .  ABOVE: Frank Castle, known throughout New York City as "the Punisher" after exacting revenge on those responsible for the death of his family. He is a man grappling with whether to fully embrace his new-found vigilante vocation. 1. FAILURE versus SIN: Frank Castle (the Punisher) is a "principled" vigilantle being hunted by two people just as morally compromised as he is. Frank Castle is first hunted by Billy Russo (a violent ex-military buddy). Billy's psychotherapist, Krista, describes the violent tendencies of both men as a facade that is at odds with their misunderstood inner-selves. She believes she can save Billy Russo, because his evil actions are not a true reflection of his authentic inner self: Russo's failures are a "failure" of authentic self-expression.
ABOVE: Krista, the psychotherapist of Russo. Frank Castle is also pursued by ex-hitman John Pilgrim. Pilgrim had given up his hitman ways in pursuit of a life of religious devotion. However he is manipulated into performing "one last job" in order to put Castle in a coffin! Unlike Krista, Pilgrim knows he can not so neatly separate-out his brutal behaviour as if it were not part of his authentic self:
ABOVE: Pilgrim, the reluctant hitman Notice above, that Pilgrim is also tempted to speak of his evil in terms of "Failure". However he corrects himself mid-sentence. It is not simply his "personal failure" that he can't stare at in the face, but his SIN. The sense of shame that crushes Pilgrim comes not simply from a "failure" to meet his own internal expectations. Pilgrim recognises that his shame originates in an offence against God. 2. FAILURE, SIN, and the hope of REDEMPTION: Secular humanism assures us that the shame of our past "failures" can always be overcome, if only we can somehow recover our authentic selves. In contrast we are told that the religious concept of "sin" is mercilessly oppressive, tyrannical, and judgemental. We can perhaps overcome "personal failure" ourselves, but "sin" is assumed to be a form of religious oppression we can never escape from under. It is surprising then, when the character closest to finding redemption by the end of Season 2 is John Pilgrim: the only character willing to speak frankly in terms of "sin". All the other characters seem more enslaved than ever to their ongoing "failures". Unlike the "shame of sin", the shame of "personal failure" is a maze that offers no route of escape. Moral theologian Oliver O'Donovan offers penetrating insight into why...
To speak only of "personal failure" turns us mercilessly in on ourselves, like a maze with no exit. By contrast, in speaking also of "sin", we are prepared to turn outward towards the one who alone can forgive, with finality.
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from Iris Murdoch, Nuns and Soldiers (London: Chatto & Windus, 1980), p67. We long to be judged. That is counterintuitive, I know. We do not, of course, wish condemnation upon ourselves. Judgement and condemnation are not the same thing. However, we do long for a definitive grasp of where our actions fit within the greater scheme of things. Perhaps we seek rest from a ceaseless struggle of self-justification. Perhaps we hope that the judgements of others will buttress our own self-judgements. But without judgement of some kind being passed, our actions and activities will always remain "unfinished business". We need a final judgement in order to find rest from our works. But exactly what judgement is capable of bringing final rest to all that frenzied activity of which a person's life consists? The judgements of others can never bring us the rest we long for. Whatever favourable judgement others may pass upon our works, those judgements are at best only ever interim and partial judgements. As O'Donovan writes, our sense of achievement (or lack of it) is insufficient to decide the matter: "even the deeds in which we imagine we may rest can very quickly appear in another light". The life of a dearly loved parish priest may find approving judgement in the eulogies offered at his funeral. But those judgements will be quickly overturned in the light of revelations that he abused the trust of the most vulnerable people placed under his care. The social policies of a politician may find resounding approval at the ballot box, only to be repented of with shame by members of his own party in subsequent decades.
Following block quotes are all from Oliver O'Donovan, Entering into Rest; ethics as theology, p44. This is why we need God's final judgement if we are ever to find rest (either in this life or the next!). Hebrews 9:27 assures us that after our one life, lies one final judgement; a judgement not undermined by an infinite regress of reversals and further revisions. A judgement that discloses the whole truth about our lives with a finality we need if we're ever to find rest. For those whose own sense of achievement is a comfort, this final judgement presents itself as a constant threat. But for those who are terrified about God's likely verdict upon their lives, the final judgement...
Consider the charitable efforts of many European missionaries. Even those acts of genuine selflessness would still wipe out whole communities with the smallpox europeans brought along with them. Even our finest achievements will require God's forgiveness if we are to find rest in them.
Rest and satisfaction will never be found by reflecting upon those works that lie behind us. Nor is much consolation to be found by looking forward in anticipation of a "better year" ahead of us. Rest comes only as we set all our work in the light of God's promised forgiveness of sin: that is a judgement in which we can find lasting rest.
Oliver O'Donovan offers some really helpful reflections on this longing to have our work judged, and on finding rest in judgement - which I've draw on above (Enterning into Rest: Ethics as theology, Vol 3. p.40-44) 
Collect for the 3rd Sunday after Easter God calls us to pray. Even our "unruly wills and passions" are not to prevent us asking of God in prayer. Yet for some of us our unruly wills and passions scare us off praying freely. Perhaps we fear our prayers are too petty or impetuous. We often feel the need to footnote our prayers with the disclaimer "...if it is your will" - a caveat with which we hope to throw a loin-cloth of modesty over our own shamelessly exposed wills. In a sermon published in "The World in Small Boats", Oliver O'Donovan reflects on the shame we sometimes feel in asking directly of God...
Jesus is clear that we are to ask of God in the manner of a child freely addressing her attentive father (Matthew 7), not in the manner of a bureaucrat justifying some contentious community grant application. Yet even as we ask freely, we become aware of where our own wills and affections most need re-ordering. An analogy from O'Donovan from the same sermon...
We are not asked to subdue our own wills and affections BEFORE asking of God in Prayer. Indeed, we often do not know the true nature of our wills and affections UNTIL we begin to pray. It is through actually ASKING God in prayer, that our own desires begin being trained towards the light of his revealed will. Jesus' own "will and affections" were never unruly as ours are, yet he too knows what it is to have one's will ordered through prayer to the Father.
We are to ask freely of our Heavenly Father. And as our own wills are exposed before the light of his perfect will, our unruly desires and passions will begin to be trained by him. For more about Oliver O'Donovan, check out this Oliver O'Donovan Facebook Page.  One of the fondest childhood memories I have of my father, is my wrestling with him. I loved even those occasions on which the sparring ended in tears, as mum had usually warned it would! It is also a precious aspect of experiencing intimacy with my own kids. Christians also often describe their relationship with God in terms of "wrestling," though perhaps in somewhat less nostalgic terms. We likely speak of wrestling with God in prayer, or wrestling with the text of scripture. But does God really wish for us (or require us) to wrestle with him? Psalm 119 recognises that reading God's word is often not easy, but never speaks of God's word as an opponent whose meaning is wilfully difficult for us to grasp. Oliver O'Donovan warns against thinking of the scriptures as a sparring partner... If we suppose we have defeated it in battle like some Goliath, we shall, no doubt, triumphantly cut off its head. We shall then be fools twice over: first in conceiving that our cunning overcame the text when the text overcame our naive simplicity, second in not allowing the text to overcome our second simplicity, which is the pride we take in analysis to the neglect of a synthetic understanding of the text as a whole. (Oliver O'Donovan. Vol.2 page136) The terminology of "wrestling" does reflect something true of our experience. But If we wrestle in reading scripture, it is not wrestling with the wilful obscurity of God's word, but the wilfulness of our own hearts. And what about in prayer? What about Jacob's wrestling the angel? Didn't God make Jacob wrestle a blessing out of him? I don't think so. Jacob didn't need to wrestle anything "out of" God. Quite the opposite. Jacob needed to learn that God's blessing comes as a gift to be received. Jacob only grasped that once the mysterious man touched his hip, crippling him as a reminder of the weakness of his own flesh. It WAS a struggle for Jacob to come to terms with God's grace and acceptance, but he had never needed to wrestle that grace from God's hands. (see John H. Walton's work on the text of Genesis) Once again O'Donovan offers a corrective to how we typically think about "wrestling" with God, with these wonderfully moving words on prayer: A tradition of Protestant exhortation, taking its cue from the story ofJacob's wrestling by Jabbok in the night (Gen. 32:22-32) and Jesus' parable of the importunate widow (Lk. 18:1-8), has attempted to make a virtue of impatience in the struggle of prayer to wrest fulfilment of the promise out of God's hold... For [Jesus], prayer may be altogether too drawn out, too histrionic and stormy, to evidence faith in a generous Father. Even the widow of the parable is not meant to encourage dramatics, for God is not like the unjust judge she has to deal with. He needs no bribing or bullying, but gives out justice speedily and readily... Our prayers may gain intensity from their circumstances, of course. When someone we love is in peril, it is natural that we pray with tears and terror. But when we find ourselves at our last breath, passionless prayer will have to suffice, for the energy of passion will not be at our command. Wrestling in prayer is wrestling with ourselves, not with God. (Oliver O'Donovan. Vol.2 page176)
For more about Oliver O'Donovan, check out this Oliver O'Donovan Facebook Page. .  I recently led a discussion on “How to Worry Well” at my church weekend away. In preparing for our discussions I came across this wonderfully insightful comment from Oliver O’Donovan, who includes some in-depth reflection on the nature of modern anxiety in his book “Finding and Seeking.” He notes that much modern anxiety is conceived in the passionate throws of anticipation: an elicit union of “breaking-news” and consequentialism (the practice of justifying our present actions on the basis of their anticipated consequences). Why are our first impressions of events so important to us...? It is because we feel our identities are at stake... Every culture concerns itself with news-bringing in one form or another; most other cultures have been more relaxed about it. Perhaps simply because we have the power to communicate news quickly and widely, we are on edge about it, afraid that the world will change behind our backs if we are not [up-to-date] with a thousand dissociated facts that do not concern us directly. It is a measure of our metaphysical insecurity, which is the constant driver in the modern urge for mastery...”
In contrast, FAITH in God's past action gives us firm ground from which to launch our moral decision making, and HOPE gives us the confidence to stay the course, despite the disorienting fog of the immediate future lying before us. Faith and Hope free us from the relentless need to anticipate the where the "times" are heading next, and instead focus our attention upon the next step of love that lies immediately at our feet. For more about Oliver O'Donovan, check out this Oliver O'Donovan Facebook Page. 
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 | ...like other colonists, she found much of what she saw bewildering, even repulsive. She and her neighbours regarded the country as a monotonous wasteland to be dominated and transformed, and a good deal of her pioneering experience was mean drudgery and brutal disappointment... Her epiphany seems to have had its roots in tragedy. Deranged by the death of a child, her mind and her heart were rent open. During her long recovery she returned to botanising. She grew more confident, more passionate. She saw such flowers of the imagination that she was transformed. |
To Georgiana the landscape often appeared oppressive and monotonous. The discipline of botany gave her a means by which to dominate and catalogue her unfamiliar surroundings: perhaps affording some illusion of control. Yet her botanical discipline seems to have presented her with little reason to delight in or celebrate the country that was shaping her. That is, until life circumstance forces upon her an attentiveness to her surroundings that begins to transform her.
It struck me that this is not altogether different from how some of us experience the reading of scripture. In some seasons of faith the scriptures can appear as a monotonous and sprawling horizon of text that lies largely unexplored before us. Perhaps we find some sense of achievement in attempting to catalogue it, but we rarely expect it to move or delight us. The otherness of the text can leave us feeling as if it hardly warrants further patient attention.
And yet, even that which at first appears monotonous and unpromising, can shape and transform us in unexpected ways. Humility and patience can beget an attentiveness to things we’d previously just trampled over.
It seems to me Winton’s closing reflection (below) is equally descriptive of what many patiently attentive readers of scripture have also experienced.
 | It takes humility and patience to see what truly lies before us. A different kind of seeing comes [...] to those who ‘stay longer and look with open hearts and minds’. We need not search merely in order to capture. Our fresh gaze yearns to understand, to bring knowledge inward - not just to catalogue it, but to celebrate what we encounter... |
Today I had Oliver O'Donovan's latest book, Entering Into Rest, turn up on my doorstep.
Eagerly flicking through the index I discovered he'd given extended consideration to the significance of human work.
O'Donovan gives particular attention to challenging the view that only "enduring work" can be considered good. The select quotes below are from p112-114.
O'Donovan sets the scene for the discussion by recounting the way in which both Teilhard and Volf have framed their theology of human work:
" 'With each one of our works we labour,' Teilhard wrote, 'to build the pleroma; that is to say, we bring to Christ a little fulfilment.' (1).... Miroslav Volf, in what was perhaps the last echo of the mid-century tradition, put the same challenge more bluntly. Only 'cumulative work,' he insisted, could 'have intrinsic value and gain ultimate significance.' (2) "
O'Donovan evocatively draws out the implications of this perspective on human work:
...we might be tempted to conclude that our work would be effective in proportion to the durability of its products. Making the terracotta army would be better than making gingerbread men for the children's party, planting a tree better than cleaning a room, manufacturing the plastic bags that hang around forever caught in the branches of trees better than making biodegradable ones.
However O'Donovan warns that.....
"...we should hesitate before reaching such a conclusion, not only from a scruple about ephemeral work, but because we know the deeds valued most have often been those whose future effects the actor could know nothing about - such as the hours spent wrestling with a piece of writing no publisher may ever touch."
O'Donovan goes on to conclude....
"So we must not allow ourselves to be forked on the suppositious alternative of a work that is precious because permanent, and a work that is worthless because its effects are impermanent. Work is made precious as impermanent, since God has taken time and its works to himself, restoring them through and from their passing away, not "cumulatively" as a process, but by an act that bears testimony to himself as creator and redeemer, which is resurrection."
1. Teilhard, Le Milieu Divin, pp. 54, 56.
2. Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2ooi pp. 9o-91.
Buy Entering Into Rest - it looks fascinating! In the section following that outlined above, O'Donovan goes on to address the difference between work and leisure, and work and self-realisation.
For more about Oliver O'Donovan, check out this Oliver O'Donovan Facebook Page.
"So we must not allow ourselves to be forked on the suppositious alternative of a work that is precious because permanent, and a work that is worthless because its effects are impermanent. Work is made precious as impermanent, since God has taken time and its works to himself, restoring them through and from their passing away, not "cumulatively" as a process, but by an act that bears testimony to himself as creator and redeemer, which is resurrection."
1. Teilhard, Le Milieu Divin, pp. 54, 56.
2. Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2ooi pp. 9o-91.
Buy Entering Into Rest - it looks fascinating! In the section following that outlined above, O'Donovan goes on to address the difference between work and leisure, and work and self-realisation.
For more about Oliver O'Donovan, check out this Oliver O'Donovan Facebook Page.
Having recently started in a new ministry possition, I'm reviewing my chruch's discipleship processes (including evangelism). The "web-diagram" below represents not a thorough analysis, but rather, three lenses to focus my understanding of how discipleship functions in my new "household of faith".
Note* this is not a strategy FOR discipleship - it is a tool to asses the way people see themselves relating to this particular church that they attend, visit, or identify with: a way of identifying contexts within which discipleship might best occur.
Having recently finished the City to City "incubator" program, my group is continuing to meet as a preaching discussion and development group.
We recently agreed to sketch out our preaching "modus operandi" - how we go about the process of preparing to preach.
The file posted below sketches the basic pattern of reading and reflection that I go through in preparation to write a sermon. I wouldn't yet use this sketch as a method to teach others preaching.
However, it was a really useful exercise to reflect on how my personal method of putting a sermon together has developed and morphed over the years: an opportunity to revist a few things...
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| preaching_mo_-_note_29_jul_2016__1_.pdf |
"A sense of duty imprisons you" says NY artist Jenny Holzer.
That is certainly what many of us most fear.
............
However, the role of DUTY is not to restrict or limit our relationships as Nietzsche supposed.
Nor is a sense of DUTY doomed to suffocate the authenticity of our feelings, as many of us instinctively fear.
Rather DUTY acts as a "shorthand" description of what kind of GOOD we are trying to achieve for others, within each specific kind of RELATIONSHIP (Romans 15:1-2).
Still, for all the help that Duty can give us in directing our relationships for the good of others, DUTY by itself is never enough to guarantee the health of our relationships, nor their full flourishing.
We can just as easily use the idea of Duty as a justification to AVOID seeking the good of others (Luke 10:29). Love alone can free Duty to exceed the limits of demand (Romans 13:8).
Nor is a sense of DUTY doomed to suffocate the authenticity of our feelings, as many of us instinctively fear.
Rather DUTY acts as a "shorthand" description of what kind of GOOD we are trying to achieve for others, within each specific kind of RELATIONSHIP (Romans 15:1-2).
Still, for all the help that Duty can give us in directing our relationships for the good of others, DUTY by itself is never enough to guarantee the health of our relationships, nor their full flourishing.
We can just as easily use the idea of Duty as a justification to AVOID seeking the good of others (Luke 10:29). Love alone can free Duty to exceed the limits of demand (Romans 13:8).
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I'm Steve. Anglican Presbyter, Practical Theology Enthusiast, and Graphic Design Hobbyist in Sydney, Australia
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