A Nation Taking Care of its Youth

This photo has been haunting me of late.  I used it last year in a C4L Bulletin called Job and the Jobless.


 
The speaker in our church last Sunday said that Prayer is mentioned 500 times in the Bible, but that Wealth is mentioned 2,350 times.  That sort of stuck with me like statistics sometimes do.  They niggle at me.  The Bible has a lot to say about Wealth and what it is for.

 

I am contemplating hard times.  The last few years have been hard on me, because they have been hard on the people that I serve.  This week's news is that 25 000 more jobs were lost in the second quarter of this year, in South Africa.  Of those, 13 000 were in the "community and social sector".  This sector is bleeding and C4L is feeling its pain.



Economies shrink.  Droughts come unpredictably.  Businesses close.  People move on.  But imagine a Chamber of Commerce putting up a sign asking the jobless to "keep going".  This really gets to me.  Too close for comfort.



I keep pressing the case for promoting self-employment as opposed to government interventions to revive sectors that are shrinking.  But I am a voice crying in the veld.



Thanks for your prayers.  One encouraging note in my day today was being approached by a deep township high school asking if I would be the Motivational Speaker at its Matric Dance.  What an honour!



But what am I gonna say to young learners facing their final exams next month?  What can inspire them to work hard and do their best?  Certainly not the conditions that they will face in December when they leave that school for the last time, and enter the work force.

Oliver Tambo said that "a nation that does not take care of its youth has no future and does not deserve one".


Pray for me as I try to motivate learners when their future is bleak.

The Eye of the Storm

They say that lightning never strikes in the same place twice.  But chances are good that New Orleans will get hit again with a major storm some day.  Hopefully by then it will be better prepared for disaster?

I have been reflecting on Yogi Berra’s famous phrase “déjà vu all over again”.

2003 Epicentre of the AIDS Pandemic
As the tide of this crisis rose, a Canadian called Stephen Lewis was appointed Special Advisor to the U.N. Secretary General (at the time Kofi Annan).  He published a book called Race Against Time which was actually a series of Massey lectures given at University of Toronto.  At the time, South Africa and Swaziland were at the epicenter of the pandemic.

For reasons that were unacceptable, the South African government of that time was not pouring enough resources into this crisis.  Anti-retrovirals were not being rolled out fast enough.  Instead, government was promoting beet root!  Government was trying to sequester all international AIDS resources for itself, to the exclusion of “non-state actors”.  When people like Stephen Lewis tried to talk sense to the Health Minister, xenophobia kicked in and he was ignored.  Years later, research done by Harvard University concluded that about 350,000 lives were lost that did not need to perish.  Government policy was detrimental. 

2013 Highest Unemployment Rate on Earth
CNN ran a piece recently on unemployment.  It listed the rates in various countries.  Conspicuously at the top of the list was South Africa.  From other sources, I have read that among the 9 provinces in SA, Mpumalanga’s rate is the highest.  So here we go again…

I have said before that the Mpumalanga rates today are worse than what the unemployment rates were in the USA and Canada during the worst year of the Great Depression.  The statistics are scary.  Aristotle said that inequity is the mother of revolution.

Government is not pouring enough resources into this crisis.

One cannot only blame government policy, as there are diverse causes.  But its policies in this respect are detrimental.  In particular it still thinks in terms of trying to increase the number of “formal sector jobs” and does not take self-employment namely the Informal Sector seriously enough.  Worse yet, it is as arrogant about this as it was about its views on ARVs.

Yesterday it was announced that the number of jobs in South Africa decreased in the second quarter - by 25 000.  Over half of these – 13 000 – were in the “community and social sector”.  So the people and organizations (like C4L) who are supposed to serve as the “safety net” are shrinking too!  This is because they are being starved of resources again – as they were during the AIDS crisis.

It was also announced yesterday that the average earnings for people who have jobs has increased during the same period  Imagine the resentment that this can cause among those losing their jobs or worse yet those who have never been able to find one.  Youth, to be exact.  Because 75% of the ranks of the unemployed in SA are under 35 – the local age benchmark for youth.

Unions exist to protect their members.  Let’s be honest, they have been doing a pretty good job protecting the interests of the employed.  COSATU is, after all, part of the “tripartite alliance” that rules SA.  For example, the unions blocked government’s attempt 3 years ago to introduce a youth wage subsidy.  Government wanted to subsidize work places that would employ youth.  The unions said this would create a two-tier effect and blocked it.

So the ANC congress late last year decided to introduce a Youth Grant instead.  They must see the “tsunami of youth” coming.  (Not to mention an election.) But this has bogged down, largely on the question of affordability.  The hard facts are that there are already 15 million citizens on some kind of direct government aid.  While there are only 12 million citizens working - paying income tax.  So adding another burden raises a lot of concerns.

Two other policies are bleeding the economy.  Affirmative action is one.  The other is what C4L has dubbed “The Impunity Gap”.  That is, the long stretch of time that passes between someone being caught in the act of fraud or corruption, and them being convicted.  Through the intervening months - or years – they just stay put.  They keep looting!  Their colleagues say, “Oh, let law enforcement take care of that, our job is service delivery.”  In other words, they leave the rotten apple in the bushel.

A-blowin my mind
In 2003 I wrote a parody of Dylan’s famous song - on the left.  Today I wrote a new version:

A-groanin in the wind

A-blowin my mind

How many times can a leader look up Before she sees the sky? How many deaths will it take 'til she knows That too many people have died? How many eyes must she have 'til she sees The truth that her cabinet hides? How many times can a man turn his head And pretend that he just doesn't see? How many tests will it take 'til he knows That you have to escape to be free? How many years can the nation exist Before it is brought to its knees? How many roads must a child walk down Before they call him a man? How many years can an orphan survive Before someone gives him a hand? How many nights can the siblings endure Before life is forever grand? The answer, my friend, is groanin' in the wind The answer is a-groanin' in the wind

How many years can our leaders look up Before they see the sky? How many jobs will be lost in this land Where too many people have died? How many eyes must they have 'til they see That youth votes will soon turn the tide? How many years must a boy study hard Before he can get a good job? How many meals must his children miss out Before he will go out to rob? How many years can this crisis go on Before we are ruled by a mob? How many jobs will be lost by the way Before they wake up to our call? How many workers will work a half shift To see there is work for us all? How many un-employed youth must we have Before they make government fall? The answer, my friend, is a-blowin my mind The answer is a-blowin my mind

A Letter from Youth

I was 8 years old when my father died in 2003.  My Mum dies 2 years later.  I miss them.  I grew up as a Child Head of Household with my young brothers and sisters.  My aunts and uncles helped us out.  The Social Worker, my school and my church have all been good to me.  Our neighbours have been kind.  I finished matric this year.  I am 18.

But there are no jobs.  I have one chance in a hundred of finding a job within a year of graduating.  Career counselors tell me that the longer I am unemployed, the harder it gets to find work.  I don’t want to steal.  My cousin is working hard, driving a taxi.  But he doesn’t have a drivers license.  Here are my options:

• Sit a home like a couch potato and watch endless soapies on TV
• Live on the accumulated child grants.  Mine will soon be running out
• Spend months job hunting when the news says the number of jobs is decreasing and the unions are fighting hard for the rights of their members
• Borrow money from government to further my studies
• Start my own enterprise to support myself

A hand up not a hand out

One recent innovation at C4L is a Solar Biltong Drier.  The prototype is working well, not just for meat but for fruits and veggies too.

Through its Green Coops at community level, these will be introduced.  They need no electricity.  They can add value either to youth who are growing plants or animals to sell.  Or youth can buy meat and process it in this way.

Biltong is popular in all the cultures of South Africa.  Some would call it a national pastime!  Maybe even good citizenship!  It can be made with solar power, as one of the bottlenecks to growing the Economy is the shortage of electricity.


Help C4L to help unemployed youth

Find out how on www.C4L.org

Success or Failure?

I read this morning that in the USA $12 will buy 3 lattes.  Whereas in Tanzania the same amount $12 will pay for one child's education for one year.  We live in a world of disparities.  No one at either end is to blame, all are caught in these distortions against their will.  But we can do our part to work to change "the system".



As a teacher, Desmond Tutu despised another system... grand apartheid.  So he decided to become a priest, a role in which he could better influence people to work for change.  He eventually became a Bishop, and later even Archbishop.  His voice is still crying, although the wilderness around him has changed.  This week in the Mail & Guardian newspaper he wrote that South Africa is "the most unequal society in the world".



He highlighted corruption, unaccountability and weaknesses in the constitution as key areas that need to be addressed.




I mentioned this to a friend today at the coffee hour after church.  He has a good Anglican pedigree and says that during his years of compulsory military service, he always went to church on Sundays.  At the time, Desmond Tutu was Bishop.  He used to send out pastoral letters that every priest had to read out loud in every church.  He said that he remembers cringing to hear these letters read out loud.  He felt at the time that what Tutu was saying had little to do with faith or worship.  And serving as a soldier at the time, it made him very uncomfortable.



Perhaps that is our role in the ministry of Advocacy?  It's a bit like the saying about NGOs - that they are there to "comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable".   I am trying to do my part in both respects.




Over breakfast earlier in the week, another friend had an interesting take on what I call "triumphalism".  This basically encompasses the terms "corruption and unaccountability" that Tutu used, as quoted above.  He says that for about 40 years after the Anglo-Boer war, the British practiced it in South Africa.  Not only blacks but other whites namely those of Dutch descent were marginalized.  Then from 1948 the Afrikaners, who had lost the war, won the peace.  Apartheid was installed and for another 40 years, the Boers practiced triumphalism.  He grew up in this period as a boy of English descent.  He said it was very open and frank that ONLY Afrikaners would occupy the upper eschelons of power.  Others could get on with their private affairs, but were sidelined.



His somewhat fatalistic view is that the same thing is now happening again.  This time, it is the black ANC comrades who are in control.  And they are having a heyday.  They are feathering their own nests.  They are (like goats in the African proverb) "eating where they are tethered".  They are shameless about it.  Opportunism reigns.  C4L has encountered this first hand.




I recently consulted with an Advocate in the High Court about corruption.  He warned me that the way it was once seen - even by the courts - has changed.  He said that there are no longer absolutes - you are no longer just guilty or innocent.  He said it is now relativistic - everyone is corrupt, so it is not fair for one judge to penalize offenders more than others have done.  So the system is adjusting itself.  Or as some would argue - going soft or rotten.



This week Tutu wrote that he was a strong supporter of the ANC during "the Struggle" against white minority rule.  But citing inequality, violence and corruption, he stated that he would sadly not be able to vote for the ANC any longer.  These are sharp words, which by the way do not make C4L's life any easier!  For C4L operates in the province that is the bastion of ANC support.



Nevertheless, I feel that his diagnostics are still working.  Corruption is as big an enemy today as Apartheid was in the 1980s.  The great problem with Triumphalism is that it tries to validate corruption with a simpe retort: "It's our turn".




Pray for me as I walk down a fine line.  One foot treads in the direct conflict between C4L and triumphalists who have caused us harm and damages.  The other foot treads in anti-corruption rhetoric and advocacy.  (A sign on my door reads: You are entering a corruption free zone.)  While there may be synergy between these two, each one could also complicate the other.  Pray for wisdom and discernment as well as for clear insight and courage.



By the way, if you are uncomfortable with what I say at times, ask yourself (and me too, please) if I am failing or succeeding?!

A Future Not Our Own

New bank notes have entered the money supply this week - with Nelson Mandela's face on all denominations.  I have said to several people that I can remember a time when it was illegal to even photograph him - so all we had to go by were those black and white photos from the Treason Trials in the 1960s.  Times change!



I can remember when the prevailing view was that majority rule would never happen in South Africa because the Boers were just too strong and stubborn to permit it.



Once in 1988 when I was visiting Canada I was invited to speak at Hillside Baptist Church.  I was working in Mozambique at the time and I lived in Zimbabwe.  So I was pretty outspoken against the racist republic's policy of Destabilization, which was wreaking havoc in the "front line states".  I can remember a South African member of the church getting up and walking out of the sanctuary during my sermon.  Then how the pastor - who was also sitting in a pew - put his forehead into his hands in prayer.  He knew us both.  Looking back, I would say that we were both right.  Canada's prime minister at that time was Brian Mulrooney and he led the Commonwealth drive to pressure SA with sanctions.  But there were (it turns out) forces for change at work inside of South Africa, too.  Including among the Afrikaners.



If you haven't seen the movie END GAME, it is worth seeing.  It was made by the BBC and tracks the top secret negotiations that started around then between "liberal" Afrikaners and the ANC.  These happened in the UK, sponsored by LonRho's Tiny Roland.  The ANC's negotiator was a bright young man named Thabo Mbeki.  But I digress...



What occured to me is that South Africa does have a way of re-inventing itself.  This gives me some hope when I look at the news.  For example, this week the Opposition parties have tried (for the first time ever) to introduce a motion in Parliament of non-confidence in the statepresident.  This would never pass, but it would allow the question of President Zuma's record to be openly debated.  (Not just behind closed doors in the NEC of the ANC, but by all parties - publicly.)  Of course this is anathema to the group that I call "the Triumphalists".  Some of them are even saying now that a law should be passed to prevent people speaking badly of the President!



My thoughts answer this sentiment with a recollection of Nelson Mandela saying that he devoted his life to fighting white supremacy, but that he is equally opposed to black supremacy, and will fight that too if it ever emerges.  That is pretty much where South Africa is getting to, as I see it.  Black leaders "get away with murder".  Quite literally here in Mpumalanga, when you consider the "January murders" between 1998 and 2011.  Fortunately, this culture of death squads seems to have passed but now there is so much Triumphalism that government is finding it hard to contain it in its diverse manifestations.



This is reflected in the exchange rate which sank to 8.94 this week.  Foreign investors are worried.



It is in this light that I reflected this week on a favorite meditation written by Oscar Romero :

It helps, now and then, to step back

and take the long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is beyond our vision.



We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.

Nothing we do is complete,

which is another way of saying

that the kingdom always lies beyond us.



No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the church's mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.



This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.



We cannot do everything

and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something,

and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,

an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.



We may never see the end results,

but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders,

ministers, not messiahs,

We are prophets of a future not our own.  Amen.

I am processing this meditation in the light of what C4L has been going through in 2012.  It has certainly been a year of transition, but not to the future that we expected.  We cannot do everything - even everything that we wanted to.  Resources have thinned out and clashes of core convictions and values have put us into open conflict with a partner NGO.  We are just not both traveling to the same destination!


But C4L can do something - we can be prophets of a future not our own.


It is becoming evident that in the next two years we have to think of the next generation, not just of the next election.  There is an Advocacy role in this for C4L.  There is an awareness raising role in it for me.  There is a need for voter education - especially among youth... and above all, those who will be voting for the first time.  The population of Mpumalanga is so young the this target group can be considered a "swing vote".  And I do not mean from one party to another.  I just mean from Triumphalist to Constitutionalist.


Please pray for guidance, just how to approach this opportunity - for C4L and for me.


This is not the kind of ministry that donors - especially government - are likely to finance!  Are you willing to keep walking with me down this road, in prayer and ministry support?

Have you Ever Read The Night Country?

It was Bryce Courtenay who wrote The Power of One, which was made into a very successful feature film.  I just re-read his short story The Night Country about his growing up near Tzaneen.  As a child, he was largely an observer of both Afrikans and Shangan cultures, because he was English.  It is a fascinating tale.  



He is rescued when his mother gets sick with malaria fever by a Boer.  When this hulk of a man is robbed by one of his staff members, he calls in a Zulu shaman called the Monkey Man to interogate his staff.  Using a divining technique, two perpetrators are identified.  They are then beaten unconcious by the Boer in a way that is reminiscent of Sheria law - until they lose their right arms.  The little English lad is the only one who can't stomach it, and who reminisces many years later that this is why he came to hate Apartheid so deeply, that he emigrated.  



The Monkey Man noticed that the English boy ran out from the beating into a shed.  He finds the boy and says  "You are not truly of the amabhunu, the Boer, for you cry out for the wrong skin".  He proceeds to teach him how to escape to The Night Country using one of his voodoo techniques.  Later in life, the writer sees the technique as folk psychology and even figures out how the divining technique worked:  "Fear had completely dried up the saliva in the guilty men's mouths.  The pebbles they spat into the Monkey Man's little hand were the only two which were completely dry".



The interesting thing, though, is that the boy's status of "white Zulu" drove him as far away as he could get from his homeland.  He just could not stay in South Africa under "a white man's god, a white man's truth and a white man's justice.

"


Several images in this short story caught my attention.  Because the storyteller is a boy, he gets away with describing caricatures, not true characters.  When the Boer first appears, he is so big that the boy is sure he is the giant from Jack in the Beanstalk!   The Monkey Man drives up to the farm in a shiny 1936 Buick, wearing a leopardskin, etc...



But what fascinated me was the alliance between Boer and shaman.  Both wanted to show their authority - one over his staff, the other over his culture.  What is never stated is that the shaman was also against stealing.  He must have been succesful, driving a Buick.  There was a kind of mutual respect in this, reminding me that even F.W. de Klerk recently raised eyebrows by saying that at its origins, some of the thinking about Apartheid was sound.  People do have a right to self-determination.  But wasn't the Monkey Man selling out his black comrades?



Another intiguing vignette is him teaching a voodoo technique to the boy he called a "white Zulu".  A road map to The Night Country.  This white English son rejects the white man's truth and justice and learns a lifeskill that he still values decades later in a far-away land.  The Boer and the shaman had an alliance, but the boy would not abide Apartheid and practiced techniques that were called voodoo, which he came to recognize as folk psychology.




This story really resonates with me.  At the personal level, I have recently joined an almost all-black team formed to run the CWP in our province.  As an organization, C4L is neither black nor white - it is mixed.  Unlike the new CWP co-host, which is black.



I am being thrust into similarly uncomfortable events.  Some of what I see makes me want to run away and hide.  I have come to see myself like a latter day Monkey Man - hired as a technocrat, because I do a good job.  Because I stand for something.  But I am collaborating with people who have little time for whites, perhaps because whites have been stealing from them for so long?



But I am not on that frequency.  I believe that white South Africans are mission-critical to this country's future.  I believe that a generation after the dawn of Democracy, it is time to soften affirmative action and return to a selection criteria based on Merit.



Above all I dream of there being One Team... but there are always two colours.  Diversity and divisiveness are never far apart.



I am painfully aware as well, that it is unlikely that I shall ever call a South African woman my new partner.  Whites who haven't emigrated already are so traumatized by the fear of being sidelined (or being saddled with a pale male, for at least whilte women are also classified as "historically disadvantaged") and black women who dare to relate to a white man face an unrelenting stigma in their community.  It is the reverse of Sidney Poitier and Katherine Houghton in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.  Just like the parents in that film (Spenser Tracy and Katherine Hepburn) there is general disapproval of mixed marriages in black communities as well.  Deja vu! 



Thanks for your prayers.

Africa Day 2012

In 1978 Steve Biko wrote (in I Write What I Like):



"You are either alive and proud or you are dead,

And when you are dead, you don't care anyway.

And your method of death can itself be a politicizing thing.

So you die in the riots.

For a hell of a lot of them, in fact, there's really nothing to lose -

almost literally, given the kind of situations they come from.

So if you can overcome the personal fear of death,

which is a highly irrational thing, you know,

then you're on the way"



These are prophetic words, considering the way he died 
and the impact his life has had on so many 


They echo Kris Kristofferson's song lyrics

:

When you ain't got nothin'

You got nothin' to lose




Today the team I now work with set out 

For a field trip in a deep rural corner of the province.

About half an hour out, they phoned us not to come

For they couldn't guarantee our safety due to a Strike

Unrest, protests, townships burning

Deja vu




The Rand has sunk from R7 per dollar just 2 months ago

To R8.4 per dollar today




Personally I overcame the fear of death in Angola

During a war between Communists and Racists

I hated them both

equally

And thank God that he removed them both

In due course



But the scars remain... the legacy.

In attitudes,

Bitterness

Fragmentation

Alienation




I am optimistic about Africa's future

But pessimistic about its present



So please pray for me.

Mercy Triumphs Over Judgement

This story was on the front page of the morning paper today:

Mercy for mom who stole cough syrup
By Zelda Venter, High Court Reporter

AN UNEMPLOYED single mother who stole a R20 bottle of cough syrup she desperately needed for her sick toddler received some mercy from the Pretoria High Court when it ordered that she be refunded the fine that she had paid.
The Mamelodi Magistrate’s Court earlier convicted Linah Matshika of theft after she pleaded guilty to the charge.  Half of her sentence of a R2 000 fine or six months in jail was suspended, which in effect meant that the mother, who could not even pay for her three-year-old’s cough medicine, had to pay R1 000 to stay out of prison.
The lower court gave her some grace by ordering that she could pay the fine in monthly installments of R250.
The 26-year-old mother somehow managed to pay the fine, but judges Brian Southwood and Cynthia Pretorius ordered that the clerk of the Mamelodi Magistrate’s Court had to pay the money back to her.
The matter came before the Pretoria High Court by way of a review, during which the judges questioned whether the sentence was too harsh and why the lower court had not imposed a non-customary sentence.
The magistrate then suggested a fine of R500 or 50 days’ imprisonment, as she agreed the fine was too harsh.  The Director of Public Prosecutions agreed with this, but suggested the sentence be wholly suspended.
The judges, however, felt a R300 fine, totally suspended, was more appropriate.
The lower court heard that Matshika had stolen the cough medicine for her child “not out of greed, but out of need”.
Judge Southwood said that while shoplifting was extremely prevalent and was seen in a serious light, it had to be remembered that the value of the medicine was probably not more that R20.
“This was obviously a case of petty theft and should have been dealt with accordingly.  The sentence imposed was clearly excessive,” the judge said.

This got my imagination going.  Here is an article that may appear one morning in the Jesusburg News…

King of kings, Lord of lords, and Judge of judges
By Joao Batista, Judgment Seat Reporter

A successful professional was greeted today at the Pearly Gates by St Peter.  He was an octogenarian who grew up in a Christian home, had a tertiary education, and rose to the top level of his profession, as anticipated when his peers in high school elected him “most likely to succeed”.
St Peter’s welcome was as warm as ever.  While flipping through his Portfolio of Evidence (presented on arrival by the Guardian Angel), outlining an illustrious career, the Gate-Keeper paused at one page.  “You convicted a woman for stealing a R20 bottle of cough syrup for a sick baby?” he asked.  The retired judge stood silent in shock and awe.  All he could think to say was that he had always tried to uphold law and order, to keep the streets safe in his community.
“Sorry” said the saint, “but I cannot take you to the mansion that I had reserved for you.  First you will have to visit the Judgment Seat.  At least it will fast-track you past all the discoveries, which can take time.”  The judge was escorted out by two spirit-guards, as he no longer had any need for body-guards.
The retired judge had never seen a court like this one!    Instead of rising when the Judge of all the Earth entered, everyone sat down, men and angels alike.  The High Judge of Jesusburg greeted his interviewee politely, noting that he too had once been a judge - in Mamelodi.  He stunned the judge by giving him a choice – an apartment in a high rise occupied by single mothers (the penthouse of which was reserved for one Linah Matshika and her family), or row-housing in a district where many other professionals resided (crowded, but after all - the streets are paved with gold!). 
“I am downgrading you for fining a petty thief more than she could ever hope to pay.  She put everything on the line for her baby.  She put herself in harm’s way to save a child.  She may not have been a good citizen, but as a mother - she did what it takes.  She may not have been doing things right, but she was doing the right thing.”

Managing Diversity

Easter yielded up such a great example of the tendency that enclaves have to diverge rather than to converge…  There has been a huge controversy in Durban over hot-cross buns!  This is because the Indian community is so large in that city, that many of the bakers prepare their products according to “halaal” requirements.  Only in South Africa would you find hot-cross buns for Easter marketed with the “halaal” stamp on the packaging!

Jesus would have loved this, I am sure.  This is what he was on about!  It’s precisely this kind of tolerance in “managing diversity” that he championed.  Sadly, you had Christians furious over it, threatening to boycott!

Allow me to share a bit of unabridged “blogging” that followed my last prayer letter.  Without naming the person – a pastor who I have known for decades… He wrote:

Thanks for your thought provoking blog.  I always enjoy your writing -- sometimes I do not understand it -- but I always enjoy it.  My life is blessed because I had the change to work along side you and to know your heart. 
 
He didn’t say what he didn’t understand, but after some reflection I guessed that it might be my Bible-thumping about a borderless church in a borderless world!  So I replied:

In the Christian spectrum there are 3 schools of thought about Salvation.  First, Catholic thought which sees the Sacraments as the key.  Then the Reformation thinking which sees justification by faith - some call it revivalism.  Third, there is the radical view that it comes from Community.



In my writings, I always try to show respect for ALL views because that inclusiveness is to me what Jesus taught and modeled.  I try to widen people's horizons a bit.  For this reason, I may not always be understood, from where you stand.  But thanks for enjoying it anyway.



Happy Easter!  

Then I got this amazing connectedness back from him:

Chuck -- thanks for the insight.  I am currently taking training to qualify as a hospital chaplain.  One of the things that I am working on is "cultural humility" -- the willingness to be open to the beliefs of others without losing my own identity.  Attending to, and caring for, people with religious/spiritual beliefs other than my own is part of the pastoral care role that we play.  I am enjoying it very much -- but finding it to be a constant challenge.  Blessings.  

This made my Easter!  Blogging rocks!  I told him so:

Ya, cultural chauvinism comes a lot easier, doesn't it?!



You hit the nail on the head with this mention.  That is precisely, to my way of thinking, what Jesus was on about.  More than just tolerance - respect and esteem for ALL the others... without losing your own identity.  Unity in diversity.
 
I thought you said you didn't understand me?  You said it better than I did!

Here is another example, again anonymous, but abridged.  The previous C4L Bulletin told the story of a poor woman who stole medicine for her sick child was featured:

So the bigger question is:  was stealing a sin in this case?  Never mind for a moment the nuance of whether she was justified in stealing the medicine.  Was doing so a sin?

I replied:

To me the term "sin" went out with archery, from whence it came.

Yes she got her hands dirty.  But to let the child get sick and maybe die would have been a bigger sin.  Sometimes the choices we are faced with are not "to sin or not to sin" but rather "to sin small or to sin big".



Jesus covered her sins already, so who are we to condemn her?



That hit a nerve!

I hear what you’re saying but it strikes me that the issue of the theft – the sin if I may – has been passed over and justified by the circumstances.  There are times when we all, me included, do the wrong things due to circumstances.  Whether or not we’re motivated by life and death circumstances, doing what’s wrong is always wrong.  Sometimes it’s justified, but it’s always wrong.  Bear in mind that someone has been wronged in this story, that someone being the shopkeeper from whom the medicine was stolen. 
As Christians, we forgive because we’re forgiven.  The right order of these things is confession followed by forgiveness.  That order maintains a clear acknowledgement that there are rights and wrongs, as opposed to that mushy relativism that is so dominant in the world today.
For the record, I would certainly have stolen medicine to save my child were I in that woman’s circumstances.  But doing so would still have been wrong – a sin – that would have demanded confession on my part and which confession would have been rewarded by God’s forgiveness. 

I was not finished yet!


Yes I think she did wrong.  She also pleaded guilty.  I think that is confession.

Most shopkeepers plan a line-item in their budget for shop-lifting.  That doesn't make it right, but I bet even the shop was appalled at a R2000 fine!



Remember the priest (in what French play?) who was woken by the police coz they found a guy with the candlesticks from his house?  He had put the guy up, and the guy had risen early and taken off with these candlesticks.  The police said that the guy had told them that they were given to him by the priest, which they doubted.  The priest never missed a beat, as he had heard this guy's life story over dinner the night before.  "Oh he said, and you forgot to take the cutlery too!"  He went and got that...



My point is mostly about proportions.  Often those who are rich and powerful crush those who are poor and vulnerable to keep themselves on top.  Intentionally or otherwise.  This can be very smug.  Or we can build into our systems and structures some mechanisms for "tolerance".  Call it forgiveness.  I don't like "indulgences" but I think it is possible to "forgive" before confession, maybe even before the crime is committed?


My blogger wasn’t finished either:


We’re pretty much on the same page.  I agree that pleading guilty, particularly if it’s accompanied with contrition, is confession and often a darn good start at repentance.  I also whole heartedly agree about doctrine becoming a shield to protect oneself in one’s comfort.  I seem to be increasingly seeing examples where doctrine is a way to avoid truly seeking God’s face.  Maybe I’m getting older; maybe just more cynical – more likely both!  

 A special thanks to these two old friends for engaging.  It’s nice to know that people actually read my missives!  I hope and pray that we can get older without getting too cynical.  And God forbid that we should confuse honest forbearance with “mushy relativism”.