Month: November 2013

I have been here for a couple of days, and during that time we had to do some grocery shopping. In the supermarket theer was a Mennonite woman with two of her daughters following behind — getting the groceries. No one blinked. I did not realize that Manitoba has its fair share of the Mennonites.

The Mennonites are Anabaptists, and I have a series of problems with their theology that are about as big as those I have with the Romans. It goes back to yesterday;’s and the day before;s comments: the church should be universal, it should not be perfect.

But the Mennonites are losing their kids because the rules of their community do not gel with those of Child Support.

Four Old Order Mennonite children — among dozens apprehended from their community by Child and Family Services amid allegations of physical abuse — have returned home.

The young children were returned on Thursday afternoon after nearly five months away from home.

Their father — who is not among the adult community members charged over the abuse allegations — described how he returned to his house from an important meeting and was greeted by the sound of happy childrens’ chatter as he approached.

His children and wife met him at the door.

“It’s absolutely wonderful,” he said, describing the feeling of having his daughter and three sons home. “We were just overjoyed.”

The kids headed straight for their toys, and the father spent part of the evening holding, and reading to, his two-year-old boy.

This is unjust. If a family has violence within it add the children are at risk — then there is a placed to keep the children safe. But removing children from their main caregivers it itself damaging. THose of us who are grandparents have to not parent the grandkids (spoiling them rotten is OK, but we cannot micromanage our children). To label all children of a group as at risk is repugnant to natural justice. And the prophets d a few things to say about this.

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4

¹The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.

²O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? ³Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. ⁴So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous-therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

¹I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. ²Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. ³For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. ⁴Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.

Nehemiah 5:1-9

¹Now there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish kin. ²For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many; we must get grain, so that we may eat and stay alive.” ³There were also those who said, “We are having to pledge our fields, our vineyards, and our houses in order to get grain during the famine.” ⁴And there were those who said, “We are having to borrow money on our fields and vineyards to pay the king’s tax. ⁵Now our flesh is the same as that of our kindred; our children are the same as their children; and yet we are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been ravished; we are powerless, and our fields and vineyards now belong to others.”

⁶I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these complaints. ⁷After thinking it over, I brought charges against the nobles and the officials; I said to them, “You are all taking interest from your own people.” And I called a great assembly to deal with them, ⁸and said to them, “As far as we were able, we have bought back our Jewish kindred who had been sold to other nations; but now you are selling your own kin, who must then be bought back by us!” They were silent, and could not find a word to say. ⁹So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Should you not walk in the fear of our God, to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies?

Mennon was a leader of a church who taught that the church should be a pure community, separate from the world, and should keep its own discipline: that believers should not serve in the military, or courts, or have any involvement with the greater society. This community was to be kept pure by casting out those who did not choose to keep to the rules, and at the same time require that each generation choose to join the community.

These Anabaptist tactics do work in keeping a community tight and together. They make it somewhat harder to witness — because joining the community means that you have to ascribe to all their values. The idea of rebaptism offends my sense of covenant theology. And the idea that the church can be pure strikes me as unrealistic. But the Mennonites can teach us about careful use of technology, and critiquing our society

But those tactics leave our Mennonite brothers and sisters open to persecution. And as the Prophet confronted the money men who were selling children into slavery, it is time to confront those minions of the bureaux that think every person in a group is the same, and remove all chidden at once, ignoring justice, and causing great damage.

For it they come for the Mennonites, they could be coming for us next.

 

It is quite weird to be sitting, at around 7:30 in the morning, on a kitchen table, and be informed by your stats page (in NZ time) that it is in fact 0130 back home. This means that I will lose at least one if not two days of posting — I am flying home tomorrow and will lose Monday at the international date line…

I have to be careful here. Because my generic dislike of the consensus in Canada — that we are liberal, reasonable and above all nice — hides a seedy underbelly. I spend a fair amount of time in the glorious dominion, and the hypocrisy rankles. The current scandal in Toronto? Mayor Ford knew hoodlums and smoked weed? Piffle. The equivalent mayor in NZ — Len Brown — influenced council to get his lover onto the council’s “ethnic committee”. The prissiness gets me as much as the ideology of entitlement.

The correction is that we are told the faithful will come from all nations.

9After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
11And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12singing,
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

13Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
15 For this reason they are before the throne of God,

(And no, there are no photos today. The only photos I took yesterday were of daughter, and the grandkids, and they are civilians).

Matthew 13:31-35

31He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

33He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

34Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. 35This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:
“I will open my mouth to speak in parables;
I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.”

There are some very good things about every country, and then there are our visceral reactions to them. perhaps I am at a point where — as someone who visits about every year or so, and has a family there — I get to know more about the nation. Perhaps it is because the country appears to be functionally post-Christian — perhaps even more than NZ. I’m not sure.

But in these times there are parables that comfort, and predict a future.

Everyone thinks about the mustard seed but I’m more interested today in yeast. The mustard seed was about the visible church. Yeast is about the church being in every society, and in each society it does it’s work — Christians should be of every station and every ethnic group. There should be no qualification.

And if a society uses some form of ghetto — ideological, regulatory, or via commission — to remove the church from the nation, then those people will be honoured by Christ, as Revelations testified. But the nation from which they sprung?

That will, eventually, cease.

So the problem is not as much Canada but the idea that the state suffices: that society is enough. It is not. Put your fate not in the hands or your rulers.

The consolation of government health care in Canada is a one-size-fits-all mediocrity. Obamacare, by contrast, offers no-size-fits-you:

George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, said he was “perfectly happy” with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The “comparable” plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible.

And the best option he’s found on the exchange so far offered a 415 percent jump in premium, to $948 a month.

“The deductible is less,” he said, “But the plan doesn’t meet my needs. It’s unaffordable.”

The president of the United States knew three years ago that this would happen to Mr. and Mrs. Schwab. But he went ahead and did it to them anyway, and added insult to injury by lying about it all the way. The genius Ivy League technocrats that a formerly self-governing citizenry apparently prefer to be ruled by have bet they can get away with wrecking the lives of millions of Americans whose only mistake was to make prudent and sensible arrangements for their own health-care needs. At some point,

Now, that is a scandal. And it should remind us to put not our trust in princes or technocrats, but instead in the Lord who we worship.

I’m sitting in a small town in Manitoba after flying from Austria — leaving well before early morning twilight and arriving in full dark.
A bit of theology for three seconds. The technical meaning is universal: this led to the reformed idea of the church invisible, being those of faith hidden within Christendom and without. This parable talks to this.

Matthew 13:24-30

²⁴He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; ²⁵but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. ²⁶So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. ²⁷And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ ²⁸He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

It’s worth noting that within the church there are thorns and thistles and weeds. That not everyone who calls themselves Christian is of Christ.

This leads us a couple of conclusions. We should expect scandals inside the church, for there are antichristian influences within the church. Moreover, we should approach the institutional teaching of the church with some suspicion, for many of those who are not of Christ will through the committees. It’s worth noting that psychopaths generally get better performance reviews than they ought: for they are not troubled by the grumbles of a conscience.

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I am in Canada until Sunday, then I will again lose 24 -48 hours travelling.