Link: Respectable Apologist Fried for "Inflammatory Remarks"

Without any derogatory intentions whatsoever, I find this to be an an article of interest. It just so happens that one reflection question I've given to my students this semester is:

What, in your assessment, is the role of apologetics today in the proclamation of the Christian message?

The following is an answer extracted from one of my students' papers:

Propositions are secondary to a personal encounter with the Truth because the Truth is a person. It is and must be personal and relational knowledge. The Pharisees of Jesus' time were not ignorant of truth as revealed through Moses' laws. Yet Jesus' harshest words were directed at them. They knew truth but did not know the Truth! Truth came as a person, the person ofChrist. The Word became flesh. Mere apologetics, however logical and brilliant, is insufficient.

Brilliant answer. Deep and thoughtful. An insightful point which certainly deserves the points. We don't see apologetics with disdain, for it constitutes a part of the Christian tradition. However, we need to face the reality that we now live in a world that criticises the inadequacy of mere propositional truth. Truth alone isn't enough, they say.

Whilst the apologist proclaims truth to the world, the world says truth isn't enough. We can either keep loud hailing what we deem to be proclamations of the truth, or we can start focusing on the sacramental embodiment of relational truth. We may defensively claim that the two aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but the medium of proclamation inevitably betrays our bias.

If we don't start getting our art of apologetics right, we may end up having more apologising to do.

Note from the Editor: Just for the record, I wanted to clarify that I have heard this apologist speaking in person and have met him face-to-face before. I have also read almost all his books that were available to me. And I believe I've heard almost every single one of his messages that have been aired on radio before. Just in case I'm deemed to be critiquing from afar...you never know!

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Have you met fear recently? He's no pleasant bloke. He terrorises you with emotional dis-ease. He makes you believe that the worst possible things are bound to happen. He confronts you with seeming realities of hopelessness. He threatens you with possibilities of failure. And he has the power to make you believe him.

Fear. He turns up at the least expected times and shows himself in places of your life in which he's not welcome. His appearance is so abrupt you sometimes wonder how he emerged. The truth is, he lives in your life. He's always there, but has the strangest ways of making himself inconspicuous. But at certain junctures of life, he hates being ignored or forgotten; then he comes to haunt you with a vengeance.

Fear. He provokes you to feel and think intensely. You find that you cannot escape his clutches when he has you in his grip. He magnifies your deepest desires and shows you how the gratification of these desires is so out of your own reach. And he flaunts his capacity to keep you feeling deprived, punished, tormented and unloved.

Fear. You wonder what he looks like. Look into the mirror of your soul, you'll find him there.

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I took my mum to the hospital today because she had a little accident with her finger. I was morbidly afraid that her finger might have a fracture or something, so the kind doctor (who's a good friend and an orthopedic surgeon) had it x-rayed. Anyway, it was no biggie.

And here I was, in the midst of all the checkups and stuff, gazing intently at the group of doctors as they went about their daily routines in their draping white coats. Surgeries, treatments, doing their rounds at the wards, filling forms and writing medical reports and what not. It's so cool to walk around in a draping white coat!

So I spent some time thinking about honourable professions. Like doctors. They're admirable because of their contributive roles to the wellbeing of society. They enhance the health of the nation. In so doing, they sustain the productivity and efficiency of a the citizens, which in turn generates a healthy economic status because healthy citizens can work! That's just how admirable doctors are.

Which brings me back to my own vocation. I'm a Christian minister (who has functioned in the capacity of various ministerial vocations before). Besides my vocation being identified as respectably religious in nature, just what's so admirable about my role in contributing to the wellbeing of society? *dreamily taps fingers on the table*

I'm a minister. I don't contribute to the physical health of the nation; at least not in the most concrete ways. I don't contribute to the economic wellbeing of the nation. There is nothing in my "profession" that speaks of concrete worth. I spend my time reckoning with issues about life and faith that people hardly care to know about. Issues that are somewhat too abstract for most people in a pragmatic society to even desire to grapple with. Thinking further about this, it does seem deeply strange that I've had to study for so many years just to learn how to be effectively redundant to society!

Perhaps my greatest contribution to society is that of being an embodiment of restful redundance. To be the living testimony that I am loved despite my lack of "usefulness". Because God doesn't love only useful people. He simply loves.

Posted by SK at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The contents of this post is a reply to Irene's letter:
Making Time for Friendship

Dear Irene,

It's great to hear from you after that brief silence. It's good that you make it a point to hang out with your friends when there's an inclination to be fixated on some disconcerting life issues. That's what I do as well; not as a way of avoiding the issues, but as a way of allowing my mind and emotions to rest for a while before I attend to the "world within" again. We all have our days, I guess. But like I told you on the SMS the other day, I believe grace prevails.

Part of friendship is in allowing ourselves to receive comfort from our friends at times when we ourselves have nothing to give. This can be such a difficult thing to do sometimes; it makes us feel like "useless" friends. But perhaps that's precisely what we need to learn: that there's no need to be a "useful" friend in the first place. Friendship isn't about what we do; it's about who we are.

Friendship is indeed a mutual exchange. We very often enter into friendships thinking about what we can or desire to do for the other person. (Of course there are those who enter friendships simply for what they can get out of the friendship, but I'm not talking about such people.) This may be done out of the noblest of intentions, but it certainly defies God's divine design for friendship.

When we are able to see friendship as a mutual exchange between two (or more) people, we soon realise that it's not just us who're going to affect others with our life stories. Their life stories too are going to affect us. Our paradigms of life are going to be challenged and impacted by virtue of having such spiritual friends in our lives. That's the whole idea of friendship: needing as much as we are being needed, being changed as much as we are changing others, receiving in as much as we are giving, and being vulnerable towards our friends in the same way that vulnerability is required of them in their befriending us. It requires less humility for me to think of myself as God's sacramental presence to my friends, but more humility for me to understand my friends as being God's sacramental presence to me.

I find myself identifying with your sentiments about "small talk". It really used to be that I never had a thing for "small talk". It was to me an absolute waste of time and was for people who didn't have anything better to talk about - and I supposed I had much better and bigger things to talk about. I remember how I used to hijack conversations with others just to try to bring the subject of my conversations to a "higher level"... my my, the explosive ego.

But that has changed now (hopefully). I no longer try to steer conversations. I realise now that most people need time to linger at one level of conversation before they proceed to another level of emotional and intellectual exchange. And I also try to appreciate that some people never proceed beyond that; but that doesn't mean that they lack a capacity to enjoy friendship. Perhaps just not in the way I understand it to be. Or perhaps some people need to feel safe; and we need to respect such safety boundaries that they've constructed for their own security. It is after all, for many, a fearful world.

I think "depth" in friendship can be measured in different ways. And part of our being vulnerable rests on our allowing for people to demonstrate their idea of depth in friendship, and to allow them to reveal themselves as they are. When this attitude is embraced, we will find that each spiritual friendship is a unique adventure in itself. So you go ahead painting fingernails side-by-side (your new female bonding ritual), and I'll keep watching movies with my friends (my ancient male bonding ritual).

Hey, take care.

To friendship!
Sherman

Posted by SK at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Greatness and significance... are they the same thing? Perhaps many are confused about what they seek in life.

Greatness isn't the path that every person is called to tread upon. It is a perilous path, for while greatness in itself speaks of an amoral state of existence, the love of greatness unleashes a journey into the kingdom of lust for power. Many reside there and drown in the currents of power. In desiring greatness, they desire power to lord it over others. But in loving greatness, they are themselves more imprisoned than they have ever been. Greatness isn't to be desired.

But significance is something else. The desire for significance is an innate inclination within every human heart. It speaks of a longing to be known, to be loved, and to love. There is nothing wrong in desiring to be significant. It has nothing to do with greed or the desire for power. It is simply about our state of createdness; it is about being made in the image of the God who himself desires to be known and to know us.

The human journey is about discerning the difference between greatness and significance. The sooner we learn that our quest is for significance rather than greatness, the sooner we find a sense of centredness within the depths of our souls. But when one is confused between the two, the desire for greatness inevitably triumphs.

He who desires greatness seeks subjects. But he who desires significance seeks friends.

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I'm sensing a rising discontentment in the enunciation of Christian theology, particularly by a number of friends from my generation. And I stand with this discontentment. It pertains to the blandness of our theological language.

We say theology is our language of the divine. It is how we express our experience of our relational transactions with God. Hence, theology is beautiful, we say. At the same time, we pack it in a most hideously bizarre way of enunciation. We say things about God in a way that few can even understand, and codify our understanding of him (or lack thereof) in mysterious riddles. We advance claims that God is beautiful and seek to articulate that beauty, but we do it in the most aesthetically estranged ways.

We spew unbecoming propositions like "God is this" and "God is that", and "God is not this" and "God is not that". And the more we speak of God in such terms and in such a language, the more the subject of our description is found repulsive.

When others reject our claims, we say they've rejected the truth. Maybe it's not God or the ones who reject the truth who're the problem; maybe it's our language that's the problem. This may not always be the case, that's true. But nevertheless, it often is the case.

Our language of God is too bombastically brash. It is complex and sophisticated. But perhaps we are confused between sophistication and beauty. Beauty can be found even amidst simplicity of expression.

But things are changing. The aesthetically sensitive people are now beginning to say things about God in a way that reflects the gracefulness of his being. It is captured not merely in the descriptions themselves, but also through the language used.

Maybe, for a change, we should just start telling stories all over again, and cease trying to talk beyond ourselves. Our attempts to enunciate theology in a sophisticated way are simply too clumsy. Perhaps God didn't mean for theology to be articulated that way.

Stories captivate, because they have a capacity to capture our God-talk together with its beauty. And stories don't make God sound too boxy. It's a stark irony when we try to say that God isn't clumsy in such clumsy language. Like this post.

Posted by SK at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The contents of this post is a reply to Irene's letter:
Sincerity in Friendship

Dear Irene,

*Sniff sniff* I've been having a bad bout of flu in the past couple of days... itching throat, stuffed nose, headaches, and a fever. Sniffing all the way. But the appetite remains intact.

I guess when you ask how we can distance ourselves from the "doing" and move towards "caring" in our relationships, you are asking how we can regulate the dynamics of our communities in a totally different way. Well, the ideal is of course to change everyone's mind about how things should be done, and get them to do it differently! But since when has that ever been possible?

I've by now more or less resigned myself to the reality that when human persons gather, they are bound to form rigid institutions to preserve the spirit of what was once a vibrant movement or renewal. And given time, it is that rigid institution itself that becomes the greatest stumbling block to the healthy perpetuation of that renewal. It seems to be that way with every single movement or renewal that has ever emerged in the history of the Church. So I have given up on the idea of seeking a new movement or a new renewal; it's a cycle that will just repeat itself.

So I guess it's no longer about getting the masses to change their mindsets. I look at my own little life and my own given little space and ask what I can do to contribute to the wellbeing of my friends, and how I can open my life up for them to contribute to my wellbeing (we should never be so presumptuous as to assume that others have nothing to contribute to our lives, right?) Using my own present experience as an example, let me share with you what I do now to try moving away from the doing mode towards the relational mode.

Here's the thing: I don't think I'm made to be a policy-maker. I'm a poor policy-maker because I'm too idealistic. So I'm probably never going to "rise" to a position of being able to change structures or abolish structures. I simply work within the boundaries of policies that are already set for me, and I work within existing institutionalised structures. That, to me, is a given. Because we abolish rigid structures only to discover that other rigid structures soon replace existing ones! How ironic but true.

As a seminary teacher, I have to abide by certain rules: 1) I have to lecture in class, which isn't my most preferred way of imparting a paradigm of life and faith; 2) I have to set and mark assignments, which isn't my most preferred way of gauging the effectiveness of my students' learning process; and 3) I have to study for a higher degree, which isn't my most preferred way of gauging the wisdom of a theological teacher. But I abide by these set policies and procedures.

But beyond all this, I seek to relate with my students in friendship. And I don't mean a superficial friendship. I seek to introduce them to an understanding of God's relational nature and how we should seek to embody that relational nature. And the only way I can impart this is to embody it myself; the medium is the message (Marshall McLuhan). So I seek to be a deep friend, and invite them to be my friends as well.

Just yesterday, a student (who isn't sitting in my class) asked me why he frequently sees me hanging out with my students in shorts and slippers. He said it's a sight seldom or never seen in the seminary. And so I explained my slipper theology to him. Theology is the language of friendship. Theology is a language that is spoken when friends come together to talk about God. If we're not trying to embody the relational nature of God, we have no business talking about God. So I believe that it is in the sharing of life together that real theology takes place. If I am to impart real theology, I must put on my shorts and slippers and open my life to the cultivation of friendships with my students.

Without friendship, I have no theology to speak about. All I have is an ivory-tower conjecture of what God must be like. There will be no collective experience of God's presence in community, or how God works to shape my life through relational agents that I call friends. The Christian faith has always been a communal faith.

But I also realise that opening up my life in this manner and allowing myself to be seen in shorts and slippers places me in a position of vulnerability. I am liable to be misunderstood, and sometimes threatened to be trampled upon or even betrayed. But this only helps me to understand the vulnerable position in which Jesus chose to place himself. Being the seminary lecturer who is seen in shorts and slippers with his students also makes me an odd person, because I am not behaving consistently with the stature that has been accorded to me. It makes people wonder who I am. And admittedly, it sometimes make me wonder who I am too. Or who I'm trying to be.

But it all makes sense in the instance that I hear a student tell me this: "You have not only trained my mind. You have also trained my heart." And I, in turn, am able to tell these students, "Friend, you too have trained my heart". And I realise that I no longer seek to change institutions or established policies. I seek to change myself. That's my ridiculous slipper theology. How about yours?

To friendship!
Sherman

P/S. While the rest of the Christian world seems so fixated on a DaVinci Code busting mania, we're talking about friendship and slipper theology. We must be so out of frequency. And oh, the Gospel of Judas! Are we missing something here?! Hello?!

Posted by SK at 01:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

It's been quite a long time since I posted pictures of the furkids. Just over a week ago, I was speaking with my students in class (during a lesson on the transcendence of God) about ecological responsibility and God's redemption plan for all of creation. So I thought it might be nice to post an entry to capture the physical growth of the furkids.

Chayim (Maltese) in February 2004. He was really so tiny that we could carry him with just one hand, like an egg. Guess which one is the soft toy and which one is the real dog?

Chayim now. He's still very tiny, weighing just over 3.5 kilograms. But he's a dignified young man now, unlike the naughty brat that he used to be when he was a tiny little egg. Still looking very much like a soft toy though.

Carissa (Cocker Spaniel) in May 2005. She was born with a mischievous streak and was naughty since the first day she came home.

Carissa now. Still mischievous and refuses to grow up. She's extremely affectionate and wants to play with everyone.

Chayim and Carissa now... this very minute, hogging my bed like they do every single night!

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The contents of this post is a reply to Irene's letter:
Being a Friend of God First

Dear Irene,

Hi there! I'm back! Sorry, was out of town for a few days (as if you didn't already know).

Your previous letter was very interesting, especially your description on being a "good Evangelical". I'm sure quite a number of our friends must've identified well with your description there. I suppose we'll just have to stop trying to be good Evangelicals and start trying to be good friends of God! After all, half the time people don't even really know what it means to be Evangelical anymore. So many fragments of the Christian world are claiming a right to that label.

They figured that if they could get a "recalcitrant" like you to read your bible and pray every day, regularly attend the Sunday Services, cellgroup meetings, prayer meetings, and to tithe to the church, they'd be able to move on and manufacture some more new good Evangelical Christians. But as soon as they were confronted with resistance, you became a reject. (Now I'm beginning to wonder if I'm talking about you or about myself...)

Here's the thing: when we see the kind of "church" Jesus had with his friends, he obviously modelled a community in which life was to be shared together. The first church was instituted when God came to share life together with his friends. This is a legacy that was meant to be preserved from one generation of Christians to another. Instead, what we have often preserved is a mere institution that we call "church".

Hence, sharing life together - living with God and with one another - is the very first requisite in the life of the Christian community. Without the presence of a deep friendship that takes place by virtue of God's friendship with us, there is no ministry to talk about. Then, as we journey in friendship with one another, our friendships will inevitably birth something. It is at this point that some "ministries" of the church will begin to emerge from our friendships. And yet, we walk in friendship not because of these ministries; we walk in friendship because of God's friendship. The birth of ministries in the church is merely an inevitable result of our friendships.

I am sometimes rather amazed at how people plant new churches and immediately start a host of ministries as a way of "reaching out to the lost". I wonder if this doesn't show that we're perhaps equally lost in the way we perceive "church". Church is all about gathering a community of friends who are committed to Jesus the Friend, and who are committed to one another. We live with and for God and one another. We break bread, read scripture, pray, and sing together because of our friendship with God and with one another. Anything else that results from this life together is utterly secondary. Our sole preoccupation should be in our friendship with God and with one another, and to inspire others to also come and be friends of God.

It must be clear now that I'm not propagating a community characterised by inactivity. What I'm propagating is a non activity-based church. Every Christian community must be a community of friendship. That's the starting point that cannot be compromised. Communities that have somehow missed out on this crucial starting point have to be willing to hold back on their active momentum and create space for the cultivation of friendships. And yet, there's still a danger that they may do it simply for the sake of creating more "powerful" ministries! Unless and until we can see that spiritual friendship exists for its own sake, like God's friendship with us, church will continue being just church... like the way it has always been.

Our friend Doulos has recently quoted something on his blog from Henri Nouwen. I think it's worth reading:

More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practise this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets.

It is difficult not to have plans, not to organise people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress. But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn't be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.

To friendship!
Sherman

Posted by SK at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Est autem fides credere quod nondum vides;
cuius fidei merces est videre quod credis.

Faith is to believe what you do not see;
the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

- Augustine -

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The contents of this post is a reply to Irene's letter: Becoming Friendship-Focused

Dear Irene,

Thanks for responding to this invitation for an open correspondence! Whilst it may seem rather awkward for us to be corresponding in the open instead of discussing such issues over lunch, I thought it might be beneficial for us to invite our friends to eavesdrop on our conversation. This is so for several reasons. Firstly, you truly have the guts to ask some very real and honest questions that I know many people are asking. Secondly, you have a keen capacity to constructively engage these issues in a way that people understand. Thirdly, you are a friend.

Perhaps for the benefit of our friends, it may be in order for us to clarify that our intention in this correspondence isn't so much to keep on dwelling on what is wrong with "church" today. We hope - in this conversation - to work towards some solutions pertaining to how we may practically recover the dimension of friendship in the Christian faith and journey. However, in attempting to emerge with such possibilities, we do have to identify what is wrong with church today. But not in a derogatory spirit.

Also, it is important for us to understand that the endeavour to find solutions isn't a short-term exercise. Quick-fix solutions, as we know, are never the way to go (it rhymes!) Hence, let's see this as a journey towards an incremental discovery of solutions rather than a prescriptive exercise in itself, if you know what I mean.

I suppose one of the things that has disturbed me in recent years is the way church programmes are perceived. They seem to be instituted in order to sustain the church organisation itself. Instead of the programmes serving people, people are now made to serve the programmes. Just today, a friend of mine was sick and called up his pastor to inform him that he might not be able to attend to his ministry responsibilities this weekend. You know what the pastor said? He asked my friend if he could perhaps try to get well in time to return to church to fulfill his responsibilities!

I would like to suggest a renewed paradigm of ministry for the church. We are first and foremost a company of friends who are brought together by virtue of our being friends of God. We are called to come together to learn to walk in love and friendship in this community. To share life together with one another. Instead of externalising our communal life into rigidly structured programmes, we are actually supposed to be the programme for one another.

Now, as we share life together and allow ourselves to be the programme for one another (by allowing our friendships to transform each individual in the community), something will inevitably grow out of the community: a sense of purpose. When this sense of purpose is expressed in concrete action as a part of who we are as a community of friends, this is called ministry. See the difference between this and the conventional paradigm of ministry as something that is imposed upon the people and simply revolves around rostered duties?

But it is important that we engage in friendships not for the purpose of ministry. We engage in friendships because it is reflective of who God is. The eventual expression that grows from sharing life together is merely an inevitable.

Of course, I have not quite provided a concrete answer to your concern as yet. But perhaps you might like to think through these preliminary thoughts and respond first before we proceed with this discussion.

To friendship!
Sherman

Posted by SK at 03:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

The implications of the recovery of friendship in the Christian life are inexhaustible. The previous posts that point out these implications constitute only a minute sampling of these implications. I invite you to reflect further on what this understanding of friendship might mean for you in your own faith journey.

It is of great significance that this series finds its culminating post on a Good Friday, for Good Friday was when the friendship of God found its most perfect expression: through the death of God.

God died. Not just for his friends, but also for his enemies. So that he could make them his friends.

Love and friendship are things we hardly take seriously in our communities anymore. The church has too many important things to attend to... finance, growth, structural maintenance, staff employment issues, evangelistic rallies, and more. Surely minutely insignificant issues such as love and friendship can find no place in the scheme of such things.

But it was love and friendship that drove Jesus to the cross. In observing a Good Friday, we are sustaining a conviction that love and friendship take positions of primacy in the life of our faith communities.

Then we have to live like we believe it.

Posted by SK at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

5. Scripture and Christian Friendship
It is difficult to find the friendship of God revealed in scripture when it is read in the way we have been taught all these years. It is not a problem with scripture itself, but rather, a problem with the lenses that have been given to us in our reading of scripture.

With a renewed understanding of friendship as God's being, search the scriptures again, and you will find that it is the underlying theme of the entire scripture. Friendship and love are what propel God in all his undertakings.

The very act of creation itself was an abundant expression of the friendship shared among the Eternal Trinity, not an effort of a lonely God to appease his narcissistic complex. The very act of discipling the nation of Israel was God's endeavour to walk in friendship with Israel, not the infliction of sorrow upon a strangely stubborn nation by some masochistic God.

The greatest lesson to be found in scripture is that friendship cannot be taught. It must be embodied. For this reason, God himself came to us as a human person, so that he could extend friendship. In receiving his invitation to friendship, we learn what it means to walk with a God who is a friend.

Scripture is a record of friendship between God and creation. It also records how creation fell away from that friendship, and how God so desires to restore that friendship with his creation. It speaks of how God had to sacrifice so much in order to make this restoration of friendship happen. This is how much friendship means to God, in that while we were still enemies, he gave his life to make us his friends.

Scripture shows us that friendship means more to God than we understand. This is why Jesus talked so much about love. The most important thing to him in life was love. Because love is the language of friendship. He who loves knows God, and he who does not love does not know God.

Scripture is a book about friendship and love. Perhaps this message of friendship and love needs to be preached differently from the way it is being preached today.

Posted by SK at 02:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

4. Church and Christian Friendship
"Church" is a community of friends that is formed by virtue of its people being committed to following Jesus together. We follow Jesus, the Friend. And by virtue of our following him, we are a community of friends.

Being a community of friends, we seek to form a lifestyle that best reflects the depth and the significance of our friendship with God and with one another. Within this community, our worship, prayer, study, and everything else reflect our life together. Church is about the sharing of life.

This depiction must seem radically different from the "church" we see today. Far from being a community of friends, church today is about building an organisation and establishing "healthy and successful ministries". Never mind about depth of friendship, so long as our members participate in our community in a way that is characteristic of a "vibrant church".

In church today, it is not relationships which govern that which is birthed from within the community, but rather, set programmes which govern the functional relationships within the community. This must be seen as a sad state of affairs. That we have allowed our communities to pander into such a state is cause for regret.

The pastor of the church is to be the model of a friend. In fact, he is to embody the friendship of Jesus - the Friend - to the community. He is to be the incarnation of the very friendship that Jesus desires to have shared among his followers. The pastor is not a professional. He is neither to be seen as an expert nor an authority in anything; he is simply to be the embodiment of the divine friendship of God with his people. He is to care for God's friends the way God himself cares for them.

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3. Vocation and Christian Friendship
When God assigned a mission to humankind, his purpose was neither efficiency-driven nor productivity-driven. It was friendship-driven. The assignment of work to humankind was God's invitation to a partnership within the context of intimate friendship. It was friendship, not work itself, that was to result in productivity.

It is necessary then for us to understand our various vocations as God's invitation to friendship. We work not because we need to earn a living or because we need to gratify our capitalistic inclinations. We work because we are friends of God.

Friends of God work because God has given them a mission to fulfill in this world. They work because they have been called to go into the world to inspire the world to share the dreams of God. It is a dream of friendship. In order to inspire the world with God's dream of friendship, friends of God embody friendship to the world.

In selecting a vocation for ourselves, we should not base our selection on the lucrative prospects of a vocation. Such a choice should be based on the potentials that God has placed in our hands; gifts we have that can best serve the wellbeing of people who will become our friends. In selecting a vocation, we want to offer the best that we are to our friends; hence, we choose to work at what we do best. For others.

We serve our employers, we serve our fellow colleagues, and we serve our clients, but not out of an obligation to perform or to attain our self-gratifying desires. We serve because this is what friends do for one another. We work so that we can serve the world in a spirit of friendship. Everything else that results from our work is of secondary significance. This is how God works.

Posted by SK at 02:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

2. Proclamation and Christian Friendship
The "gospel of salvation" many of us have received is one that excludes the friendship of Christ. We speak of Christ's work on the cross as necessary for our redemption from sin, but we forget that the whole purpose of God's redeeming us from sin is for the restoration of a divine friendship with him. His primary concern is not so much sin, but rather, friendship. Sin grieves him only because it severs friendship.

For this reason, Jesus says "Greater love has no one than the man who would lay down his life for his friends." It is strange how we read about the laying down of his life and miss out almost entirely on the friendship that Jesus so desires to restore.

Many of us spend most of our Christian lives being conscious of sin and wrongdoings, and yet conveniently overlook the friendship that constitutes the heart of Christ's Spirit. We must progress beyond a relationship of sin-forgiving towards a relationship of friendship with God, for that is his ultimate desire.

This fixation on sin at the expense of friendship is telling in the way the "gospel" is presented. We preach sin. We do not preach friendship. The thing is, without the friendship of Christ, the sinner derives no meaning from the reality of his own sin! The gospel of salvation is more a gospel of friendship than it is a gospel of forgiveness, for it is in the friendship of Christ that forgiveness is to be found.

Is it any wonder that the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ has become the impersonal exercise it has become today? It is a gospel devoid of friendship. It is a gospel that demands repentance from hearers but does not extend God's dream of friendship to them. It is a gospel that, upon repentance, assimilates the responder into a religious institution rather than initiating the responder into a divinely appointed friendship with Christ.

For that reason, we can preach the gospel to almost anybody and not have to worry about embodying the grace of friendship towards them. Even if we do embody friendship, it is for the sole purpose of invoking repentance. Repentance is the end goal. Just proclaim and get them to repent. Then move on to proclaim more so that others may repent too.

Meanwhile, God keeps on dreaming of a community of friends that embody the true nature of his being, and we just keep on missing the point.

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1. The Communion and Christian Friendship
The Lord's Supper that is commonly known today among Christians as the "Holy Communion" is more than the institution it has become.

It is an invitation of Christ to friendship. It is his holy invitation for us to come, not just to eat with him, but also to partake of his body and his blood. For greater love has no one than a man who would lay down his life for his friends. And this supper is the occasion of his expression of a desire - a willingness - to lay down his life for those whom he calls friends.

In understanding the friendship of Christ, the table must bring a deeper sense of significance. The repeated act of coming to the table of grace is a sacred remembrance of his very presence at the table, bidding us to come to partake in a deep and sacred friendship with him.

We must do away with the monthly mechanical ritual of the Holy Communion that no longer expresses the inviting friendship of Christ and replace it with a Holy Communion. There is an immediate need to restore that experience of awesome grace that captivates the hearts of the invited and draws them towards the table of grace. For the host is a friend. And he bids us "Come, my friends, eat with me so we can remember this moment".

I am wondering...what if there was someone in the midst of the disciples in the Upper Room that night who was not yet a friend of Jesus? Would Jesus have said "Please stay away from the table, because this is a 'friends only' session", or would he have said "Come join us, please, for I want to be your friend"? Whatever the conclusion may be, this is certainly something worth thinking about, because it certainly shows in the way invitations to the Lord's Supper are issued in our faith communities today.

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IMPLICATIONS OF CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP
This has certainly been a tediously long series of theological reflection. For this reason, a lot of personal contemplation has had to be undertaken, coupled with the enunciation of my experience of the embodiment of friendship within my own community of people whom I call "spiritual friends".

Much has been said, and yet much more still needs to be said.

If the previous segment of this series may have tended to come across as being rather theoretical (theological and philosophical), this segment seeks to demonstrate that the implications of those theoretical thoughts are crucial. Furthermore, the visibility of those implications are to be embodied concretely in the life of the Christian community.

I am also (somewhat boldly) suggesting that the embodiment of these implications is not a negotiable component in the Christian life and faith, for the restoration of relationship and friendship is fundamentally what God seeks with and among his people.

Hence, in the next several entries, I will attempt to delineate how the fundamental importance of friendship must be concretely recovered in different aspects of the Christian life. In missing out on this, we may well be missing out on that which is most important in the economy of the Kingdom.

It is my personal hope that in articulating these things, I will not merely be trying to practise what I preach, but rather, preaching what I practise.

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Editor's Note: This is the last entry on Dynamics of Christian Friendship in this series. The next phase of this series will be Implications of Christian Friendship. Hope it's been beneficial so far.

5. Offering in Christian Friendship
Lest anyone should define friendship in its most casual terms, it has to be clarified that Christian friendship is about the laying down of one's life; not just for God, but for one's friends. In the process of learning to love our friends, we learn to lay down our lives for God and for one another. We learn how to love our friends sacrificially; to truly actually live for them.

We learn to love one another beyond a superficial love, and to offer ourselves to one another in a real and deep way. The word "learn" is herein deliberately emphasised and consistently repeated, for we are not yet able to express the laying down of our lives for our friends in its perfection. But we are learning and trying to do it in the best way we know how. Yet we keep trying, in remembering Christ's words: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends".

What if the laying down of your life for your friends costs you something? What if it costs you a job, a scholarship, or a relationship? It must be obvious now that it is potentially painful to love by way of laying down our lives for our friends. When we approach one another with no holds barred, we are actually in a position of vulnerability. We can get hurt easily because we are walking with people who do not truly know how to love perfectly yet. They are learners, just like us.

Furthermore, what about when your love is not reciprocated the way you wish it would be? What about times when it seems like you are giving more? Wouldn’t it be foolish to go on being the one to give all the time whilst someone else just receives?

And yet, this is exactly what God has been doing for us! Having to lay down our lives for one another helps us to understand the nature of Christ's friendship with us, such that he laid down his life for us. And when we walk in relationships like this, we are also learning about how God feels when he loves us and we are not able to reciprocate. We learn to feel how God must feel.

Of course, we can settle for a superficial religious life in the absence of such friendships. But not if we desire to be like Christ. Those who desire to be like Christ must take the unnecessary risk of loving their friends deeply, even to the point of laying themselves down for their friends, so that they are formed in the likeness of Christ.

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4. Missionality in Christian Friendship
When we speak of friendship or relationships, we often hear responses such as "Friendship alone isn't going to get us anywhere" or "Relationships alone aren't enough". But when we understand the missional dynamics of friendship, we will see that friendship alone is indeed enough. It is precisely what the world needs.

In friendship, there is an intimate intertwining of lives which consequently produces a synergy of sorts throughout one's engagements with his friends. When friendship takes place as it should, it is almost as if something beautifully harmonic can be birthed, which can produce a magnificent explosion of chaotic splendour. It is like fireworks. The result of this magnificent explosion creates an effect beyond the boundaries of that friendship itself. It overflows into the lives of other individuals, other communities, and often even into other nations.

And yet, we engage in friendship not for this purpose. We engage in friendship simply because we desire to be like Christ. We engage in friendship because God is a community of friends. This requisite is a non-negotiable component in friendship; that we become friends for the sake of friendship itself. To define friendship functionally is to treat friendship as a commodity and to instrumentalise another fellow human person, and to disregard the dignity of his being made in the image of God.

Hence, we become friends because friendship itself reflects who God is. But an inevitable result of such friendships is the sharing of lives and the intertwining of our stories such that vision is birthed from within our hearts. And then there is the desire to fulfill the vision because we desire to share a common purpose in accordance with that kingdomic nature of our friendship.

And therefrom explodes a beautifully orchestrated harmony that flows beyond friendship into other spheres of life, which inspires the world to live in friendship as well. Then God's invitation to friendship is not merely proclaimed, but also embodied in all its imperfect fullness.

It is somewhat disconcerting to see the surge of "mission" endeavours that is taking place in the world by Christian organisations today. Missionaries are being treated functionally; they are made to serve the purpose of mission organisations. They are simply workers of these mission agencies; not friends. In the missionfield, "ungospelised" people are being treated with less dignity and respect, because they are often expected to listen to a gospel that exists without the embodiment of the friendship of God. But we call this "mission".

There is no mission without friendship. When all we care about is world evangelisation at the expense of friendship, our gospel is void. Because Christ's gospel is a gospel of friendship. But this gospel is twisted when our primary concerns are the reputation of the mission agency, the annual statistical reports, and the favour of financial supporters.

This preceding point has had to be brought up so as to highlight a stark difference between how the word "mission" is commonly employed in its current usage and how it is employed in the context of this series of thought on friendship. When we understand God's heartbeat, friendship is missional.

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3. Grace in Christian Friendship
It is strange how we often almost too easily assume that others are not trying hard enough, or that they simply are refusing to try to live a life that is consistent with Christian ideals. It is somehow difficult to see that, just like us, others are perhaps actually trying to live their lives in the best way they know how.

Could it be that the imperfections we see in them exasperate us because they are so reflective of our own inadequacies (of which we hate to be reminded)? Could it be that our reluctance in offering grace is reflective of our own reluctance in acknowledging that we too actually need grace from God and our friends?

Friendship cannot deepen in the absence of grace. It must begin with a consciousness that we live in a world that is less than perfect. The exchange of friendship and the sharing of life is then understood in the context of a community of people living their lives in the best way they know how, and striving together to dance towards the dream of the Kingdom... in a very imperfect way.

We are bound to fall along the way, but we are not judged. We are loved and accepted and restored. Friendship is safe where there is grace. There will be no need to hide our stories or conceal our deepest struggles where we know we are loved. We are wounded, but we nurse one another's wounds. Grace in friendship therefore liberates one to reveal himself as he truly is, knowing that such impartations of grace will propel him increasingly towards perfection in the love of God. It creates a responsive attitude of constant repentance.

The offer of friendship is the offer of grace to those who need it. Jesus, instead of going around to proclaim judgement on the unrepentant, went about offering friendship and inviting others to share in his life. He gave his friends the liberty to discover within themselves a desire to reach out for the grace he was offering. The key to invoking repentance is not so much the proclamation of judgement, but the offering of grace through friendship.

In offering friendship and grace, the receiver also learns how to offer the same gift to others. Of course, there are those who neither feel nor acknowledge the need for grace or friendship. But friendship is not for everyone. It is for those who desire it and who know that their lives will be enriched by it.

Many people find that friendship is a futile exercise, for it is a waste of time. Others think that they are already engaged in that which they perceive to be friendships. And yet others engage in friendships that are abusive, such that they become the abusers. Hence, friendship is not for everyone; it is not even simply for anyone who calls himself "Christian".

In friendship, lives are intertwined together. And as they together experience the grace of God through one another, there is an overflowing gratitude towards the constant grace in their midst. This grace has an affective power that flows out beyond that friendship. As that grace flows out, others are inspired to reach out for it as well. Friendship therefore brings the world closer to the dream of the Kingdom.

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