Church is a dangerous place to be

It seems to be becoming a common place tragedy in America today. You can read about it here - a gunman goes beserk and goes into a church shooting.

One person was killed and several wounded when a man armed with a shotgun opened fire in a church in Knoxville, Tennessee, US television reported on Sunday.

How do we respond to such news? Well, what we looked at on Sunday can help us to make sense of this senseless event.

At PBCam we looked at Revelation 13. There we saw Satan's twin strategies of conquer and deception against God's people. The first beast was active in this tragedy - trying to intimidate Christians by force.

Then at PBCpm we learned a different lesson from 2 Samuel 1. The right response to sin is this world is grief. This is a terrible thing and, as we pray for those effected, we cry out to the Lord in anguish.

But both passages push us still further forward. To Jesus. He has fatally wounded the beast, he has decisively defeated Satan. Jesus is THE Messiah, THE Lord's anointed, the one who gives us hope for the future. For his kingdom we pray and we serve. Longing for the day when there will be ... "no more death or mourning or crying or pain."

When sorry seems to be the hardest word

So WYD is finally over, the Pope has left the building, and Sydney businesses are still arguing over whether they are dollars up or dollars down.

One issue that has been hanging over WYD was the dark cloud of abuse by Priests in the RC church. Pope Benedict XVI has obviously learnt from the impact of Kevin Rudd's public apology earlier in the year. Generally the event seems to have been great PR and the Pope's apology a good thing.

However, I use the term PR advisedly. It could be sour grapes (Baptist youth days don't get quite as much media coverage!?) but the 'sorry' doesn't seem very sincere when it is so stage managed. Even today when the Pope conducted a mass with four sexual abuse victims, the victims were carefully chosen and are anonymous. Melbourne man Anthony Foster, whose two daughters were raped by a Catholic priest when they were in primary school, was pointedly not invited. Mr Foster said the last-minute meeting with the as-yet unnamed victims was "sneaky, underhanded and disappointing" and was designed as a PR stunt. (According to the SMH.)

Now, if I was the leader of an international charity which faces billion dollar lawsuits I would choose my words carefully. And yet, and yet, is he truly sorry?

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

That's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7 verse 10. I don't know anything about what is going on behind the scenes at the Vatican... but it is still food for thought. What would godly sorrow, true repentance look like ... when sorry seems to be the hardest word to say?

Ratzinger Rules

"Ratzinger Rules". The message, spray-painted in red on the war memorial at Hyde Park overnight showed the Pope's historic visit to Sydney has even touched vandals.

It got me thinking about the last Working Bee when I had the job of removing the graffiti from the church walls. Vandalism like this is a pretty good picture of sin. We all want to leave our mark in life, and we don't really care about what we have to write over to do so. After all it is really about seeing me and what I've done. God has given us all gifts to use, but we don't want to listen to him, we want to show them off for maximum effect; we want centre stage.

Thank God for graffiti remover then. A super-strong solvent that washes it away. Wipes it clean so that we can start again.

Cardinal Pell's address was preceded by a welcome from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tonight. Mr Rudd said it was a time to speak about all that was right in Christianity and the church:

It was the church that began first schools for the poor, it was the church that began first hospitals for the poor, it was the church that began first refuges for the poor and these great traditions continue for the future.

Right on Mr Rudd. And as a church we can think of PACC and the Op Shop likewise. Good deeds done in the name of Christ. But don't forget the graffiti remover Kev, only Jesus can do that.

Paint them Ugly

Those who were at PBCam on Sunday will be interested in the following article in the SMH. It is all about parenting and is very relevant to the theme of Sunday's sermon.

Paint them ugly

Son of WYD

But what if you end up chatting to a keen, convinced RC? (Not just someone who is culturally RC but someone convinced about their faith.)

Well I think it is helpful to acknowledge our differences and also to admit where we get it wrong.

For example, many RCs will have been told that Protestants don't have to live good lives, they just have to 'believe'. And we need to take that on the chin. There is a popular misconception around that faith in Jesus is just about getting your ticket stamped for heaven and then you can get on with living your life how you want to.

So hold your hand up to that one. Just as there are nominal RCs so there are nominal Prots. Jesus does call us to live godly lives. As Tim Blencowe likes to say, "sometimes it seems as if our only theology of good deeds is that they are bad!"

This is where we get down to the nitty-gritty. Where does our righteousness come from? We believe that it is a gift from God, through Jesus - that it is imputed to us as we are united to Christ by faith. Since we are 'in Christ' we receive what is his, his righteousness.

RCs. on the other hand, believe that we are infused with this righteousness. In other words there is a co-operation here. God gives us an injection of his goodness so that we can be good in our strength.

Now, I hope, we can see why RCs think we don't believe in being good. However, that is a misunderstanding. We believe that faith does not include good deeds, but that it does produce them. "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,which God prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2: 10)

Ephesians 2 is a great passage to read with a RC. We are saved by grace, not by works, but for works.

What a challenge all of this is for us! If our lives do not display God's glory in good works then we undermine the gospel. The acid test of WYD will be whether glory goes to Christ Jesus and whether good works come as a result. However, that is our test too. If our RC friends cannot see good works in us then we confirm all their prejudices.

WYD strikes back!

There is something else we can learn from the RC view of church - it is a corporate image. While we do not accept that the 'tradition' of the church trumps what the Bible teaches, there can be dangers lurking in the Protestant view too.


When we talk about Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) we do not mean (likewise as the Reformers did not mean) that my personal interpretation of the Bible trumps everything else. We come together as a body of believers and we study the Bible together.

We are proud of our Protestant heritage and quick to reject anything 'just because the church / tradition says so'. That is good and we must always go back to God's Word to see what that says... but did you notice the 'we' in the above paragraph?

It is a little too easy for Protestants to ape the individualism so prevalent in our society. We turn up at church and the Vicar says something we don't like, but that's okay because I don't think the Bible says that. I just accept the bits I agree with. I go home. Watch TV. End of.

This explains why PBC places such an emphasis on sermons and Bible study groups. These are deliberately corporate experiences (e.g. morning tea and pm supper) so that we have our own personal interpretations of the Bible challenged by others. We all have blind spots and church is the place where we help one another to follow God together - this is just as true for myself and Tim as for anyone else.

Of course, all this assumes that when we meet together we do so with the aim of getting to know God's Word better (in the Bible) so that we can better follow Him.

WYD

The countdown continues ... less than a week to the Roman Catholic World Youth Day (WYD) comes to Sydney.

To get our PBC blog off the ground I'd thought I'd do some posts on WYD. This is not meant as a 'pop' at Catholics but rather as a resource to encourage PBC folk to utilise this event for the gospel. Everyone in Sydney is talking about it. How can we turn these conversations towards Christ?

Okay, I'll start with some background. A couple of month's ago I went to a seminar at SMBC by David Shead (the Sheads used to be out in Slovenia with the Groombridges) about Roman Catholicism. Below are a mixture of his points and my musings:

• The Biggest issue for Roman Catholics = the church. You meet Christ in the church, you hear Christ speak to you from the church, there is no salvation outside of the church.

• Therefore while a Protestant might talk about what they believe, a RC will talk about the institution to which they belong.

Of course these are generalisations, but they are at least a good starting point. All of this is useful to bear in mind when talking to someone who comes from a Roman Catholic background. RC is much more of a cultural background than for us Prots. Therefore even those who no longer 'believe' will probably still identify themselves as RC. So, how should we tell them about Jesus?

• Don't over generalise - not all RCs are the same. It would really annoy you if people treated you like that!
• Don't criticise the RC church.
• Don't assume they know what 'they' believe. They may just turn up to Mass occasionally. If belonging to the institution is all that really matters then what they believe is not so important. (See above.)
• Don't just argue doctrine ... for the same reason as above.
• Introduce them to Jesus - focus on the gospels.
• Introduce them to your church ... no, really :-)
• Pray for them.
• Understand how tough it would be for them to think of themselves as anything than RC.

Howdy doodly

Hi everyone,

I thought it was a good idea to start up a PBC blog.

It has been suggested to me that it might be helpful if we (John & Tim) gave out regular thoughts on topical issues from a Christian perspective. Hopefully this would encourage us in our faith and act as a resource to stimulate gospel conversations with friends or at work.

The original idea was a 'thought for the week' in the church email, but I think a blog would serve the purpose better. This way we can get a bit of a conversation going too!?

So, let's get blogging for Jesus ... or something like that, anyway.

Yours in Christ,

John.