Am I a dreamer?

Two memories combine as I contemplate the modern political scene.

One, a memorable speech from a meeting a few years back. Our work group director publicly thanked an assistant director for being a voice of clarity in their deliberations. He said she had a remarkable gift for gently yet firmly pointing out where his ideas were incomplete and destined to fail unless substantially reworked. An awesome speech, inspiring to hear of the wisdom of the associate. But the speech also showed the humility of our director, who would publicly praise his assistant for showing him where he was wrong, rather than sideline her as an annoying obstacle to his plans.

Second memory, C. S. Lewis writing about his wife in A Grief Observed, stating one thing he misses greatly about her was her ability to penetrate the nonsense in his thinking. “Her mind was lithe and quick and muscular as a leopard. Passion, tenderness and pain were all equally unable to disarm it. It scented the first whiff of cant or slush then sprang, and knocked you over before you knew what was happening. How many bubbles of mine she pricked!”

What makes politicians popular today? Saying what you think, not letting “those people” intimidate you.

Is not sticking to one’s convictions a good thing? Yes. Stick to your convictions of value, but be flexible and teachable about how to implement those values. What should we value in politics? My list would include the rule of law, civility in discourse, equal opportunity and responsibility for all. But I also value being alert to complexity, ready to learn and to modify one’s default reactions in new circumstances are also virtues. I’m sure when we meet God face to face we will have much to learn. “I had no idea” we’ll probably find ourselves saying often. What did Job say when he saw God?

Where are the politicians who explain what they’ve learned from their opponents?

No one is like that. I must be dreaming, I know. But is not dreaming of the better something to be encouraged? 

Empowerment, a holy buzzword

I enjoy satirizing corporate buzzwords. My favorite punchline for "Why did the chicken cross the road?" The business consultant: "We developed with our client a comprehensive plan to leverage her core competencies and better position herself for success in today's changing marketplace environment."

But "empowerment" is one corporate buzzword that represents something holy, something God has been doing for a long time. God does empower his people. In fact, without God's empowerment, there is not much to say for us. God enjoys taking ordinary, insignificant people and making something great of them. 

But alas, we all too often find this too hard to believe. At first we struggle to believe God could do something with us. Then we shift to struggling to believe God can do something with that other person. Or we cling to the role God has given us, forgetting that it is his gift, and that he likely delights in giving the same kind of gift to others. If we feel driven to control everything around us, because no one can get the details right as well as we can, have we not lost sight that our position and competencies are gifts from God?

I think God calls us to be stewards of the authority or positions he gives us. He gives them to us for a time, not to be kept permanently for ourselves, but to be used for his kingdom. The time will come when we won't have that role any more, we are to hand it back to God, or see God hand it to someone else.

The gift of being a beloved child in his kingdom, that is eternal. That we can cling to and call our own. The gifts of being someone notable in this world can only be temporary. We are only temporary in this world.

God's humility and ours

Philippians 2:6-11 is a really awesome passage. Awesome both in the contemporary sense: really, really, really great! and in the the archaic sense: so great it frightens me. This was my favorite passage in my twenties. I loved the image of Jesus giving up his equality with God, lowering himself to the lowest depth made himself nothing ... humbled himself by becoming obedient to death -- even death on a cross And then God the Father's response, Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. In my mind I saw this wondrous cycle, Jesus giving up and then the Father exalting him.

But then I realized how awesome in the archaic sense it was. If Jesus is so committed to humbling himself, making himself nothing, that means we his followers have to do the same. And that could be really hard! Maybe I should make my favorite verse Come to me all who are weary, I will give you rest or The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. I was reminded of it this last week. First, that great meditation by Jon Bloom on John the Baptist's humility. "John had blazed across Judea like a shooting star, the first real prophet in Israel for four centuries. John’s disciples had been right in the middle of this remarkable move of God. Then abruptly, they weren’t." I thought it was a great exhortation for  Christian leaders, don't think of yourselves as irreplaceable. Safe enough for me to cite, I'm a follower, not a leader

The next day I saw an article by Scott Rodin echoing the same thoughts – and citing Phil 2:7, how Jesus made himself nothing, taking the role of a servant. I've been pondering this, and was further struck by what Gordon Fee writes in a commentary on Philippians "The concern is with divine selflessness: God is not an acquisitive being, grasping and seizing, but self-giving for the sake of others." The awesomeness of God's selflessness awes me anew, and I realize this is a principle for all believers. If God is selfless, and salvation is becoming like God, we must then become selfless, and it is only our own folly or pride or brokenness that makes this feel frightening to us.

Yes, this is archaic awesomeness, terrifying in its implications, but we can and ought to have faith in the faithful God of the New Covenant, who is more committed to making us who we ought to be than we are ourselves.

Leaders, replace yourselves

I'm convinced a key aspect of Christian leadership is that it reproduces itself. Leadership is not innate but a gift given by God. If God calls and enables you to lead, He will also call and enable others. You are not irreplaceable.
I see this idea present in creation: God makes humanity in his image, we are made to be like him.
The Bible is full of stories of unlikely people called and sent by God.
Another place is one of the hardest to believe or understand promises Jesus ever made. "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." John 14:12. If anyone could think of himself as irreplaceable, it would be Jesus,  the Son of God. But he believes and promises that the same works he does, each of us can do because he has gone to the Father.
The principle appears again in Paul's counsel to Timothy. "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others." (2 Timothy 2:2). Christian leaders should be watching out for people who can be gifted to become leaders, and encouraging and training them, encouraging them to lead.

This reminds me of my recently discovered missionary hero, George Leslie Mackay, who did focus on replacing himself as the leader of the Taiwanese churches he planted.

A missionary hero

I've been inspired learning about the history of 19th century Canadian missionary George Leslie Mackay. Mackay went to Taiwan in 1874, settled in the north of the island (where there were no other missionaries), and in almost thirty years of ministry saw many local churches started. He appointed local leaders for the local churches, rather than choose to lead them himself. Although sent by the Canadian Presbyterian Mission, he refused to establish formal Presbyterian government in the Taiwanese churches, saying this would be an accretion from another culture. (There is an irony here, his insistence that local believers ought to be free to organize their churches as they felt led is actually a vibrant example of the core Presbyterian idea that churches should be led by elected elders).

One biography concludes with this inspiring quote:

Possessing an authoritarian temperament, as his critics correctly charged, he exercised his power to carve out for the native Christians a degree of autonomy and freedom perhaps unparalleled among China missions of his day. That he is still lionized in Taiwan by Christians and non-Christians alike, long after most other Victorian missionaries have been forgotten or deconstructed, testifies to the enduring bonds that mutual affection and respect can forge between people of sharply different cultures.

"Authoritarian temperament" is probably a good academic way of saying he was a stubborn old coot, but if so, he was stubborn about good things -- to preach the Word, to adapt to the local culture and to believe God could guide and equip the local converts without importing church policies and structures from his Canadian culture.