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Principal Agent

May 15, 2009 / Benjamin Welby / 3 Comments

As part of my job in Hull I get to study for an MSc in Public Management in Birmingham (where I am currently in a fairly ropey hotel room). This is a wonderful opportunity but not necessarily one I’m always enthusiastic about (I need to work on cultivating an attitude of gratitude). Before we came down for some lectures on research methodology today and tomorrow I was completing an essay on the insights that the principal-agent theory has in terms of performance management. And it got me thinking.

Before I continue I ought to explain what the principal-agent theory is. Don’t run away at the thought of economic theory I’ll keep the explanation brief and hopefully straightforward.

If I employ you to do something that makes me the principal and you the agent. I want to minimise the inputs I give you in exchange for a maximum level of effort that ensures I get what I’m looking for from you. You, on the other hand, want me to give you as much reward as possible in exchange for less effort. What we both want is an outcome that suits us both – I want my interests to be maximised, as you do yours.

The principal-agent theory then lets people work out how to design performance incentives or measure effort in order to get the best outcomes for everyone concerned. And it struck me that there’s a school of thought about Christianity that looks at us within this framework (even if they don’t know it).

On the one hand are those who unwittingly make us the principal and God our agent. That’s those who think we’ve made him up to make us feel better (it’s certainly a remarkably complex and well fleshed out crutch that’s the product of invention, must be the work of some Machiavellian genius). And there are those who turn to God when the chips are down or when they need something. An ATM saviour who responds to our needs.

Not to suggest that God doesn’t answer prayer of course but that we are not the principal in this relationship, it’s to refute the suggested that he’s an on-call deity should we need a favour. God is obviously the principal, but recognising that doesn’t stop the misconceptions from floating about.

I don’t know when it was that the church dropped the ball but we seemed to have done so in a big way when it comes to an understanding of the motivation behind our Christianity.

This lens of God as principal and me as his agent means I must be performing because of something God is doing. My motivation for dancing to a Holy tune, perhaps, is fear, a fear of hell, a fear of damnation and a fear of being judged a failure by God. It’s an understanding that says I have to comply with a stated norm in order to be accepted as good enough for God. I’m sure there are plenty of people who love God, seek Him and serve Him that reckon that’s the nature of our relationship with Him. By my reckoning it’s a bit brimstone heavy and grace light which is a tragedy.

Alternatively, if not fear of consequence, then clearly it’s all about reward. Heaven is the carrot dangled under our noses that we will get if our behaviours make it possible. Like imagining the God of fear, this God of prizes forms another theological construction that squeezes grace to the margins.

And that’s because whilst it is possible to see elements of principal-agent theory in how the world understands us it totally skews the nature of our relationship. It’s not a transactional or contracted situation. Our performance is not measured, there are no proxy indicators suggesting whether we are pleasing God or achieving salvation. God loves us for who we are, as we are and irrespective of what we have done or ever will do. It’s not contingent upon fulfilling stated aims or meeting certain goals (beyond the having a relationship in a first place which, if it exists, suggests that reconciliation has happened).

The reality of Jesus’ sacrifice is that it breaks the idea of principal versus agent and makes them one and the same. Perhaps we’ve lost sight of that behind the veneer of something transactional because we’ve seen relationships move away from being selfless in their search for a unity of one flesh and themselves becomes something principal-agentesque. Maybe the church is responsible for advertising this idea of family that places man at the head of a house and wife as subservient to him.

The thing is that’s not what I see when I read the oft trotted out Ephesians 5:21-32.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

I’ve obviously missed the bit of that which is about servitude or subjugation. Is it not a recognition that both parties give of themselves to the other out of love. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And so, if you’re in submission through reverence to Christ then as women submit to their husbands so their husbands are submitting to them. Not a transaction, not a greater or lesser role, no one thing making something else happen as a result. Just love.

The problem in much of my public management MSC is that the language is transactional. It’s not relational. You won’t find love being spoken about when it comes to understanding the interaction between the public and its governing agencies or a contractor and his staff. You won’t find love entering the equation when it comes to maximising sales or minimising costs. Yet in the economy of grace the greatest value is to lose, the biggest joy is in giving away. Freedom comes not from the what but from the who. The who of our friends, the who of our family, the who of our communities, churches and colleagues.

If the principal and the agent submit to one another, simply because they want to maximise the interests of the other then greed, self interest and the negativity of desire vanish. So, if the principal agent theory tells the church anything at all it reminds us that our principal does that – God lives in us, trusting us to be His hands and feet and empowering us with the same spirit that created the universe.

I’d like my effort to look like it’s the work of an agent responding to the most generous, over-the-top, outrageous contractual arrangement from the principal. Economic theory says that the agent is always looking for the principal to ‘reward’ them hugely. It says that any principal making the kind of commitment our saviour has they’d be after a commensurate level of response. The magnitude of our riches in Christ are incomprehensible, there’s no way that (even if we tried harder) we could come close to matching them with our efforts. Thankfully we don’t have to. But I don’t want to rock up and meet St Peter saying I never tried to respond to God’s grace cos I didn’t have to. I’d like to be able to say I could come close. Not because I’m scared of hell, not because if I do God might answer my prayers, not because I want to go to heaven but because I don’t want to forget that what God has done for me as I was, continues to do with me as I am and has in store for who I could be isn’t for my benefit but is to bless him, those around me and the world.

Interesting thing economics…

HIV Kings Of Europe

May 8, 2009 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

According to yesterday’s Metro, the UK is HIV king of Europe.

Tragically I’m not surprised.

Whenever we hear the latest statistics that tell of Britain ‘leading’ Europe in some new way the response is that we need more or better sex education. This follows the premise that information is what sexually active men and women are lacking.

I’m not buying it. I don’t believe the solution rests in some golden calf of sexual education that focuses on precautions. I think that there’s little more that can be done in school.

We are an incredibly condom-ised society but we also have such a ready proliferation of post coital birth control that cure (of pregnancy) appears preferable to prevention of sexually transmitted life (be it viral or human).

No, I think that the fact Britain leads the way in teenage pregnancies, abortions and sexual disease is because somewhere in our national psyche we don’t value relationship with one another as we ought with the result that sex isn’t seen as something of consequence. It’s casual, not special.

For chunks of my peers, promiscuity is grounds for respect. Sexual conquests are celebrated as an end in themselves. People are reduced to objects of gratification. Lily Allen’s most recent offering says that being bad in bed undermines anything positive in a relationship.

But in a throwaway world it’s hardly a surprise. Britain is a place where the temporary reigns. And more often than not it is a selfish idea of temporary which doesn’t think about the consequences. Dishearteningly that message is reinforced by the media, in politics and through fractured families.

The Pope was recently attacked for saying you don’t fix AIDS with condoms. The church is ridiculed for saying that abstinence and faithfulness should be higher priorities. This alternative is easily mocked, just another irrelevant sermon from a completely irrelevant group of people.

The “Death of Christian Britain”, as sociologists call the 1960s, has much to commend it. Not least it changed the dynamics of gender (or recaptured New Testament values of equality), beginning a process that sadly has not yet reached completion. But, in addition, by supplanting singular ideas with pluralistic ideals it gave space to people of all faiths, and none, to express their ideas without prior conditions. True pluralism is foundationally about loving your neighbour for who they are and what they think even if that person is someone you would hate to be. But it is critically undermined when it isn’t a two way dialogue.

People should not have ideas foisted onto them or be required to live according to my expectations. That’s neither gracious nor loving. However, if we don’t offer the alternative what’s left behind is a vacuum. And that too fails on both counts. When it comes to sex and relationships I think the squeezing of God to the margins has been a bad thing. So called ‘free love’ seems to have resulted in slavery rather than freedom and painful hollowness instead of loving delight.

I have no doubt that loving and respecting one another unconditionally and selflessly is the model for relationship and I believe that the public commitment of modelling that forever is what makes marriage the perfect context for sex. What I could do is use that to stand in a corner and judge. To jump around on top of the moral high ground claiming victory after a battle that knows only losers. True, I don’t think condoms are the answer but in the developing world so much time and effort goes into standing alongside people to tackle the issue. In Australia the Red Cross have little stalls outside night clubs doing that whilst handing out condoms.

The sexual revolution has had side effects. For some reason Britain has borne the brunt of them. But if we’re interested in people’s lives being transformed by grace and hope could we have done more to support it? Could we take a lead from those Aussies and stand outside nightclubs offering condoms ourselves (alongside our bottles of water and street pastoring)? Not to condone the things we disagree with but to engage with the reality of brokenness around us. To love them by serving them on their terms, not ours.

Too often the problems of the world become the church’s pornography; we get to analyse without being involved. We toy with the idea of being part of a culture that has sex on tap. We moralise about its perils. But we keep doing it from Christian holes in the ground that people might, if they’re lucky, fall into.

This is why Conversations is exciting.

It’s gloves off church because it’s passionate about authentically seeking God’s heart for transformation. On Wednesday the theme was ‘Loving The City’ and Dave Magill spoke on Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls. He asked us what metaphorical walls need rebuilding in York. As someone who lives in the shadow of a broken family (of Christians no less) it’s strange this didn’t occur to me then. Getting back to the basics of relationship is fundamental. It is impossible to stress the importance of rebuilding relationships built around selfless appreciation, respect and compassion. Sex and everything that is glorious, or sinister, about it lives or dies on the basis of whether those things are present.

We love because we were loved first.

As I saw on Sunday there are people living within touching distance who might never have known what it is to be loved unconditionally, just for being alive.

Except that we know they are.

God loves you; because he loves you; because he loves you; because he loves you; because he loves you; because he loves you; because he loves you…

All we need to do is get that message through.

Cost Benefit

May 5, 2009 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

Recently there have been a number of journalists writing articles about church, God and Christianity. Oddly they’ve not all been entirely negative. Since Dave flagged up Matthew Parris’ thoughts from last month I’ve come across, or been pointed towards, other things most notably here and here.

Nice to see that we Christians are capable of being presented in a positive light. Of course the articles are imperfect and there are things to which we Christians, and those heathen others, could pick on. Problems in their reasoning, or their misconceptions or their opinions but nevertheless these are articles which are refreshing.

Coupled to that refreshment is the wonder of the internet where anyone can hold forth on anything (just like this). And, even better, people can take their cue from what someone has written to delve deeper into the issues at hand.

Predictably, some of the articles have descended into thinly veiled arguments over “my absence of God is better than your God” and vice versa. Clearly, my bias lets me take the undoubtedly condescending, self-righteous and arrogant position that my God is better than the absence of Him but that’s another discussion. And one which tends towards going round in circles generating heat rather than light.

What’s caught my attention is the following remark…

Both atheists and believers have done evil things (China’s cultural revolution to today’s Jihadists to name just some). But I do feel that if one were to do a ‘cost/benefit’ analysis of the two camps- the atheists would have the higher moral ground because we have contributed a lot more to science in general and in particular, the pursuit of life saving medicine.

An interesting thought and not one that I feel particularly well qualified to discuss from the point of view of the premise that, looking at contributions to science, theists have had less impact than their atheist fellows. My gut reaction is that given the durability of Christianity, 2,000 years of thought, invention and design inspired and informed by those worshipping God does not suddenly get undone by a louder atheistic presence (which of course is nothing new).

In terms of the moral high ground, however, it’s a position that doesn’t show much appreciation of history. The reality, however much we appeared on earth by chance or hold that morality is simply something that occurs naturally, is that it took a very long time for people to think that other people were important.

In Genesis 34 we read about Dinah and the Shechemites. Basically, Dinah, daughter of Jacob (sister of Joseph, he of dressing gown fame) gets defiled by Shechem. The response is brutal and savage, just have a read. It’s that kind of an environment into which Moses speaks in Leviticus 24.

Here’s a culture that practices rampant, and disproportionate violence being told, in no uncertain terms that actually, if you’re going to exact vengeance it should be in correlation to what went on. I appreciate that a stoning for a blasphemy is arguably disproportionate in itself but stick with me (no doubt this will be something to explore at a later date).

You get the whole idea of punishment and revenge turned on its head by Moses. And that persists for quite some considerable time. In fact up until Jesus.

In Judaic culture you were very keen on helping your family, and your tribe but that was where it ended. You helped those you liked. You helped those who might help you back. The concept of the neighbourhood was a closed one.

And history is full of city states, tribes and kingdoms setting off to war against its non-kindred neighbours. Now whilst the thirst for power and the quest for domination didn’t end with Jesus the whole idea of what being neighbourly meant didn’t so much end as finally got the point. If, in the years after that we’ve carried on as before it doesn’t mean Jesus was lying, just that we might not have been paying enough attention.

Because if we read Matthew 5 it’s blatant what Jesus is saying. This is a beautiful exposition of why vengeance is not what’s best for us and specifically Jesus takes to task the idea that ‘an eye for an eye’ is. Instead he says that the best way to respond when someone does you wrong is to take it and offer the chance for them to wrong you further.

Madness.

A madness that only gets worse in Luke 10 when a young lawyer says, so Jesus, how is it that I get eternal life? As ever, Jesus gets him to answer the question himself, whereupon he retorts that you need to love God with everything and to love your neighbours as yourself. Although the answer impresses Jesus the young man wants clarity and says but, who’s my neighbour?

With the result that Jesus unleashes the Parable of the Good Samaritan on a truly unsuspecting world. This is the point when the limits on charity, on love and on compassion get undone. When Jesus becomes not just a Messiah for the Jews but effectively declares salvation for all. The moment from which the early church takes the inspiration to turn the world on its head outside of the Jewish nation. The point when all the good which has happened through Christian endeavour can find its point of conception.

Who’s my neighbour? It’s that person you hate; the one you share nothing in common with; the guy who is something you would hate to be.

Had Jesus not been the one to institute that new covenant based on a relationship with God that flourishes in relationship with others then maybe someone else would have done at a later date. But no matter how much cynicism is poured onto the Biblical Jesus it’s not an idea that pops up elsewhere. This is something attributed to him before anyone else.

Of course the church and Christians haven’t always lived this out and that is to our corporate regret and shame. But it’s workmen rather than tools and whilst I’ll see your Crusades and Inquisition it bears raising you the 20th century secular leaders who are no less, if not more, responsible for suffering than the carnage of antiquity.

So if we keep those events out of it in recognition that death by conflict is motivated by a thirst for power irrespective of faith, or none, and return to the cost/benefit analysis it’s difficult to agree with the original premise. As I said I can’t comment on science, but the sweeping generalisation has certainly agitated Mrs Wellers, instead I can look at the history of selfless love (read charity). And through that lens Jesus’ idea of neighbourhood, community and revenge becomes a world altering idea that strikes the Father of all blows for morality, for transforming lives, for putting hope into the middle of dark places.

But then I am exceptionally biased aren’t I?

The Future’s Bleak

May 4, 2009 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

Yesterday I was travelling back to York after spending a couple of days in Devon.

A few minutes after the train had pulled away from the station a young guy walked past, beer can in hand, directing a conversation towards his partner making it clear that she knew he wasn’t happy about her alleged sexual indiscretions.

What this guy was saying was colourful to put it mildly and he clearly took great pride in having an audience with everyone able to hear his opinions on those most intimate parts of her body.

I was sat listening to music so was well shielded from what he was saying and I assumed that once he had sat himself down he would shut up. He didn’t. I could have turned up my music and carried on ignoring what he was saying but instead, prayerfully taking my life into my own hands, I went and asked him if he wouldn’t mind putting a lid on it.

He wasn’t keen on the idea and he was even less keen on “someone posh like you” telling him what to do. Instead he took great pride in telling me that he was a very dangerous person, asking me whether I knew who he was (unfortunately I’m no expert on the criminals of Devon) before letting me know that he dealt heroin and crack. As though that would make me either fear or respect him. It did neither. Asking where I was going, York, he said that he was off to Bristol, although to hear his description of the place you would think it to be the embodiment of Gomorrah.

Having never really confronted a drunk and clearly violent drug dealer you don’t know how it’s going to play but his behaviour wasn’t acceptable for me so I told him that. On the condition that I never spoke to him again, he did agree to move carriages. Whether he shut up once he had moved I don’t know but by the end of his journey he had made his way back down to where he started the journey and got off the train with his other half and their daughter in tow. Some happy family.

And that’s why I’m telling you this. Throughout the whole exchange this guy had his little daughter with him. She must be three at the most as she sits there surrounded by darkness. Her father is effing and blinding (and then some) at the top of his voice with no regard for who might hear; but worse, far worse, is the lack of respect that he has for her mother, or even that her mother has for her father.

There was definitely venom, and there was definitely anger but love?

The reality for that little girl is bleak. Where is her knowledge of love going to come from? Her parents are criminals. If they never get caught then that means a lifestyle outside societal norms. But if they do then she’s alone, hoping against hope that her experience of social services will not result in the outcomes that have been, and are, all too prevelant in terms of homelessness, criminality or lack of skills.

How does the cycle of deprivation, of poverty, of pain, of fear, of anger, of suffering get broken in that context? I don’t know. This is the stuff of miracles. Without a fundamental reconstruction of the hearts of her parents the future experiences of that girl aren’t filled with hope. But that’s Jesus’ promise, that all our future experiences will be full of hope.

That’s not a guarantee against pain or suffering or anything else negative but it’s a promise of hope. Hope against hope, that’s what I prayed for that little girl. If you’re reading this, would you do that too?

I pray that in Exeter and in Bristol God’s hands and feet are active in working alongside drug addicts and drug dealers, that the prisons and the police are infected by the viral, guerrilla values of the kingdom, that those providing care for children caught up in these most awful of situations know no limits on their love and compassion.

Would you ask that God would do something for the lives of all three? Challenge him. Beg him. Implore him.

God show us as the church, as your body, as your instruments of grace how we can shine your light into this darkness.

I have absolutely no idea what the future of that girl, her mummy and her daddy will be. I trust that God does.

I hope against hope that she hears and knows Jeremiah 29:11.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Thank you Father that you do.

The acceptable face of apathy?

April 27, 2009 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

Over the last year or so I’ve become incredibly impressed by the tireless efforts of one person who has taken two causes by the scruff of the neck and harnessed social media to push the issues onto individual agendas.

Lance Laifer has championed the causes of malaria and pneumonia both on and off line with remarkable consequences. The ‘March of Washingtons’, for example, has seen $85k donated (although this is by no means just about facebook) so far whilst thousands of people have joined the Facebook groups, causes and events.

And as far as any of that is concerned I’m not aware of his being spurred on by anything other than the fact that at least 300000000 (three hundred million) people will contract malaria or 4000000 (four million) will die from pneumonia this year.

Reason enough I think you’ll agree.

This Saturday just gone was World Malaria Day and as a small way of participating and showing support and solidarity it was suggested that people blackout their Facebook and Twitter profiles. Not requiring anything more than people taking 5 minutes to change their profile pic.

I’ve been annoying people by inviting them to causes, groups and events as well as giving my ‘Status for Humanity’. Unfortunately, only a handful bothered to do anything about it.

Understandably not everyone checks their social media every day but at a weekend the vast majority will at some point.

It’s disappointing that more people didn’t join in, not because people don’t care of that I’m sure but because it’s not a priority, because after all it’s only something on Facebook or Twitter and for a number of my friends I’m not really bothered.

The problem I have is with the Christians.

There isn’t an excuse for not being involved with these campaigns. there’s nothing anyone could say to me that would lessen the importance of raising awareness and helping to combat diseases that cripple the poorest in the world. Nothing.

Fortunately global attention is getting to grips with Malaria, it’s getting the kind of funding that could start to make real inroads. The global economics shouldn’t change that (check globalrichlist.com to see how plentiful our lives are) so maybe lives will start to be saved.

So the grassroots focus is switching to pneumonia. When I was invited to the cause it was a no-brainer to join. Pneumonia is a big deal. Bigger than I had registered. Just visit worldpneumoniaday.org to see. So I looked at my friends and I saw some influential people, other Christians with time and resources, passion and compassion and cherry picked the people I invited.

The response has been rubbish.

This is not an invite to play Attack, it’s not getting you to see which fictional character you’re most like, nor is it even an invitation for any sort of financial or physical commitment.

It’s an invitation to stand shoulder to shoulder with people in need. Bluntly, that’s why there’s the church. That’s why God sent His only son. That’s why we are involved as a body. To roll up our sleeves and see people’s lives transformed. And to take a lead that shows the world the incredible love of God and the power of grace.

For sure there’s an incredible amount of prayer going on but far more often than not God is going to use people to answer them. People like Lance who put the Body of Christ to shame. Is ignoring online campaigning ok? Is ignoring non-church instigated action an acceptable apathy?

I don’t think so…

Dividend

April 24, 2009 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

The first thing I blogged was a introspection on where I am and how life felt a bit inert. By the end I’d reached a conclusion that inertia is a negative way of looking at waiting. But that actually waiting is trusting in God knowing the best route.

And it appears he does.

At our church weekend one of the congregation had issued a call to prayer for people involved in local government/public policy, basically those involved in shaping society. He invited everyone to the 7am Tuesday prayer meeting to encourage and be encouraged. Unfortunately I couldn’t go because I have to be on my train but instead chatted to Phil about how frustrating it was to fall between the two stools of Hull and York.

So, fast forward to this week and I return to the office to find an email waiting for me from the Christian who had been on my interview panel. He’s an incredibly busy guy so getting in touch with me should hardly be a priority especially given that outside the interview I’ve only met him once, when he briefed us as part of our induction…hardly presenting an opportunity to share what excites us about knowing Jesus.

Nevertheless, the email said “I was involved in your interview last year…I recall at the time, that you said that you were a Christian, so I wonder if you might be interested in the “kings breakfast” initiative that we started in January. This is a prayer breakfast for those who work in and around the city; we haven’t had such a thing in Hull for over 12 years, so it was exciting to see 78 people get together to pray in January. We are doing it again in May, and I wondered if you wanted to come along”

In my first placement there was a Christian, I’ve passed the invitation onto her too. In this second placement there’s a lady who wears a crucifix but I’ve not spoken to her, this is a great excuse. And just this week one of my colleagues on the Master’s degree in Birmingham wears a cross, with obvious pride, around his neck.

Of course people wear crosses for all kinds of reasons, not all spiritual (although I’ve yet to see anyone wearing a guillotine round their neck, or an electric chair), so they may be red herrings. Undoubtedly as a Christian I’m sensitive towards seeing Christian paraphenalia (I wear a Global Day of Prayer band around my wrist because random Christian strangers might be encouraged by it) and sensitive to seeing God at work. Sometimes, no doubt, we read too much into things, but on the flip side I’m sure we don’t appreciate just how much the church envelopes us. The Body of Christ is home to God’s hands and feet so it shouldn’t be a great surprise that it’s the vehicle of answering prayer.

There’s riches in patiently chucking prayer heavenward and seeing God-incidences happen. The dividend of patience is in the heightening of faith, in the encouragement of knowing that the small whisper, the faint flicker of insight wasn’t just your imagination. That all those other little God-incidences were of Him and that you can move on from being stuck somewhere stagnantly fretting over what comes next to craning forward to peer expectantly into the (still murky) horizon.

There’s a lot of joy to be had in experiencing the completion of patience with the hint of more to come!

Equality & Diversity

April 13, 2009 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

So last week I had some training arranged at work in Equality & Diversity. I wasn’t really expecting it to be a good day. I’m lucky, these are ideas that come naturally to me and so it felt a bit like a colossal waste of time. This wasn’t true of everyone.

The course was led by a British Muslim called Pasha who came from Salford and whose family was Pakistani. And he had a tough crowd. There was one individual in particular who behaved in an absolutely repugnant fashion towards Pasha by spouting the worst kind of ill-informed, ignorant, caricatured and evil opinions. If it had been as part of the wider group discussions that might have been better but as it was it was on one side during a break in a very personal manner.

The tragedy is that there was no way that the rest of the day made any impression whatsoever on him. They were his views and he wasn’t going to change them. Equality & Diversity covers Age, Gender, Sexuality, Disability, Faith and Race and tragically you’d probably find plenty of people who would suggest that we as the church don’t really employ Equality & Diversity in our theology let alone our practice.

Of course there’s the obvious claims that the church suppresses women, that Paul was a misogynist and we are entirely a patriarchal entity. Add to that our hatred of gays. And, don’t forget the wars for which we’re responsible because of other people’s faiths or skin colour.

It’s not a very nice picture. And it’s so far removed from the person of God as revealed through scripture and Jesus. As Christians we should lead the way when it comes to Equality & Diversity. We should be stood at the forefront of this.

1. LOVE.
We’re created for relationships, the Trinity is all about the three persons of God entwined together in relationship and you could succinctly summarise the Bible as being about God hunting out relationship with us in spite of our rejection of Him. If we believe that God has made the earth and everything in it (whatever mechanism he used to do that) then it is all to be cherished, people and planet.

When Jesus gets asked about what is the most important commandment in the law he references the Old Testament law; don’t bear grudges, love your neighbour as yourself. At the same time, he reaffirms the first three commandments.

Basically, if we’re loving God but treating even our enemies like crap we’re at odds with God.

And, more to the point, we love in spite of behaviour because we love with a deep understanding and desire for redemption and reconciliation. We love on the basis of our redemption, of the fact that God loved the world so much that rather than make us do something to fix it, he came and restored it. We should know that you don’t have to qualify for a Christian’s love.

1 John 4 17-21 underscores that, and I make no apology for publishing this beautiful translation from The Message,

‘God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us. So that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day – our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life – fear of death, fear of judgment – is one not yet fully formed in love. We, though, are going to love – love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first. If anyone boasts, ‘I love God,’ and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both’

2. CREATION.
God knows us and loves us and made us all as individuals. Christine and I were puzzling over fingerprints the other day and we wondered what the rational position might be. A little googling and the evolutionary case is that fingerprints are all about grip. As for their uniqueness it seemed that the consensus lay in needing to check out chaos theory. All well and good, but grip seems to me to be a perfect example of God’s creation ((as seen in this Audi advert) and I’m not satisfied by saying fingerprints are unique because chaos theory shows us that all things are possible.

I’m quite content to see them underlining the uniqueness of a creation which is reiterated time and time again…

Jeremiah 1:5 ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.’
Luke 12:7‘Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered’
Genesis 1:27‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.’

Fundamentally, as Christians we believe and recognise that every other person in the world is crafted by God, and not only crafted by Him but absolutely, 100%, head over heels, loved by Him.

3. IDENTITY.
So, we’re uniquely made by God, and we’re all about love but people are different, and that means that necessarily there are divisions. Fortunately not, Paul’s pretty clear that our first identity is in Christ. It’s not whether we’re male or female, it doesn’t rest in our ethnicity or our sexuality. First and foremost, before anything else, we are Christians.

Galatians 3:28 ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’

And not only do we identify ourselves as such but because of Easter, God looks at us and doesn’t see our messed up selves but he sees Christ. Pure, unblemished and equal with Him.

So in Christ we are equal but in Christ we are also diverse. We’re called to be different, called to a freedom of expression, called to be individuals of God glorifying Him in weird and wonderful ways. I’m a little bit passionate about how exciting it is to be a part of the church and how, as a body, we each get to do different things, have different passions, think differently, experience differently but to be unified in our equality in Christ.

The boxes of society shouldn’t matter inside the church because we identify in Christ and as Christians we identify each other as bits of the body.

4. THE WORLD.
This is all very well and good when we’re in church and in our nice little Christian bubbles but what about the world. What about a world that doesn’t recognise God’s creation in all things and doesn’t value all individuals beyond their past behaviours? What about a place where war is fought on the basis of theological dispute? Where people are spat at in the street by dint of their physical disability? A place where we’re ready to talk about evil but ignore redemption?

If we are God’s hands and feet (which we are) then Equality & Diversity is our starting point. We’re not interested in what people believe, or don’t; in how they act, or don’t; we’re interested in them as people that God wants to have relationship with. And if God wants to have relationship with them then there’s a value in their lives far beyond our understanding.

It’s not just Equality & Diversity that this informs, it’s how we think about Pluralism. We crave pluralism, but one which recognises the freedom of everyone to be themselves, that doesn’t restrict in any way what people believe, and how they express that. If our starting point is to love people as they are then that’s far more than tolerance, it’s even more than respect. As Micah tells us, God has shown us what good looks like, all he requires in return is that we act justly, love mercy and walk humbly.

If we recognise all people as incredible works of God’s hands, love them beyond ourselves and remember that we are all equally sinful and blameless. If at the same time we appreciate being individuals of diversity whilst striving for justice, mercy and humility then the legislative and societal demands of Equity and Diversity begin to be irrelevant.

Maybe, just maybe, if the 3 billion Christians in the world exhibited all that we know to be true then Equality & Diversity training would be a thing of the past.

And whilst that would make Pasha redundant, I hope he’d agree that some things in life are better obsolete.

Love Wins

April 12, 2009 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

Today is definitely the greatest day in the year.

It’s not about Pentecost, it’s not about Good Friday, it’s not even about Christmas Day.

What begins in a stable and apparently ends on a hill is rebooted in that empty tomb.

Imagine those three days, imagine if we had an Easter weekend where Good Friday was anything but, where all we knew it to be was the darkest point in eternity. Imagine spending your life in mourning. Imagine not knowing about today.

Without today Christianity doesn’t happen. Without today Jesus is a fraud. Without today the world lacks redemption. Without today, we have to rethink everything we know about the last 2,000 years.

It is Jesus’ rising from the dead which completes the new covenant. I can potter through Easter weekend carefree, affected by the cross insofar as the empty tomb allows me. I know that it frees us from our sin and turns that dark day on Calvary into the most glorious act of love imaginable. Today I know that in Jesus’ cry of ‘it is finished’ it has only just begun.

Ask anyone, of any belief, what the greatest act one person can do for another and they’re likely to say give their life to save another.

The difference in what Jesus did is that it doesn’t finish with the dying.

He not only gives His life to save us but His death and resurrection destroys the power of sin and invites us to bathe ourselves in Grace. Not just so that we can enjoy eternity with Him but so that we can live today. Not just so that the Church can sing hymns but so that the World can be transformed. And not just so that we can live quiet lives of desperation but so that we, His body, can be in relationship with God and act as hands and feet to His fragile and hurting but overwhelmingly loved creation.

Thank you Jesus!

My 2 Cents (at the current rate of exchange that’s actually 0.014p)

April 10, 2009 / Christine Welby / 2 Comments

So this evening, Ben and I went to St Mike’s to watch a screening of The Passion. Rather predictably, we were about 5 minutes late, so arrived as Jesus was praying in the Gethsemene. This was the first time I’d seen the film and I’m still, to coin a phrase from Alyson, ruminating over it, and thought I’d use my first post to try to make some sense of what I’m thinking. (please bear with me, I’m not always the most articulate and lucid of bods)

I thought it was a brilliant film. Extremely, and unsurprisingly, moving. However, I couldn’t quite shake off a strange sensation that the film was almost trying to manipulate my feelings in places, although I’m not entirely sure how… I’m no film buff, so I’m not sure exactly what cinematic story-telling devices were used… and I didn’t like the feeling that I almost felt sceptical in places…(is it so predictable that I even feel a teensy bit guilty about that?) Was it that I was too shocked by what was shown – I don’t think so. I fully expected a film that was brutally and honestly graphic about the kind of torture our Lord endured.

I think that I felt (feel) that the story is (should be) moving enough without having to employ such cinematic techniques. Or maybe my English blood is exherting it’s influence, and pushing me into cynicism too readily. I felt that I should be more upset than I was. In short, I expected to bawl my eyes out. I don’t often get emotional at films, only when they are really moving. (most notably, I still to this day can not watch the stampede scene in the Lion King, I have to fast forward past the bit where Mufasa dies – mainly because my dad took me to see the film at the cinema, but that’s an issue for another day…) I don’t think I’m cold and unfeeling, I was very moved by the film, especially by the two Mary’s. But I knew how the story would end, and perhaps that was why I didn’t feel as sad as I expected; I knew that he would rise triumphantly from the grave.

I must confess to not an insignificant amount of disappointment that more wasn’t made of the resurrection. I wanted them to show more of what happened after and what that means for our world today. Although I suppose there would then be too much to cover in one film (at this point Ben suggested that they produce a sequel – something along the lines of JESUS 2: THE RESURRECTION).

I’m not sure how to end this post, which is in a way I suppose fitting as I’m still mulling over the film. I suppose I’ll watch the film again someday, and expect I’ll feel completely different.

…

Good Friday

April 10, 2009 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

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