Friday, January 02, 2009
On The Economy
Out of Ur prints thoughts by Dave Gibbons on the current economic downturn.
Is not confession in large part self-evaluation, and is not confession supposed to be a regular, liturgical part of our faith existence. We bemoan "trials and tribulations" so often in our lives, and yet it seems it takes those same trials and tribulations to get us to simply do what we should be doing all along.
If you find yourself reading this Gibbons piece and thinking - giving it careful consideration. Then it is time to confess. But rather than confess about overuse of church statistics, or sending the wrong kind of aid somewhere, let's confess about the lack of confession. Let's look at these issues now and let's look at them later when things are not so tough.
I think the lesson to learn here is to figure out how to ALWAYS be learning lessons.
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Sure it’s easy to shamelessly wag our finger at Wall Street bankers, traders, and lenders. Their avarice, greed, and ostentatious ways are notorious. But before we strain our finger, let’s not forgot who they’ve been working for. We’re also involved in their trades, their transactions, and the thirst for MORE. The hard reality is, we are Wall Street. We are the lenders, we are the traders, and now we are the debtors.These are reasonable thoughts, but my heart hurts deeply that it takes something like this economic circumstance for us to ask such questions and do such evaluation.
The church is not untainted by this. I understand a need to be a healthy and purposeful church, but have we gone overboard with our focus on formulas, numbers, size, influence, marketing techniques, and branding? Have we forgotten what makes the church the church? At the end of the day, are we really driven by God’s heart? Are we really motivated by Christ’s love and not the money or the numbers?
Of late the church has become increasingly “cause” focused. Justice and advocacy is our mantra, but how much do we need to pour into advertising this? I thought the right hand wasn’t supposed to know what the left hand was doing? How much do we really need to be spending on self-promotion within the church?
While in Thailand, the Muslims we worked with on one of the southern islands were sick of the Western “help” they received. They said after the tsunami, “western Christians came to give us things without asking what we needed, and then they took pictures with their banners and left.” Their conclusion, “The Christians used us.”
Is not confession in large part self-evaluation, and is not confession supposed to be a regular, liturgical part of our faith existence. We bemoan "trials and tribulations" so often in our lives, and yet it seems it takes those same trials and tribulations to get us to simply do what we should be doing all along.
If you find yourself reading this Gibbons piece and thinking - giving it careful consideration. Then it is time to confess. But rather than confess about overuse of church statistics, or sending the wrong kind of aid somewhere, let's confess about the lack of confession. Let's look at these issues now and let's look at them later when things are not so tough.
I think the lesson to learn here is to figure out how to ALWAYS be learning lessons.
Technorati Tags:confession, economy, learning lessons
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