The Cheap Mask of Good Works and Conversion: Mark Wahlberg and Other Badly Behaved Celebs

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Luke 19.1-10, Mark Wahlberg, Mark Wahlberg's pardon, Zacchaeus

Luke 19:1-10New International Version (NIV)

Zacchaeus the Tax Collector

19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ² A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. ³ He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

⁵ When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

⁷ All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

⁸ But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

⁹ Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Recently, Mark Wahlberg, the famous actor, has asked for a pardon for a hate crime he committed years ago as a kid. I enjoy a lot of Wahlberg’s movies, and unlike many who really dislike his action, I’m not about to boycott all his movies, but his case does bring up some interesting ethical problem.

 

Reaction comes from the extreme of either saying that Walberg doesn’t deserve any pardon or he deserves a second chance. Then, there’re the reactions in between. According to Wahlberg in this article, he said that he has paid back society by doing good deeds like charities. Mary Belmonte, the white teacher who brought the students to the neighborhood beach that day, sees things differently. “I believe in forgiveness,” she said. “He was just a young kid — a punk — in the mean streets of Boston. He didn’t do it specifically because he was a bad kid. He was just a follower doing what the other kids were doing.”  Yet, one of his victims called for no pardon. Walberg used to chase her and her friends, pelted them with rocks and called them racist names. Some might question her for drudging up the past. Why not let bygone be bygone?

 

The answer is very simple. Good works do not always bring reconciliation. With every sin or crime against real victims, unless the perpetrator reaches out and makes reparation to victims, good works can’t hide past sin and they certainly do not redeem the sinner. Wahlberg and his supporters do not understand this simple truth.

 

According to the Asian American man who lost his eye in the racist attack, he has pardoned Walberg and he is to be commended for his generosity, but he also states that Wahlberg has never reached out to him. People like Belmonte, a WHITE teacher, do not help by saying that Wahlberg deserves forgiveness.  Says who?  Belmonte is WHITE; she’s never experienced a racist crime from another white man like Wahlberg.  To be honest, with people like Belmonte who just don’t get it, they’re allowing Wahlberg to dance around the issue. They’ve never earned the right to forgive because they’ve  never been a victim of Wahlberg.  If Wahlberg wants good will, perhaps taking financial steps to make reparation to his victims is the best way to earn some good will. Start with, “I’m sorry for your eye. Here’s a few million dollars from my stash of several other millions.”

 

Christians who behaved badly in their formerly lives also often hide behind their conversion, as if God’s grace is somehow a justification for their past wrong. I’ve seen this with some HK officials whose questionable ethics only match their zeal for “evangelism”, supposed after being reformed and of course not making any reparation towards their own mess. Some 70% of present and past HK high officials claim to be Christians according to one article.  Some of them even organize prayer events on the Day of Global Prayer with a heavily pro-government coloring.  One particular gentleman has been known to use questionable tactics to carry out more questionable government policies while always kissing up to China’s oppressive government.  The same gentleman who has studied for his diploma at Oxford while “seeking God’s will”  and who was a huge advocate for the oppressive government is now an “evangelist” who will spend his time “praying” for the government.  I would laugh if I thought he was telling a joke, but he wasn’t.  Perhaps he needs to pray over his own sins first and then make reparation by advocating for greater justice and less oppression.  Some abstract pie-in-the-sky prayer is not what we need because we’re living in the real world with real victims. If a Christian is truly justified, s/he then ought to understand that justification is based on a sense of justice. The justified should value justice more, not less. Free grace is not cheap grace. A changed life doesn’t equal to reparation. Neither does it necessarily bring real reconciliation.

 

So, pardon (excuse the pun) my cynicism (aka realism) on cheap grace and dirty pardons. My haters will call me a Pelagian or a heretic who doesn’t believe in the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith.  Someone ought to take a page out of Zacchaeus’ playbook in trying to define salvation based on that the way Jesus did.  Reparation is necessary to demonstrate a changed life.  Talk is cheap.  Pretentious good works to ease the uneasy conscience is cheaper.

When we DENY the problem, we BECOME the problem

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Galatians 3.28

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  Galatians 3.28 NIV

 

“According to Galatians 3.28, race is not the problem because our identity is in Christ now,” proclaims a white pastor.

 

My friend visited this church. This is what he noticed. The church is packed full of white folks. Now, I’m not saying that isn’t a good thing, but with the change in our society, we ought to ask why our Sunday morning is still the most segregated time of the week. When we read and study Paul’s mission and Jesus’ Great Commission, we see the clear command to make all people disciples of Jesus. “All” means all, not white, not blacks, not brown, not yellow and not red.

 

 

When quoting Galatians 3.28 in this colorblind perspective, we must equally say that gender inequality is not the problem or that social status is no longer a problem. But gender inequality and social inequality ARE problems! In fact, slavery was alive and well when Paul wrote those words and had continued to be so for many centuries after, even in the US today (where human trafficking and sexual slavery still concerns us). The logic simply doesn’t hold water. Paul’s message doesn’t deny the problems of race, gender and social class. Rather, the church ought to consider such issues within its own mission in how to adapt and help these problems to go away (e.g. Paul did it with not forcing gentiles to circumcise or follow food laws). In fact, the church should be much more sensitive towards race, gender and social class than society so that there’s true equality within its community life. This requires a brand new way of doing ministry that considers all these factors. What would be the consequence of misreading Galatians 3.28?

 

 

The consequence of misreading results in the very opposite of Paul envisioned for the church. Ironically, the same pastor who proclaimed this misreading is in a predominately white church with very few Asians and two blacks. Of course, race is not a problem because there’s hardly any minority there to CREATE that problem. Yet, race IS a problem because the practically lily-white demographic of his church hardly reflects the changes in his neighborhood. I don’t want to blame the entire problem on the pastor, but surely, he has to shoulder part of the blame when he preaches this sort of misreading of Paul. So, let’s be careful when we say that our faith has negated real world problem because that negation is often a mere denial. The louder we deny, the greater is the problem. WE may be the problem.

An Advent of Love? Reflection on the 140 + dead in Pakistan

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Christian response to Pakistani bombing, Christian response to torture, Pakistani bombing

“I urge, the, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone …” 1 Timothy 2.1 (NIV)

 

As we approach Advent, tragedies occur all over the world.  Sydney saw its rare hostage crisis where one of my friends’ colleague lost her life. Equally tragic is the death of 141 people, mostly children, in Pakistan after the Talibans launched a revenge attack against a school.  Meanwhile, debates still continue among Christians on whether torture is a legitimate practice against enemies.  As I look around, people give different reactions through social media and newspaper op ed columns.  I notice something peculiar.

 

I notice that while Christians will continue to justify torture as a valid method against enemies, there’s some call for prayer for people in Australia.  However, there’s little to no call for prayer for the families of the dead in Pakistan.  While we construct logically sophisticated justification (even from scripture) on why we can torture, many of us Christians don’t even care to pray for these Pakistani victims.  Why?

 

I can think of thousands of reasons, but I bet one glaring reason is the way we western Christians think of the world.  Sydney, Australia, a city that deserves our prayer, is western enough.  After all, the Aussies are “better” allies than the Pakistanis.  So we pray for them but not the Pakistanis.  The Pakistanis belong to the “other”. In fact, aren’t all Pakistanis Muslims and if so (I’m not saying that they are), aren’t they are political enemies?  If their children die, they can go straight to hell where our enemies belong.  This simplistic and warped worldview has colored our priorities to the degree that it has affected the way we pray and the way we worship.  While we shout in favor of separation of church and state, our politics continue to cloud our judgment and more importantly, our spirituality.

 

In our response towards crisis and in our prayer life, we demonstrate the kind of value we hold.  Actually, many may come up with thousands of verses to justify this and that, but some verses like the one I quoted above is straightforward as part of the Christian worship. If you don’t believe it and can read Chinese, go read my three works on the Pastoral Letters.  If you don’t believe me, go read some commentaries on 1 Timothy.  In this case, our worldview causes us to make disgusting, xenophobic and worst of all, anti-Christian choices, right in our worship. This begs the question whether our ethics matches the kind of God we worship. This is an important concept to contemplate during Advent or any other time. Do we even worship the same God the author of 1 Timothy worshipped or do we worship some other version of God?  Before we can heal the world, perhaps we need healing first.

The Lord’s Army in Hong Kong? A Blasphemous Prayer!

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611 Hong Kong

¹³ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

Luke 2.13-14 (NIV)

 

I’m usually quite tolerant of all kinds of prayers because after all prayers represent where we are in our spiritual journey and sometimes we take some detours, but certain detours are simply paths to destruction.  This week gives us such a prayer on the first Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of hope.

 

Let me summarize the whats app screen capture of a prayer from the 611 church membership.  I saw this on a friend’s Facebook and I simply couldn’t believe my eyes.  It says something like this.  “I just heard the sharing of a Christian lady cop. Today through the Spirit’s guidance, we have decided to do a prayer walk around the police HQ so that the Lord’s Army (HK police) would have greater power to clear protesters and lessen the bloodshed.

 

I just saw the wonderful news of the police clearing the sites.  We thank our God the heavenly Father’s miraculous power that enables the police to use the least amount of force to clear the site.  Our heavenly Father watches over HK.  We continue to pray for a peaceful life in HK…”

 

Besides the lack of factual accuracy to this entire prayer about the “least amount of force,” the description of HK police as the Lord’s Army simply curses rather than blesses HK.  I’ve often say that the zealous ignoramus does more damage than the cold intellectual.  This case is such a perfect illustration.

 

At best, we simply can’t sustain the believe based on biblical evidence that the HK police is the Lord’s Army.  Even at their best behavior, they can’t qualify as the Lord’s Army. There’s nowhere in Scripture that the Lord’s Army is equated to any kind of human security force.

 

Since it is the Advent Sunday of hope this first Advent Sunday, let me look at one place where the Lord’s Army did appear in the NT.  Luke 2.13-14 record a heavenly host parsing God for the great event that was the first Christmas.  The heavenly host joining with the present angels were praising God.  In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament), the word for “host” can be descriptive of army in the heavenly realm (e.g. 1 Kings 22.19) sometimes being falsely worshipped by idol worshipping kings (e.g. 2. Chron. 33.3, 5).  In Luke 2, these angels celebrated the fact that God had chosen His first witnesses to be the poor shepherds so that the poor would receive the gospel of Jesus’ birth.  In other words, Jesus’ birth was praiseworthy because he had eliminated the disparity between social economic classes.  In fact, he favored those who were poor.

 

Let’s look now at the irony of this entire prayer being said on the eve of the first Sunday of Advent.  The protest of HK is precisely trying to eliminate the disparity between the social economic classes.  This first Advent Sunday is called the Sunday of hope.  Such a prayer murders hope.  By viewing the police force as the Lord’s Army as they cleared up a movement that has sprinkles of the message from the first Christmas, the prayer is a blasphemy against the very spirit of Advent.  It is an unacceptable prayer.

 

Will the HK police be the Lord’s Army?  It won’t even come close until the entire police force joins force to praise God for His work to break down social economic barriers.  Clearing up the protest site and creating further obstruction of local businesses may do the very opposite!  James 5.16 says that The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective in healing.  In this present situation, the prayer of an ignorant person is powerful and effective too in destroying any hope for human dignity.  A more appropriate prayer perhaps on this Sunday is an imprecatory prayer against all oppressive forces.  If you don’t want to pray the imprecatory prayer, let me share something positive from my church today as my family lights the Advent candle and read the following words. 

 

1^st Sunday in Advent:

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the Sundayof Hope. Our hope is in God, and in his son Jesus Christ. He is the one appointed by God to be judge of all things, and he is the one through whom God has promised to save and redeem his people. And so we put our hope in Him as Savior and Lord.

 

The words of the prophet Isaiah, from Isaiah 9:5-7:

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty
will accomplish this.

 

We light this candle today to remind us that Jesus, the one who is given, whose kingdom will have no end…that he is our hope and the hope of the world.

 

Prayer: O God of Hope, Emmanuel, God with Us – we pray that you would send your light into our hearts at this time. Help us to live as hope-filled people, trusting in Jesus every day. Live in us and help us to live in you. By the power of the Holy Spirit, transform us so that our lives, our worship, our celebration, our time of preparation, may be pleasing unto you – both now, and forevermore. Amen.

 

PS. I realize that the prayer may not represent the official position of the 611 church in HK. I would however say that those in teaching leadership need to take up their mantle of the spiritual educator so that this kind of curse no longer lands on our suffering society.

Sample Scriptural Manipulation by the Western Religious Right (IV) – The Problem with Immigration and Ex. 23.9, Lev. 19.33, Dt. 10.19

“Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.” Exodus 23.9 (NIV)

 

This week, I continue to continue my series on evangelical Bible abuse.  I’ve decided to take a little break from talking about HK to complete this series.  I’ve read a popular and famous American systematic theologian (I loosely apply that term to him because many consider him one) on his take on politics and the Bible.  I’m going to deal with one issue he talks about in order to illustrate how tough it is to use the Bible to support your own agenda while opposing agenda of others.

 

Meaning

 

To start with, I have a very simple question to ask.  What if the Bible does not support my agenda? This author’s answer is simple. He can simply put in bold print “We have a very different situation today.” Now in principle, that is a good thing to do not with verses that do not agree with our conviction but to do that with every verse in the Bible. First we should examine the meaning of one verse he quotes. I would work with a few more verses simply because they often are read within the same corpus by Christians as part of the first books of the Bible, but I”m limited by space here.

 

Ex. 23.9 is a repeated idea from the injunction at Ex. 22.20.  The contexts of two similar  injunctions are different in that Ex. 22 talks about the individual Israelite while Ex. 23 talks about those who were judges over Israel. Thus, the different context shows the universality of this injunction both at the individual level and the judicial level.  This injunction is about as absolute as they come within the Torah.  Ex. 23.6-8 talk about bribes and lies and Ex. 23.10-11 talk about the needy.  Thus, the injunction has the same weightiness as bearing false witnesses and oppressing the needy.  This is not something we can just shrug off as being “for them.”  The historical situation tells us that Israel had always had needy people, some Hebrew and some foreigners.  This ongoing historical situation doesn’t just apply to the Exodus but ran all the way to the exile period.  The major difference however is that the political system of that time was different than today.

 

As we have already seen, the situations are indeed very different today than those days. Those days, the Bible had theocracy. Even within theocracy however, the determining factor for theocracy is whether the alien was willing to live within the covenant religion of Israel. Due to the fact that religion was part of Israel’s law, it was a requirement.  Is our law based on a covenant religion?

 

Even without the covenant religion of the ancient Israel, we can at least draw the conclusion that helping the foreigner ranks right up there with being truthful (which we surely can’t make situational) or helping the needy (which most of us can’t make situation with a clear conscience).  The tension then is between what was particular and what was universal.

 

Consequences for Misunderstanding

 

Since this theologian speaks against any kind of help for illegal immigrants, he uses the least amount of scripture to support whatever cause he wants mainly because scripture does not support much of what he is saying. He tries to cite scholarly studies that support the closing of border in Israel’s history to prove that border was indeed God’s will. The trouble with that is whether anything from Israel’s politics back then could be applicable to today’s America. If he sincerely believes that we have a very different situation today (and he is right), why would he cite the border situation back from ancient Israel? The fact of border in Israel was due to the importance of keeping the Israelites together due to their ideally homogeneous faith. We have no such situation today in our multi-faith and pluralistic society (unless he still insists that we’re a Christian nation, which he seems to also insist and that we’re still a homogeneous society).

 

The theologian’s logic goes further off track when he insists that closing the border and insisting simulation is the perfect solution. Without a doubt, as an American, I believe we have to deport escaped criminals but we do that with all the other countries anyway. I understand some of my readers are going to object to what I say as naïve liberal nonsense, but from a moral point of view, the whole idea of closing border is problematic to US history. At one point, American land belonged to the Native Americans. Imagine if the Native Americans decided that it was a bad idea to help the colonists in Virginia Colony as well as the Plymouth Colony survive and just let them starve to death. Imagine worse. Imagine if they decided to “close the border” and just kill all white men as trespassers. IF they had a closed-border policy, America wouldn’t be what it is now. The original spirit of this nation versus the spirit represented by this theologian is at variance. No matter how he justifies himself, his stance is basically historically illogical. The immigration situation in the US today is less than best, but his solution is simply untenable from an ethical and biblical point of view.

 

Some of his other steps are probably helpful in terms of practical application: teaching children to learn English to help assimilate, helping illegal immigrants to gain legal status, a compassionate path to move from illegal to legal immigration. These are all practical steps, but some of his other steps simply cannot be ethically and historically sound even if they work (and I doubt that they do).

 

At the same time, there’re issues that these verses do not deal with either. The greater idea of justice needs to be dealt with as well. For example, when funding goes to helping illegal immigrants, many of our shrinking middle class are feeling the impact of cut government spending to help the locals that are in need. People like injured veterans and honest citizens who hold several jobs to make ends meet will have great need as well. How about the funding to schools that are underprivileged even if those who are affected are honest citizens working their hardest to make ends meet. In all this, where would the discussion about greedy rich who are cheating the system? True justice is fluid, nuanced, prioritized and even gradated. These and many other topics are all justice issues that can’t be solved simply by appealing to the text that seems to support us while distancing ourselves from texts that do not support us and shout, “We simply have a different situation today.” No, ALL biblical situations are different, not just the select few.  If you appeal to history, you can’t have your historical cake and eat it too.

 

As I said before, the problem is not the biblical text. The problem is the interpreter.

 

More Cheap Unity? Truth that Divides!: 2 Corinthians 11.24, Paul, and the Subversive Gospel

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2 Corinthians 11.24, harmony in Chinese Christian circles, HK mega church compromise, Occupy Central, Occupy HK

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 

2 Corinthians 11.24 (NIV)

 

It is a well-known fact that I love reading the writings of Jesus scholar Larry Hurtado. His latest blog interaction with the work of Paula Fredriksen intrigues me, not only because her work was widely cited in my book on Paul in Chinese, but because of its implications for many HK churches, especially in light of the further call for harmony and tolerance for another fake election by the Anglican provincial secretary on HK TVB. I will cite below what Fredriksen claims from Hurtado’s blog. At some near future point, I will read her work in its entirety at which point I can give it a fair reading.

 

“In a recent publication, she probes the matter by first addressing Paul’s references to being on the receiving end of floggings by fellow Jews (five times) in the course of his Gentile mission (2 Corinthians 11:24).[2] Her cogent hypothesis is essentially this: Paul required his pagan converts to withdraw from worshipping the gods of the Roman world. Given the place and significance of the gods in Roman-era life, this would have generated serious tensions with the larger pagan community. As he identified himself as a Jew and linked up with Jewish communities in the various diaspora cities where he established early assemblies of Jesus-followers (ekklesias), these Jewish communities could have feared that they would bear the brunt of these tensions. So, Paul was meted out synagogue discipline in the form of the 39 lashes as punishment on several occasions (he mentions five).”

 

If what Fredriksen says is true, then Paul was not punished because he preached the gospel as people traditionally believe, but because the gospel Paul preached caused disharmony both with society and within the synagogue system. Let’s think about the current culture of the HK mega-churches that tend to speak for oppressive government policies. The best example is from one church where members who opposed oppressive governmental policies would be punished by having their memberships revoked from the church. Other less severe but equally misleading responses would be to call for harmony at all costs without adequate discussion on the issues that divide.

 

In essence, if Fredriksen’s claim is true, then some churches behave more like Paul’s Jewish oppositions than Paul. Paul has already shown that the gospel is not mainly meant to cause harmony. Truth doesn’t necessarily harmonize. Quite often in Paul’s ministry, it confronted and divided. When people point out falsehood, the church’s job is not to call for harmony but to call for discussion, circumspection and introspection or even repentance. False harmony punishes the wrong people and in the long run ruins lives. Getting truth right is tough.  Living truth out is even tougher.  It takes prioritizing ideas and conflict, just like Paul did in his life.  It takes tough struggles over issue rather than a simplistic call for cheap unity while covering over the holes in our imperfect ideals.  The only question to ask of such churches is this, “What kind of faith do we hold when we behave more like Paul’s opposition than Paul?”

Cheap Unity Again?: 2 Corinthians 6.14 and Occupy HK

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2 Corinthians 6.14, Christian response to Hong Kong protest, Hong Kong protest, Occupy Hong Kong

14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will live with them
    and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.”

17 Therefore,

“Come out from them
    and be separate,
says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing,
    and I will receive you.”

18 And,

“I will be a Father to you,
    and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.” 2 Corinthians 6.14-18 (NIV)

I’m going to blog about chapter 18 of my book. I’ve already blogged about it before as a negative example for how to use scripture. In my book, I’ve already established that the passage was not about marriage between believers and unbelievers. Rather, it is about unity between radically different value systems within the church possibly propagated by different parties. I believe this passage has huge implications for HK in the present climate among SOME pastors to call for unity. The Chinese Christian blog sphere also lit up with discontent and outrage.  I believe Paul’s teaching prohibits the church from a compromised unity.  In a situation where black and white are not neutralized by heavy shades of grey, perhaps, unity is not the answer, as we shall see below.

 

The passage talks about being yoked together possibly borrowing from farming practice of putting two different animals together to plow. In this metaphor, Paul was talking about working together with unbelievers, but was Paul’s writing a total prohibition on working with unbelievers? I don’t believe so. The subsequent verses show that certain anti-Christian results that came from working with unbelievers such as idolatry. In other words, you can’t work with unbelievers if the results go against the fundamentals of Christian value. For believers who may be tempted to link themselves to such anti-Christian values, they ought to separate themselves. This is the essence of Paul’s message. Let’s look at the HK situation.

 

The fault line between the two parties in the church is political where one party sides with the government and the other does not. Before we call for reconciliation and unity, let’s see what reconciliation consists of. The most successful example of recent history is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South African abolition of Apartheid. In fact, this bloodless revolution has caused other countries to form TRC’s, countries as varied as Colombia, Nigeria, Canada and so on. In reconciliation, those who are wrong do not get an easy escape. They confess that they’re wrong not because they hold a different opinion and reject others’ opinions, but because they actually hold the WRONG opinion about race and politics and must confess their falsehood. Bring that to HK. Can anyone honestly say that siding with the government that lies repeatedly to its own people is RIGHT? Is oppression and dishonesty part of our Christian value system?  We don’t need to sweep rubbish under the table right now. We need separation from lies. We need truth, even if that truth tears our church asunder.  This recent protest movement has become the mirror in the church to show where everyone stands in relation of oppression and dishonesty. We need those who have supported lies in the faith community to 1) confess their sins 2) to separate from such anti-Christian values. The preachers from those rich and large churches who have sided with governmental oppression should be the first to come out and confess their sins! I dare them to be an example to the flock by following Paul’s advice.

 

IF our church leaders are willing to take such harsh and courageous steps the way Desmond Tutu did, I’m all in favor of reconciliation and unity. Otherwise, count me out! So, if you want a Christian way to do unity and reconciliation, read, meditate and apply 2 Corinthians 6.14 for its real meaning instead of going for cheap unity because cheap unity will create more injury in the long run. So, for now, give me a break from this cheap unity talk because such unity is not just untenable; it’s immoral.

 

As I always say, the texts are not at fault. The interpreter is!

Rich Churches and the Poor: A Reflection on the Poor in Luke 14.15-24

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Hong Kong protest, Luke 14.15-24

¹⁵ When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” ¹⁶ Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.¹⁷ At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ ¹⁸ “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ ¹⁹ “Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’ ²⁰ “Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’ ²¹ “The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ ²² “‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’ ²³ “Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. ²⁴ I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’” Luke 14.15-24 (NIV)

A heart-breaking story in “prosperous” HK surfaced this week.  It details the routine of an old lady who is nearly 80. She lives in low income housing and her only means of paying her rent was to pick up cardboard boxes dawn to dusk.  In this “prosperous” and “relatively just” city, 70% of the elderly do what this lady does to make ends meet.  This is the city where the chief executive freely admits that democracy would allow the poor to dominate, indicating that the poor occupies a substantial part of the population. I use words of prosperity and justice to describe HK because those have been the words used by many of the upper middle class church leaders there.  In contrast, Jesus told a parable in Luke 14.15-24.

Since I’m writing the Luke commentary in Chinese, I’m going to share my reflection in this blog.  Let’s see what Jesus had to say about prosperity and the kingdom. Someone told Jesus in a banquet that those who would eat at the messianic banquet were the blessed/happy ones.  Jesus told a parable in reply.  He talked about a rich host opening a banquet and the host invited all the usual rich people.  However, everyone unexpectedly made excuse not to go in Luke 14.18-20. The excuses ranged from having bought a field to having bought some animals to having gotten married. The order of field, oxen and marriage is interesting in that the excuses moved from financial to marital. The buying of field came from the upper class of Jesus’ day. The buying of oxen was due to the need to plow a large plot of land. While the ones about purchase indicate wealth, marriage seems more basic. The excuses then would seem more and more reasonable, but yet, it seems like none of excuses made here were reasonable. Why in fact would a new marriage prevented one from attending the banquet? This parable then is the mockery against those who made excuses. It is important to note that the two analogies about the field and oxen put the emphasis on wealth because of the setting of the real banquet Jesus was eating. Such banquets were the occasion one shows off his wealth and high society connections. All the excuses were of the same kind: they had other more important priorities.

Wealth played a prominent role because Jesus was sitting among the rich. The host then sent his slave to invite more to come in the parable. The places where the slave went in Luke 14.21 were probably where the outsiders hung out because what the slaves found were the down and out people. These underprivileged people would be a stark contrast with the first two excuse makers. The ability to buy a field and five oxen shows that they were men of some wealth but they didn’t go to the banquet. The Pharisee who hosted could certainly relate to this degree of wealth. The poor would be the last invited and they became more like those who were first invited, much like what Luke 13.29 says. This strange guest list is the same list Jesus used in Luke 14.13. Still there was room. So, the master told his slave to get people from all over to come in Luke 14.23. When Jesus taught this story, he taught it to the wealthy.  This story seems like a story about the future when the kingdom would be released or is it?

I propose that the Jesus’ banquet setting in which he told the story suggests otherwise. It is about the present! It is a story to the faith community and its leader, the host of Jesus’ banquet, the Pharisee, that true faith community would have unexpectedly blessed people like those who were invited last in the messianic banquet.  It is not just or even morally sound to not notice the social ills and the poor in any faith community.  The story was also written to Theophilus who was a Roman official.  He would be a patron to Luke and the church.  He too would hold banquets.  Would his banquet include those outside of his privileged circle?

When reading this story, if HK upper class church leaders and rich Christian politicians who pronounce “peace, peace” when the chief executive clearly stated this week that those who made low income had less rights, then pages of Luke 14 need to be torn out of their lectionaries and their Bibles because that would be the only way we can say that the HK society is “prosperous” and “just”.  Jesus wouldn’t have said the same thing. True prosperity is to allow the earthly faith community to reflect the value system of the messianic banquet. Anyone denouncing the effort to fight for the (democratic) rights of the poor is immoral and anti-Christian.  Instead of all the popular cheap unity many Christian leaders are calling for right now in HK, I propose that we don’t unite with such false gospel preachers.  Instead, we need to call leaders into account for supporting the system and the (Christian) politicians.  This is no time for cheap unity.  This is the time for a clear division for the blatantly right and wrong value systems.  Think about that!

Money Worship, Occupy HK and Luke 18.18-30: An Inconvenient Righteousness

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Hong Kong protest, Luke 18.18-30, Occupy Hong Kong

18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.” 21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said. 22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?” 27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” 28 Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!” 29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30 will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.” Luke 18.18-30 (NIV)

Occupy HK has occupied much of my Facebook news feed. Many organizations have paid attention besides just the newspaper. The blatant human rights violation of the police crackdown even has Amnesty International on alert. During this time, I’m also in dialogue with people with all different opinions. One consistent argument that comes up is finance. It goes something like this. China won’t crack down on HK because it wants HK to do well financially, but the protesters do not. The logic goes, if HK remains peaceful, it’ll thrive like China and will eventually provide more freedom. No money? No freedom.

I think it’s worth our while to see what Luke had to say about the issue of money from one passage that is apparently about money. Since I’m writing on Luke, I might as well share my thoughts in how Luke’s message is relevant to the present discussion. In the NT, the passages that often have less to do with government may have the most to say about the present situation. I’ll have to ask my readers to think outside of the legalistic box for a moment. That passage is Luke 18.18-30. In this familiar passage, this rich young ruler asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. The word Luke used to describe the young ruler indicates that he was possibly part of the religious elite, perhaps even a ruler in the synagogue. In Jesus’ day, the religious elite held both power and money. To his question, Jesus answered with a series of commandments dealing with sexuality (adultery), life (murder), private property (stealing), words (false testimony) and family (honor parents). These commands are sample texts from the Bible that deal with almost every facet of life. It even deals with enemies with the prohibition to murder. The rich young ruler answered that he had kept all such commands. Jesus then told him that he lacked one thing which was to sell all that he had and to give to the poor. Thereafter, he would have eternal life, presuming the command to follow Jesus was part of the deal. The narrator of the story says, “When he heard this, he became very sad because he was a man of great wealth.” Luke never failed to mention his wealth in his rich description. He sprinkled the passage with wealth. Jesus then said that it was very hard for the rich man to enter the kingdom of God, maybe even harder than a camel going through the eye of a needle. Some commentators prefer to see the word “camel” as a Greek misreading of the word for “rope” in Aramaic, but whether it is camel or rope, Jesus’ point remains the same. It’s damn near impossible, barring divine intervention that something this large can pass through the eye of a needle. The disciples themselves also focused on how much they had left to follow Jesus. The contrast then is between those who had hoarded and those who gave their wealth. The story of Zachaeus only makes it clearer that salvation came to Zachaeus and that sign was the fact that he was willing to leave it all behind for the poor and for reparation of those whom he wrong (Luke 19.8-10).

Although we often like to focus on money when reading this passage, I want us to read it from a first-century peasants’ eyes for this exercise. When Jesus called people to follow him, many were not rich like the rich young ruler and Zachaeus. The rich who followed Jesus were rare in the Gospel records. For the poor, they too left something to follow Jesus, but didn’t have to leave very much. For the rich here, Luke characterized him by his social advantages: he was rich. In other words, he was unwilling to leave his social advantages because if he did, his action wouldn’t just affect him but also others around him. Surely, the rich young ruler was obedient to the sample commandments. Those commandments made him a moral man. Society endorsed such a moral man. In fact, his morality was convenient because any decent man wouldn’t cheat on his wife, murder people, steal, lie or dishonor parents. These are convenient truths. Jesus however was after an inconvenient truth. Jesus was after what held him back, his social advantages. What does this have to do with our Christian worldview when arguing a social issue such as Occupy HK? A lot!

When people argue that society would be better off in the long run, they are arguing about financial advantages. They think that financial advantages would result in the ultimate good for the society. In fact, the very leader who ordered the murder of hundreds of students on Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, Deng Xiaoping, also argued the very same thing: if the country was prosperous, progress would come. Nothing got better! Only the rich got richer in China.

To make matters worse, people that tend to think of HK as a relatively good society tend to be the same ones who stand to benefit from it. I’ve never met taxi drivers or cleaning ladies who think that they are benefiting from the economic growth of HK, and I’ve talked to plenty of them. Did you know that one out of seventy people in HK are either in poverty or on the verge of falling below poverty line?  In fact, I know of some young people who graduated from reputable European universities making wages that aren’t much more than when I was young and HK is one of the most expensive places to live on earth. Their parents might argue that if they study hard, they will benefit from the system the way their parents benefitted from the system. Such is not reality. At the same time, every single person I talk to who argues for financial welfare as part of social wellness benefits from the system. Essentially, they are arguing for their own benefits and have mistaken their personal advantages as advantages for the whole society. Someone asks me why many Diaspora Chinese, especially those in North America can’t appreciate the plight of the HK poor. The answer is simple. If they didn’t benefit financially from the system, how in the world would they be able to move to Vancouver (or any big and comfortable North American metropolis) to begin with? You need money to move and you need money to buy a house in rich metropolitan areas in North America. Have you check housing prices in Vancouver or San Francisco lately? To argue from financial advantage when you’re part of the privileged from afar is immoral!

When I hear Christians argue in terms of finance, alarm bells also go off because the argument once again is often about financial benefits for the city. Then, we need to ask the next question, “Beneficial for whom?” Unlike the US, HK’s social hierarchy separates the rich from the poor drastically. As if this is not bad enough, only recently did the government impose minimum wage, something we take for granted here in North America. That is the HK society. Its wealth was developed around disparity.  Thus, there is no reason for Christians to argue in such terms even if they do so based on what they see. Yet, there’re even more reasons scripturally not to argue in terms of finance. Based on Jesus’ discussion with the rich young ruler, the financial part, his social advantage, was the very thing that kept him from inheriting eternal life. Barring a miracle, he would NOT enter the kingdom of God. In other words, Jesus was calling for all his disciples to give up their social advantages for others. Jesus called for radical sacrifice. I suspect that if Jesus were here to listen to our debate, the first call he might make would not be for us to be a little bit more moral. Rather, he would immediately call the Christians to stop using finance as an excuse to gain further personal advantage on the one hand and to support such an oppressive system on the other. He would especially be on the case of the Christian leaders (much like this rich young ruler) to lead by example. How many of us who are moral, religious and know our stuff would heed this call?

What was Jesus after when he was talking about eternal life, salvation and the kingdom of God? He was after an inconvenient obedience. The place to start is to abandon the logic of financial advantage or convenience as the ultimate good for Christians.  Jesus was not against rich people or wealth. He was against using wealth to justify living a life we WANT to live rather than living a life God wants us to live. Someone asked a multimillionaire, “How much is enough?” The answer he gave was, “It’s never enough.” That seems to be the argument of many middle-class Christians because to say “enough” requires inconvenient obedience to Christ.

Material Possessions, the Final Judgment and Hong Kong Protests: Reflections on Luke 13.1-9

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Hong Kong protest, Hong Kong protest and faith

In the week of Hong Kong protests, Christian communities have had various reactions.  One reaction deserves our attention.  The Jireh Foundation held a prayer meeting, reported by Hong Kong Christian Times here in which the CEO Chan Auyeung said that the use of force was a reasonable response by the police. She also said that people need to be congratulated for being against the protest because after all, the protest was “unlawful”.  She said that the anti-protest Christians were the truly sanctified ones.  In a condescending way, she said that she would only “pray for the protesters.” Another speaker also told all the Christian leaders of the protests (so many of them are Christians) to bow in humble prayer instead of doing what they were doing. Of course such a prayer meeting would be incomplete without some kind of appeal to the sovereignty of God.  And they surely did just that.  Let’s see what Jesus actually taught about the sovereign eschatological judgment of God in his own teaching in Luke.  Prayer meetings don’t trump truth!

I’ve been writing a Chinese commentary on Luke and I happened upon Luke 13.1-9 as the Hong Kong Protests kick off. In this account, some people were talking to Jesus about certain political situations involving revolution (a historical situation that has no historical evidence for us to pinpoint the exact event) against the Romans. The people asked for Jesus’ opinion on such Galilean politics. Understand that Galilee was sometimes places of revolutionaries (what NT Wright calls brigandage). Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Jesus’ answer is intriguing because his question shows the following assumptions. First, he assumed that both the revolutionaries and the questioners were imperfect human beings, sinners, if you will. Second, he assumed that the questioner actually believed that his being alive made him more righteous than the persecuted and dead revolutionary.

Let’s pause to see how these two assumptions apply to the present situation in Hong Kong. In the vitriol between factions, people tend to assume that their version of truth is the only version and that they have the perfect understanding. For Christians who take Jesus’ word seriously, this assumption is false. Furthermore, some Christians even rejoice in the suffering of the persecuted students because they “did not break the Hong Kong law.” Such narcissistic righteousness also goes against Jesus’ ethos. In fact, Jesus called such self-righteous people to repent in light of the coming judgment. What must they repent of?

The story that leads up to Luke 13.1-9 actually sheds light on what Jesus said. The story in Luke 12 starts with a warning about coming judgment and then Jesus gave a example on how people would be judged. Someone asked Jesus to mediate on family inheritance in Luke 12.13. Jesus talked about the rich fool whose sole concern was to hoard, thus condemning the person hoarding inheritance. Why not hoard? Jesus then told his disciples that there were more serious issues than hoarding material possessions in Luke 12.22-59. Not to hoard is an expression of faith in a just God. Now, faith is an easy escape for the most naïve unless we take seriously what Jesus said. Jesus’ condemnation was against the hoarding fool, the rich! Someone told me that Jesus also loved the rich.  Sure, he did, after they sold their material possessions to feed the poor (cf. Luke 18.18-22; 19.8-10)!  Jesus didn’t hate the rich; he hated GREED!

Contrary to the popular understanding that Jesus said that material possessions were completely valueless, we must take seriously his condemnation of the greedy rich. His point was to raise the issue of greed through the dispute over inheritance. In Luke 12.13, clearly someone was unjust and greedy. Jesus condemned such greed, whether rich or poor, but especially against the rich. Thus, the overarching principle for which one should repent should be greed over material possessions. The eschatological judgment against which Jesus warned will be based on where one’s heart is. Luke wrote to Theophilus, a government official and an immensely wealthy man.

Let’s think about what implications such a teaching of Jesus had on such a person.  The teachings of Jesus should actually scare those who were rich towards themselves but poor towards the poor and towards God. In light of the Hong Kong situation, it is easy to condemn the students or protesters. Jesus’ teaching however condemned the uncontrolled capitalism (in the situation of Hong Kong) that breeds greed. It is a morally bankrupt ploy to appeal randomly to the sovereignty of God without understanding of what that actually meant biblically. That’s the overarching Christian principle. The greedy rich (obviously, not all rich people are greedy) will face a most severe judgment. That too is a promise of God.  It’s time for some Christians to stop kidding themselves and others.  People should both stop doing violence to the poor and to the biblical text. Prayer meetings don’t trump truth!