Army of Priests

Attn: For those that read this blog via RSS (you know who you are) this post contains some important information for you…

I started this blog nineteen months ago. That sounds like a lot longer than it feels. Over that time it has done a half reasonable job of attracting readers, especially considering my post rate has dropped dramatically at times. And I have gotten some really good feedback though the comments and the About section of this blog. Those let me know that I am not just a raving lunatic, and these posts are actually worth something to someone. Thank you for those.

Shortly before I started this blog I watched The Last Samurai which stars Tom Cruise. I was inspired by the Samurai’s devotion, discipline, courage, and values. All these were attributes I wanted to develop in myself. They also tie in deeply with my identity as a soldier and my attempts to get Christians out of their pews and into the world (where all the excitement it). If the popular posts of this site is any indication I seem to have done alright at that. The Radical Christian: An Overview is, by a large margin, the most visited page on this site (even more so than the About page), and the rest of the series also ranks highly.

The last nineteen months have also been a really significant learning time for me. In the years before I started this blog I had been spending a lot of time studying and trying to understand the purpose of Church, and the best way to fulfil this purpose. However, whilst I have been writing this blog the gospel itself has been something I have questioned and explored. I have had some really wacky, off base ideas ideas at times but I finally feel like I am ‘getting it’ something which is evidenced in the events of my life recently.

But I digress, “Becoming God’s Samurai” isn’t, I feel, the best name for this blog. It creates other images in peoples minds, such as violence, that this blog isn’t about. It’s also cumbersome, considering that even I get the spelling wrong sometimes.

For these reasons on the 1st of October this blog will become armyofpriests.com . I feel that this title expresses both the idea that we are at war, and are soldiers, but also the method of our war. We are an army of lovers as it were.

WordPress says that all links to godssamurai.wordpress.com will get redirected to armyofpriests.com and that the RSS should continue to work. But, just in case, they recommend changing your RSS over to http://armyofpriests.com/feed/ .

There will be some other changes too. Firstly, I have been able to organise my life in such a way that I can now post every day. Starting on the 1st. I have over a month’s worth of posts ready as it is. I also plan on doing some custom CSS at some point as well.

Thanks, and I will see you on Wednesday!

I’m actually doing Luke 18:18-29, which reads:

A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honour your father and mother.’”

“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

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.”

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus replied, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”

Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.”

I was looking around my room a month or so ago and noticed how much stuff I had (most of it I don’t even use!). Meanwhile, children in Africa starve to death because worms (from untreated water) in their stomach consume all nutrients before they do. They starve to death whilst eating. It only required a 50c tablet to cure…

So I’m doing it. I’m getting rid of all this junk. I’ve been doing it over time, bit by bit. After all, none of it can bring happiness and there is nothing like the awesome feeling that happens when you get rid of all this dead weight…

After all, Luke 16:13 makes it pretty clear that you have to hate money to love God. You have to hate it. I don’t want that false idol near me. I don’t want it’s crap cluttering up my life. So I’m getting rid of it all. 

But what is really weird is that people think I am crazy. I get rid of something and they ask, “What are you getting rid of that for?” As if ‘that’ is something important. So I tell them that if they are so concerned about it, they can have it.

I mean really, why are people more concerned about my stuff than I am? It’s just stuff. It doesn’t make you happy, or give you meaning, it just makes you want to get insurance.

I’m not the crazy one. This bizarre world that expects people to buy, buy, buy to be happy is crazy. This world that expects you to work, work, work in order to buy is crazy.

There seems to be a treadmill people are on where work makes them sad. Then ads convince them that buying stuff will make them happy. So they buy lots of stuff, but in order to buy that stuff they need to work more… Do you see a problematic cycle here?

I believe that a happier lifestyle is one where you cut down your expenses, so you can work as little as possible, and use the time you save on relationships. Not stuff. People. Experiences. Whatever.

And in the meanwhile we can help those kids in Africa. Which is, quite frankly, awesome.

So why does the world think I am crazy? Maybe I have just gone sane.

Found on my computer.

Dear God,

Forgive us for being so comfortable when your children sleep on streets. Forgive us for being so comfortable when people die of hunger. Forgive us for being so comfortable when people die by our bombs. Forgive us for being so comfortable when we pass pesky beggars on the streets. Forgive us for being so comfortable in our big protective buildings. Forgive us for being so comfortable with the illusion of charity. Forgive us for being so comfortable with pain, and shame. Forgive us for being so comfortable with judgement. Forgive us for being so comfortable with a small, boxed in God.

Most of what I know is probably wrong. It’s a frightening statement. At some point in time I will attack the ‘truths’ I currently hold with an axe and refine, reform, or reconsider them all together. According to Otto Neurath, the search for truth is like fixing a leaky boat. To fix one plant you must stand on others that will later also need to be replaced.

It’s a conundrum which can cause some insecurity. Modern society – the world of our parents and of the church – holds knowledge in very high esteem. Christianity can often be reduced to simply knowing the right stuff. We gain popularity points for knowing the right stuff (ever played the NIV Bible Game?). Our courses for new Christians are all based around imparting knowledge. Our Sunday Services serve the same purpose for the more long term Christians. Even faith seems to have been redefined as “believing the right stuff”.

Yet when we get to heaven I do not expect there to be a pop quiz:

1. Do you believe in a literal hell?
2. Do you believe in the penal substitutionary atonement?
3. When was the beginning and end of each dispensation and what were their spiritual names (in Hebrew)?

I’m sure every one would agree that such an idea is preposterous. But when someone questions on of the ‘sacred cows’ they are viciously attacked. At times when I have suggested we have to act on our faith by loving the unlovely I have been informed that bible study is more important.

Ultimately it is easier to trust in our knowledge than it is to trust in God. After all, I can’t undo my chains of sin, I can’t add an extra minute to my life, but I can read up on systematic theologies, learn ancient Hebrew and Greek, and repeat the 5 points of Calvinism.

Theology can be a false God. Believing we can get to heaven because we believe the 4 spiritual laws is a world away from believing we are safe because we trust God (yet the Campus Crusade for Christ course on discipleship teaches that we should do the former). Knowing God is a big jump from knowing about God (Mathew 7:21-23). Yet too many times I have seen people hold on to their theologies so tight that their conversations repeatedly descend into very unloving arguments. It seems our allegiance to our beliefs is stronger than Christ’s command to “love one another” (John 13:34-35).

So many times I have believed something only to find years later that some new apiece of information undermines it completely. As such, I have become willing to admit that I am probably wrong about most things. Even this post. Don’t get me wrong – I believe there is ‘absolute truth’ (or absolute fact?) but I am not proud enough to suggest that I know it. Only God does and I have learnt to let Him reveal to me what He will when He wills it.

At the same time, I still teach (or share) what I know, even though it is probably wrong. Now that takes faith; to believe that God will teach people instead of you and will fix your errors. I also still search for truth and try to stretch my understanding (I am probably ‘more right’ than before, yet still pretty dumb compared to God). But I have learnt that I don’t need to know everything to be of worth to God and I don’t need to have a ‘crisis of faith’ every time something I believe gets turned over.

I just believe God will help me out. And I believe in making mistakes, refining beliefs, and trying again. I believe Christ’s death covers my misunderstanding.