More than bearable... In fact, a blessing!

Continuing in the theme of "an every day spirituality", I thought I would share a short reading that came from my devotions this morning -

Think of the number of people who have been encouraged in this way by the simple writing and profound life of Brother Lawrence. How vastly enriched we are that he was finally persuaded, almost against his will, to write down how he had learned "The Practice of the Presence of God". His famous words still throb with life and joy, "The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.

-- from Freedom of Simplicity by Richard Foster.

And, here's one of the prayers from the little prayer book for exams -

There are times, O God, when I am overwhelmed by the evidence of Your presence. It can be seen in the work that I study, the conversations during the day, the scenes of nature about us on this campus and area.

Let these build my faith, and rededicate my resolve to do the best possible revision of my work for these exams. They are important both me and to You.

As I read books I find Your presence with people in every Age. As I examine the microscope, I see the minute beauty and excellence of Your creation. As I enter the library I find others studying so they too might bring hope to our world.

"Come see what the Lord has done, the astounding deeds he has wrought on earth" Psalm 46:8 (REB)

Technorati tags: Spirituality, Prayer, devotion

Blogger problems - anyone else struggling? Any suggestions?

I've been having quite a few problems with blogger in the last few weeks - perhaps it is the increase of traffic to my blog? Posting is a real problem since each time I post via the web it has to upload almost 17MB of data to my website (I know that it is much easier if one simply posts to a standard blogger account, but I want the security of knowing that my posts are safely housed on my own domain).

Has anyone else been having problems with blogger in the last few days?

What are some of the problems I've had?

- Images that won't upload.

- Blog posts timing out.

- Updating the blog and then suddenly discovering that the whole page is blank!

- Formatting problems with my template (and the inability to change my template header graphic to something unique).

So, what are other people using? I can see that Stephen and Barry seem to be using wordpress, oh and so is Sivin (see links on the left), is that the best alternative for a more ardent blogger?

What I need is:

- Blogging facilities that will allow me to post from a web browser, or simply post to my blog via an email (like this post).

- Something that looks good, is customizable, and can handle fairly high volumes.

- Something that is not too expensive.

All help and insight would be appreciated! Thanks, Dion

What every South African Church MUST do... If it is to be obedient.

Each year I have challenged my students, and my congregation, to look around them and understand the needs of our society. The basic principle is:

God will not consider how you pastored your congregation, but how you ministered to your community.

In the light of this I have become convinced that any Church in Southern Africa that does not have an effective HIV AIDS ministry has some growing to do in order to be obedient to God, and to participate in God's mission of bringing Christ's healing and transformation to the world.

Central to my theology is the question "What must the Gospel look like?" - we so often hear what the Gospel sounds like, but ask yourself the question, what does the Gospel LOOK LIKE in nation where there are more deaths than births? What does the Gospel look like where there are millions of Child headed households? What does the Gospel look like where people have monitised life saving drugs, turning the suffering of others into their profit? What does the Gospel look like? What is Good News to the dying? Of course the Gospel looks like our Churches - isn't it amazing that in a country where 78% of the population indicated that they were Christians we face social problems such as this?

I still have some work to do!

Today this shocking news report was released:

South Africa is in danger of losing the battle against HIV/Aids, the United Nations children's agency has warned.

Unicef's South Africa representative, Macharia Kamau, said infection and death rates were outpacing treatment.

This was having a devastating effect on children whose parents died of Aids, and sent out a dire message for the future, he said.

Mr Kamau said if present trends continued, there could be five million orphans in South Africa by 2015.

Huge risk

South Africa is one of just nine countries worldwide where infant mortality is rising - from 60 deaths per 1,000 births in 1990, to 95 deaths today.

The main reason, Unicef says, is HIV/Aids.

The average infection rate is almost 30% of the population - and in some regions it is closer to 50%.

Speaking in Geneva, Mr Kamau said the effect on children was devastating, and that infants whose mothers died of Aids were at huge risk of dying themselves.

Older children who have lost one or more parents faced a struggle to survive and to go to school, he added.

In South Africa today there are 1.5 million Aids orphans. If the trend of 400,000 deaths from Aids per year continues, by 2015, the number of orphans will have reached five million.

Mr Kamau said that the numbers of people in South Africa being treated for Aids were constantly being outstripped by the numbers becoming infected and dying.

He described this as a dire message for the future because although 380,000 South African Aids patients were receiving anti-retroviral drugs, 1.2 million were not receiving treatment.

As long as infection and death rates continued to outpace treatment, South Africa would lose the battle against Aids, he said.

Unicef says an aggressive expansion of treatment is needed immediately, alongside a much more open Aids prevention campaign from the government, to challenge the stigma which still surrounds the disease in South Africa.

Spirituality Podcast: MP3 Bible study by Dr Robert Aboagye-Mensah from Ghana

It has been a while since I've uploaded a Spirituality podcast to the blog. This podcast is a pre-recorded Bible study of Dr Robert Aboagye-Mensah, the Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana. I have a second one that I need to edit and upload (I hope to be able to do so by the weekend).

The theme of this first Bible Study is "Come Holy Spirit, heal and transform Your Church" it is a wonderfully challenging and encouraging African Christian perspective.

Please feel free to leave comments!

You can download the podcast here (7.5MB)

Technorati tags: Podcast, Bishop, Methodist, Ghana,

If you're going to do it, at least enjoy doing it... She has curves in the right places! A creation spirituality.

To skip my diatribe and see the curvaceous, well rounded, beauty - scroll to the bottom of this post....

I am a theologian, but I am also a student of the natural sciences. Straight from school I spent some time studying science, and both my theology Masters, and my Doctoral work focussed on theology and science.

I have spent years trying to understand atoms, and sub atomic particles, trying to fathom the complexity of the EPR (that's Einstein, Rosen and Podolsky) 'tunneling effect', and how quantum theory can relate to the faith that I have in a God who holds everything in existence moment by moment.

I've just recently had to go through a whole stack of my foundational work in this regard for a book I've just finished writing about the Cosmic Christ (I'll post about that separately). I have a great appreciatoin for the minds that have formed the western scientific paradigm (by my mind the most important of them are), but they have also caused us some problems (which relate to the curves you'll see below):

• Plato who emphasized, in a clear philosophical system that material reality was distinct (although only a 'poor copy' of the truer spiritual reality it reflected). The positive development was the recognition of material reality as distinct, the negative element was the duality created between spirit and matter.
• Next, in my mind, was the philosophy of Rene Descartes (the famous 'I think, therefore I am' man. cogito ergo sum, although I have always thought it should be cogito, cogito, ergo, cogito sum (I think, I think, therefore I think I am...) Just kidding. Oh, and by the way, his name is pronounced "day car", NOT "des car tes"!). Descartes' philosophy of being developed the Aristotelian principle of 'matter' being an 'extension of mind' (res cogitans and res extensa). In short, he asked the question "How can I be sure that I TRULY exist?" i.e., how could he be sure that his body, the world, and everything else was not just a dream (like a bad episode of the 80's soap Opera Dallas when JR Ewing was shot - if you're too young to remember - google it! ). So, he couldn't sure that anything that he thought was real (i.e., material reality) could be truly trusted. The only thing that he could be certain of was that he was thinking (i.e., that he was a sentient, thinking being, thinking about what existed) - hence the statement "I think, therefore I am". The positive step in this was that it created an 'objective' and a 'subjective' reality (i.e., something that the res cogitans could observe, res extensa). The downside was that it further removed the sacred, spiritual, and sentience, from material reality - the duality between spirit and matter was widened.
• Next came the English physicists Sir Isaac Newton, under whose tree (you remember, the one from which the apple supposedly fell that started the whole 'gravity thing') I have stood under in Cambridge! I'll post the photo to prove it! Newton discovered, and suggested, that the whole of the material (objective) Universe could be objectively studied, and that when one did so one could determine clear and definable laws according to which it operated - these are what became known as the laws of physics. By understanding these laws you could thus understand all of material reality! This was quite a positive step for science! It is what made things like building bridges, flight, and car engines possible - engineering would be lost without it. However, the downside was that many people began to disregard, and doubt, the presence of God in in creation (if creation was more like a mathematically precise machine, than a living organism, then God's only role - if God existed at all, was simply to build the clock, wind it up, and watch it unwind).
• Next came another English philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon, he took Newton and Descartes theories a step further (by they way Newton and Descartes theories become commonly known as Newtonian - Cartesian logic). He suggested that 1) if material reality is separate from 'self', and material reality ran according to clearly deducible 'laws', then by discovering and manipulating these 'laws' one could control the destiny of material reality. The upside of this theory was that it held some truth! If you could work out how to harness the power of water to drive a turbine, to create electrical energy (something that only happened much later), you could get 'something for nothing' (or so it seemed at the time). The downside of this theory is that it is so devoid of any sense of harmony between humans and creation that it lead to the abuses of the industrial revolution, and almost all ecological abuse since! Certainly, America's unwillingness to sign the Kyoto protocol accord smacks of this kind of thinking "It doesn't matter what we do to the rest of creation, after all we're seperate from it! So, if the planet dies, it doesn't affect who and what we truly are - all that we need is to find ways to manipulate it to get what we want". Sad, but true. A further downside of this philosophical approach was that it ONLY VALUED those things that could be measured and quantified - read the works of the father of modern economics, Adam Smith, and you'll see that even people have a value attached to them... What you can earn and produce determines your worth. In the Baconian world, beauty, faith, happiness, and spirit had no value whatsoever because they could not accurately quantified, and because of that they could not be manipulated.
  
• For the first time in history material reality was seen as purely functional, completely devoid of God's sacred and loving power... And, so we abused it.

Now, that's the whole problem with the false dichotomy, and duality, that is created between material and spiritual reality! All of creation is God's creation! Sadly, because we no longer recognize that we think that the only place that we can worship is in Church!

Of course there have been MANY significant developments in science since then that show just how material reality is filled with God's divine power and presence. But you'll have to buy my next book to read about that! Ha ha!

So, here's the point that I was getting to when I started writing this post....

When God created the heavens and the earth, God said "It is good..." (Gen 1). Moreover, we are told in Paul's (or the Pauline author's) letter to the Colossians that "...by him [Jesus] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Col 1:16-17, emphasis mine).

That's what the Bible tells us, theology further shows us that God sanctifies created reality when he chooses to become 'incarnate' in it - the divine enters physical being! Moreover, have you ever thought that when Jesus ascended into the Godhead (Acts 1:9-11) he took atoms into the Trinitarian life! By this I mean, Jesus didn't leave his body behind, Jesus fully God, fully human, and Nicea Constantinople creed tells us, ascended into the divine Trinitarian life.

So, next time we abuse creation, or choose to disregard it - remember that God has sanctified it, and if you abuse creation you are abusing the God who has entered created, material reality, and taken that material reality into the divine life of the Godhead!

The point is that today I decided to take my 1967 Vespa to the Kentucky Fried Chicken drive through! It was a spiritual experience! As I rode that curvy, rounded, beautiful orange scooter, I experienced the joy of being alive to God in Christ. It could feel the goodness of God's creation! God created the air, the sunset, the plants, and let me assure you, God created MY VESPA!

(the one on the left is mine... I used to own the one on the right as well, but she has gone to a good home and been replaced with a beast).

So, my advice is, if you're going to live life, ENJOY IT! Find joy in God's creation, give God glory for what is around you. A creation spirituality, like all spirituality, is a discipline - it takes discipline to say "Lord, I CHOOSE to see you in the world around me, active, alive, keeping all things in being. And, as I see you, I praise and thank you for your beauty, power, and love!"

Oh, and yes, I do enjoy writing as much as I enjoy riding my Vespa! Any other Vespa riders out there who want to join me for an occasional ride in the Pretoria area?

Tecnorati tags: Spirituality, creation, Philosophy, Plato, Descartes, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, sexy, curves, Vespa

A prayer guide for use during examinations - Wohooo!!! My first international sale!!!

Hey friends, I just wanted to share some great news with you (good news HAS to be shared!)

I sold the first copy of my little book (emphasis upon LITTLE) A prayer guide for use during examinations. Through Amazon.com today! How's that? Of course the postage will cost more than what the buyer paid for the book! But, it's worth it if it helps someone gain some encouragement as they face their examinations.

If anyone already has a copy and would like to write a review on it for me, then please won't you go the Amazon.com page for 'A prayer guide for use during examinations' and say a few (kind) words!?

P.S. If you life in South Africa and would like to order a copy (or more) please contact me directly (my email address is on the right hand side) - it is both cheaper and faster, plus I can write you a little love note in the front it you want one!

Thanks to whoever bought that first copy in Kentucky, USA! You book is on it's way!

AND, PPS Janet, your copies are on their way tomorrow.

Technorati tags: Prayer Guide, Dion Forster, Amazon.com, Prayer, Exams

Bad preaching, cliched quotes, silly jokes, and the same old scripture verses!

The Bible is a very big book...

Yup, I've preached a few of these (well, more than a few), and I have CERTAINLY hear a few hundred....

God's people deserve better - come on preachers, buy a few good Bible commentaries, or at least use good internet commentaries, and READ! When ever I am visiting a city and one of my past students has a Church there I try to visit... Sometimes I am wonderfully surprised by how much they've grown... Sometimes they're still preaching the same Sunday school theology they preached at College.

Technorati tags: Bible, bad preaching, sermon illustration, cliche

Resources to guide your prayers, thoughts, and choices during World Hunger relief week.

Did you know that Hunger kills more people than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined!?

This week is World Hunger Relief week. I would encourage all Churches to insert some prayers into their liturgies, service sheets, or weekly devotionals.

From the links below you can get Prayer resources, Bible verses, and even games to help focus your prayers, and the choices and thoughts of your cell group, or Church during world hunger relief week.

Here are a few facts about world hunger:

You can download a MS Word prayer guide that has 40 prayers, with additional information, to guide your prayer during the week by clicking on this link.

• 854 million people are hungry
  
• 20 million people are undernourished
• 1 billion people live on less than $1/day
• 146 million children under age 5 are underweight
  • 10 million children under age 5 die every year, over half of hunger-related causes
• 1 in 6 people is hungry
• 1 in 6 people lacks safe drinking water
• 
  
• In the developing world, 20 million low-birth-weight babies are born each year. They are at risk of dying in infancy or suffering lifelong physical or cognitive disabilities.
  
• 3/4 of all deaths in children under age 5 in the developing world are caused by malnutrition or related diseases.
  
• Each day in the developing world, 16,000 children die from hunger or preventable diseases such as diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, or malaria. Malnutrition is associated with over half of those deaths. That is equal to 1 child every 5.4 seconds.
  
• Hungry children are more likely to be ill and absent from school.
  
• Hungry children suffer from 2 to 4 times more individual health problems--such as unwanted weight loss, fatigue, headaches, irritability, inability to concentrate, and frequent colds--as low-income children whose families do not experience food shortages.

---

Africa quick facts - hunger and HIV/AIDS

• The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that there are 206 million people who are hungry in sub-Saharan Africa. This region accounts for 13 percent of the world's population, yet it is home to 25 percent of the world's undernourished population.
  
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, 24.9 million people live with HIV/AIDS, which is 63% of the world's 39.5 million total cases.
  
• In half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, per capita economic growth is estimated to be falling by between 0.5 and 1.2 percent each year as a direct result of AIDS. (Bread for the World)

For detailed information, resources, and a truly wortwhile read, please visit Evangelical Lutheran Church of America's website.

Technorati tags: World Hunger, resources, Church, Social Gospel

Something's wrong with this picture! Baragwanath Hospital

This evening the SABC 3 news reported that the Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala Msimang, visited the Soweto Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. The reason for the visit was to contain the scandal of 3 newborn babies being placed in a cardboard box in the maternity ward
earlier this month. For the full story please read this news report:http://www.iol.co.za/

What was shocking is that the news reported that whilst there were not enough cribs for newborn babies, due to equipment shortages, the budget reflected that 9 Million rand was spent on the telephone calls last year, and just 7 Million on equipment! And this, all came out of a 1.1 Billion rand budget!

Something is wrong with this picture...

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." Matthew 25:45

This Friday as I fast I shall have something more to add to my list, and something for which I need to ask for forgiveness - anger...

Technorati tags: baragwanath, baby, Manto Tshabalala Msimang, scandal

Freedom of the press under attack in South Africa - tie a yellow ribbon to your blog

Repost from http://www.trafficdepartment.co.za/.

Tie a yellow ribbon to your blog or website Today. It is a sad day, an attack on our freedom is being made. In honour of press freedom, tie a yellow ribbon to your blog or website.

To add a ribbon to your website simply right click on this image, save the location, or save the image to your hard drive, then add it to your blog posting.

Email me (see the link on the right) if you would like me to email the image directly to you.

For a full article describing the problem please see the Dispatch Online blog.

Technorati tags: Press Freedom, South Africa, yellow ribbon, blog

The prosperity gospel (with a small 'g') - fantasy, fallacy, or fully realisable?

I am always a little weary about pointing a finger directly at what I find wrong in another person, simply because I am so well aware of how wrong I am most of the time, about most things... However, this afternoon when I got home my 8 year old was flicking through the channels on DSTV. She stopped for a moment on TBN (Trinity Broadcast Network) and I caught a glimpse of a guy called Andre Roebert.

I have great respect for the late Ed Roebert, not necessarily because I agree with his theology (which I cannot say I have studied in any detail), but simply because God used him to do something great in South Africa during his lifetime. I remember reading the story of the 'Hatfield Baptist Church' (if I'm not mistaken) called "Church ablaze" many, many, years ago, and being impressed by the courage and faith that it took to break with convention, follow God's calling and dream, and do something great. I think John Wesley did it in his day, Nicky Gumbel will surely be remembered for doing it in our day, and possibly Ed will be remembered in South Africa (surely in Pretoria) for what he did here.

The Hatfield Christian church (now near Menlyn in Pretoria), is still doing great things I believe - a school, AIDS ministries etc. As for Ed Roebert, well, I never did hear too much more about him, or take the time to read up and scrutinize his theology - sometimes ignorance is bliss!

So, seeing the name Andre Roebert made me wonder who this guy is - I was curious. So, I did what every net savvy person does, I 'googled' him and found his ministry website - River Ministries in East London. I clicked on the link expecting to find the usual glossy, independent church web page... Instead here's what I found (located right in the centre of the web page):

For those who don't load images on in their browsers let me copy the text from the image below:

River Ministries is a non-profit organisation (incorporated in terms of Section 21 of the Companies Act of South Africa that was established as an administrative vehicle for a number of related and like minded ministries as well as some commercial business entities. The purpose of the group is to establish the Kingdom of God on the earth through the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ - River Ministries was established in 1995 by Pastors Andre and Jenny Roebert

The ministry's slogan seems to be 'more than a church' - I might say, that by the standards of orthodox ecclesiology this is so much LESS than a church.... But, I could be wrong.

When I looked at the 'like minded' commercial enterprises (mentioned in their statement above), I see that they have a property (probably their Church building - I think I went there for a friend's Ordination some years ago) which they sub let, and an air charter service with 3 planes!

Now here's where I need to ask for guidance and help. I am constantly sprouting forth about doing the work of God's Kingdom in new and creative ways... Yet, why do I feel so uncomfortable about this? Perhaps its because for a ministry that is 'not for profit', their primary communication to all visitors to their main website is about a company, with no statement about the content and power of the Gospel to transform individuals and society (note I use a capital 'G', whereas they used a small 'g')?

I worry about this kind of portrayal of Jesus, and of those who serve him and follow his ministry. We read in the Gospels that Jesus was one who lived on the margins of society, with a preferential option for the outcast and disregarded, those who were poor, oppressed and disenfranchised. I wonder if Jesus would have set up a property and air charter service to establish His Kingdom among us? Please forgive me if I am wrong, and if I have judged this ministry unfairly. I don't think that all wealth is wrong - in fact I know quite a few very wealthy people who are responsible and faithful stewards. But, I do worry that these people have made it the centre of their 'ministry'. You need only look at the list of CD's available (read the topics and descriptions) to see that there is an unhealthy emphasis on capital gain, not for the good of society, but for the enrichment of self!

My request is that as Christians we take care not to taint the Gospel of Christ with the gospel of mammon.

I seem to remember Jesus, when teaching on the Kingdom, saying something about it being more difficult for a rich person to get into the Kingdom than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle (Luke 18:25).

Sadly, I smell a scandal brewing...

Technorati tags: Church, Money, Gospel, mammon,

Rankings in religion! Number 1... I say we start a little cult?

So, it has happened at last! Dion's Random Ramblings is number one in religion (on www.amatomu.com at least).

What do you say? Should we start a little cult? I know I'm strange enough to keep it going... And let me not say too much about a few others who subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog....

Vrystaat! We could all wear Orange in this strange cult, sing songs about trains, bribe waitresses not to give toys to our kids, try to win people from the 'emerging movement' to orthodoxy, live in Malaysia and be friends with Brian Mclaren, look for prophetic inspiration between sermons, live to be 'gruntled', or go to Duke to learn just how African we truly are, and learn to wear carpenters shoes, or become a dassie bouncing, sky pilot with a 'bell butt'!

If you're really looking for a worthwhile read, please follow the links to the blogs on the right of this post.... They're much better than mine. Truly!

Regardless, thanks for reading the posts on this blog! I have no idea why you do it, but I'm grateful that you check in from time to time!!

I am a little snowed under today, I hope to post something more meaningful and serious tonight.

Rich blessing to all! And particularly a huge thanks to all those who asked for copies of the little prayer guide book for Zimababwe! I am overwhelmed by the response! It goes to a good cause.

Dion

Technorati tags: blog, amamtomu, religion, theology, South Africa