Gsw820group5's Blog

Continue the discussion

admingroup5 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:02:27 +0000

Thank you to everyone who joined in our discussion about Christian Hope! But it doesn’t end here! We invite you to to follow our Wikispace link where you will be able to see our collective work on this subjects, with some of your comments too. Feel free to edit it, and put some of your own flavour into it.

Installing Hope into people’s daily lives

admingroup5 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:27:20 +0000

In 1938 during the IMC meeting at Tambaran we saw a fundamental shift in the understanding of eschatology. Eschatology was no more seen as only God`s plans for the future, but also God`s plan for the world right now. This idea is already found in the book James where it is stated that it is of no use to tell a hungry person that God will help him/her one day in the future and not give the person bread. People need to experience something of the reality of God in the now in order to have hope for the future.
Throughout history, the Church has also tended to comfort people with the notion that you only have to grit your teeth, AND BEAR IT! Because one day, all of our troubles will be gone, every tear will be wiped away, and there shall be no more death! But does this approach really help people to understand hope, and the type of relation we have to one another, and God? Especially in a missiological setting?
When bringing the gospel to people who haven’t met God yet, does it seem sufficient to tell them: “I know that you need help, but don’t worry, one day God will relieve your pain and suffering”, and send them away with a Bible. Although there has been a shift in missiology to a more holistic approach, do we install hope into people’s lives right now, or not?
Some people seemed to react quite strongly to our previous post on Oprah and the Church. We would like to maintain our viewpoint to illustrate the way the seemingly secular-world have been much more successful in addressing peoples needs in the world, than the church. Oprah does not equal the church, but it is a question of functionality. Do we function as we should?

Can the church learn something from Oprah?

admingroup5 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:08:18 +0000

Tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorism, sickness, war, crime, poverty… These are words very familiar to us in our modern world. We hear it on radio, read it in the papers, see it on television. But not just in the negative sense. We hear it when people are doing something to help heal these problems. Like on reality television. But do we ever hear anything about it in our churches? Does it feature in the news letters of our congregations? Do people find more hope from Oprah than in the church?

We believe that the church needs to reconnect to people`s lifes. We have become a consumerist society, where we switch on televisions and hear the theme songs of programs that give us instant hope. Yet the church is slow to provide us with hope, if any. The pain that people experience is experienced in realtime and therefore the church cannot take weeks or months to decide the give hope in certain situations.

Maybe we should reconsider the type of hope the church sells? Does the church address people’s problems with a “quick-fix” approach, or is the church focussed on relationships. Could these relationships bring us more substantial hope? Maybe this type of relationship-based hope take a little longer to develop, and maybe this type of hope will last longer than talk-shows, self-help programs and books or quick-fix one-liners…

Turning off the Lighthouse

admingroup5 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:32:07 +0000

“If we turn off the lighthouse of Eschatology we can only grope around in darkness and despair”. Bosch uses these words to describe the importance of Eschatology in Christian hope. We have explored various other forms of hope inside, and outside of religion, and have mentioned aspects such as love, money, politics etc.

But the one thing that distinguishes religious hope from other types of hope, is Eschatology. It has also become necessary to look at what form this eschatology embodies. Is it something that happens when you die? Or is it already happening? Or did it happen a long time ago?

Our time is marked by an Eschatological fever, and in the Protestant orthodoxy and Pietism, this has coincided with a negative view of the physical world in many cases: “The body is bad, the spirit is good”. But then Bosch says: “Christian hope does not spring from despair about the present. We hope because of what we have already experienced. Christian hope is both possession, and yearning, arrival, and being on the way.” Eschatology, wich is then to be viewed as the Lighthouse of Christian Faith, is not a light at the end of the horizon, but guides you from where you are now. It is of no use to you once you reached land, it guides you while you are still at sea.

What are these lighthouse-moments, that shine from a shore we want to reach, to guide us while we are still at sea? Is it love? Is it justice? And do we as Church sometimes fall short of being a “lighthouse” in the world? Does this “Body-Bad, Spirit-Good” attitude keep us from seeing the same light-beacon of Eschatological hope as our non-religious brothers and sisters that sail the same sea…?

No Religion: No Hope??

admingroup5 — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:59:39 +0000

A person can live 40 days without food, 8 days without water, 8 minutes without oxygen but not one second without hope. According to Bosch, Moltmann is of opinion that religion can not function without hope and hope cannot function without religion. But we would like to pose the question: can hope only be found in religion or are there other ways to connect to the streams of hope that can be found in daily life. And are we simply blind to it? There are religions that don’t have any clear-cut eschatological dimensions i.e. Buddhism. So what is their connection to hope?

If we regard Moltmann’s statement as true, that hope can only be found in religion, in what specific aspect(s) of religion can it be found? Are we arrogant to assume that hope can only be found in religion? The first traces we found apposing the above can be found in the Enlightenment. During the Enlightenment era hope was discarded because everything was seen in a pattern of cause-effect. No attention was given to the role of ‘purpose’. What to wish for was a subject not given much attention by Enlightenment scholars. However, according to Bosch (Transforming Mission: p.499) religion gives us a grip on what we should wish for.

No religion: no hope… Statement or question?

Hello world!

Cobus — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:52:38 +0000

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