'Real' Community

As I contemplate an overseas conference in a beautiful European country, the words of G.K. Chesterton* on 'real' community life, are an important reminder. Living in one's own community is where we need to concentrate most of our energy and prayer. We need to guard against the tendency to want to escape everyday life in favour of more exciting adventures.

In this quote Chesterton argues that families and communities are good, not because they are "peaceful, pleasant and at one" but because, often they are not, and that we need to learn to stick it out, not simply run away to exotic locations as an 'escape'.  How desperately do we at times seek to escape the mundane grind of daily life?

If we were to-morrow morning snowed up in the street in which we live, we should step suddenly into a much larger and much wilder world than we have ever known. And it is the whole effort of the typically modern person to escape from the street in which he lives. First he invents modern hygiene and goes to Margate. Then he invents modern culture and goes to Florence. Then he invents modern imperialism and goes to Timbuctoo. He goes to the fantastic borders of the earth. He pretends to shoot tigers. He almost rides on a camel. And in all this he is still essentially fleeing from the street in which he was born; and of this flight he is always ready with his own explanation. He says he is fleeing from his street because it is dull; he is lying. He is really fleeing from his street because it is a great deal too exciting. It is exciting because it is exacting; it is exacting because it is alive. He can visit Venice because to him the Venetians are only Venetians; the people in his own street are men. He can stare at the Chinese because for him the Chinese are a passive thing to be stared at; if he stares at the old lady in the next garden, she becomes active. He is forced to flee, in short, from the too stimulating society of his equals--of free men, perverse, personal, deliberately different from himself. The street in Brixton is too glowing and overpowering. He has to soothe and quiet himself among tigers and vultures, camels and crocodiles. These creatures are indeed very different from himself. But they do not put their shape or colour or custom into a decisive intellectual competition with his own. They do not seek to destroy his principles and assert their own; the stranger monsters of the suburban street do seek to do this.

Living in community day after day where we rub against those who are different in appearance, values, priorities, interests, habits and beliefs is ultimately the default position that God calls us to. Yes, he calls us to the ends of the earth too, but most of us live ordinary people in ordinary places, amongst other ordinary people to whom we are to witness of Christ.  This of course will be played out with other believers through our local church, it will be evident as we live the life of a neighbour in our street and it will be seen as we live together as families. We are to imitate Christ's humility as we live out our lives (Philippians 2:1-18)

This is challenging stuff!

1So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others (Phil 2:1-4).  

Other posts


'God, the City and Us' HERE

'The Tyranny and Challenge of Time' HERE

* HT: Thanks to John Smuts for pointing me to this quote

Other People's Children (A Reprise)

When I first blogged on this topic in September 2008, it was in response to a great question that Tim Adeney had asked in a blog he was writing at the time.

"How do you feel about other people's children? Do you see them as people worthy of your time, effort, prayers and affection?"

I've been encouraged to revisit this topic by an excellent post my daughter wrote recently on her blog 168 Hours titled 'The Disappearance of Caring Adults'. In it she presented a great quote from Steve Biddulph and ended with a few questions of her own, one of which was "How can we make ourselves more available to our children, and other people's children?" I've repeated my last post on the topic (with a few minor revisions) because I think it's such an important topic that touches all children and families.

Love your neighbour as yourself

Tim's question of course was directed to those in the church, and is worth asking within the church alone, but I have always felt that as Christians we are far too ready to place a fence around our concerns for others. As I reflect upon questions like those from Tim and Nicole, I can't help but think about how I was treated as a child and the impact it had on my life. While there is good biblical justification for the priority that parents are to give to the care, concern and spiritual growth of their children, we can easily become oblivious to the needs of our neighbours. By neighbours, I mean the broadest sense of the word, the Luke 10 sense, where Jesus challenges the expert in the law ("lawyer" ESV) who had just tried to challenge Jesus himself. You no doubt know how it unfolds; the lawyer asks, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus responds by asking him "what is written in the Law?" The lawyer then quotes from Leviticus 19:8 - we are to "Love your neighbour as yourself." Jesus then responds with the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan and makes it clear for the lawyer that the extent of his love and concern for others should extend beyond his family and fellow Jews even to a stranger (Luke 10:25-37), in fact in other places Jesus extends this even further - "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:43-45). Jesus makes it clear that the Christian life must demonstrate this type of neighbourliness.


Some decent men and women in my life

When I reflect on my first 31 years as a non-believer and atheist, I can identify a number of decent men and a couple of women, who took an interest in me; who saw me as their 'neighbour'. These were men and women demonstrated in the richest sense of Jesus' parable what it is to be a neighbour to other people's children. I'll share how just two of them did it.

There was Paul, the owner of the local slot car track and pinball hall. As a young teenager I would spend up to 25 hours per week at the slot car track - playing pinball machines, racing and repairing slot cars, messing around and hanging over the counter talking to Paul about sport, cars, girls and life in general. Paul had his own wife and two children and his mother-in-law living with him. He was a devoted husband and father even though like most small business owners he worked long hours. He was always quick to give advice - "Don't talk like that!" "Don't you need to go home to do some school work?" "Do your parents know that you're here so late?" "What are you going to do with yourself when you leave school?" "One day I want to be able to tell people that you're an engineer, not unemployed."

There was Mr Campbell my 4th grade teacher. I was a grubby and chubby little kid who would try to sit at the back of the room, with the seat out of my hand-me-down pants and a neglected appearance that was brought to the attention of DOCs on at least one occasion. He was the first teacher who recognised some things in me that others had missed. He took an interest in me in and out of the classroom. He would talk with me in the playground when I drifted towards him. He would encourage me inside the classroom, calling on me to answer questions when my hand didn't go up, setting me work that would challenge me, talking patiently with me when I messed up, and looking for ways to challenge me. He gave me several jobs. One of them was to put me in charge of the brand new school aquarium with tropical fish. I'd never seen tropical fish before. I'd seen goldfish and the mullet I caught from the creek, but never fish like this. I was entrusted with the only local source of knowledge "An introduction to caring for tropical fish" and encouraged to take care of them; and I did with great success. Eventually, he gave me my first public speaking opportunity, a talk I delivered on tropical fish to the class. I was now an expert on something.

There were other people too - a baseball coach, a cricket coach, a single woman who lived next door called Evelynne, a high school geography teacher, Mrs Clarke across the road, and the father of one of my closest mates. All demonstrated that they were concerned for me and that they were interested in my life and my welfare. None of these people were Christians, but all were decent man or woman who had a significant impact on my life, second only perhaps to that the only significant Christian influence, my grandfather. While God was to use a variety of Christians later in my life (between the ages 20-31) building on my Grandfather's godly example, God also used these decent non-Christian men and women in my formative years.

The challenge

For me the challenge as a Christian is this. If God can use a few decent men and women who didn't know him or his eternal purposes, how much more can God use godly Christian men and women in the lives of their neighbour's children? We all need to ask, how available am I to be used in similar ways? In fact, how can I ensure that I am seeking to be used by God in this way? Am I even conscious that God might use me this way? Of course, I know that God expects me to do more than live alongside people, he wants me to share my faith in Christ with others. But how seriously do I take to heart that I am to love my neighbour as myself? And perish the thought, am I so bound up with caring for my own nuclear family that I have no time or interest in my neighbours (young and old)?

There isn't space to go into much detail, but my personal challenge, and one I hope readers will share, is for each of us to do a quick assessment of the type of neighbour we are to the other families even in our street or apartment block. Of course for this to happen, our lives need to intersect with their lives in some way. How can we make this happen? This will vary depending on our circumstances - whether young or old, married or single, male or female etc. If for example, you have a young family, you have a great opportunity to involve yourself in other people's lives. When my children were growing up my wife and I had wonderful opportunities to be involved with other families. For us there were three areas where we had numerous opportunities outside the church:

• Through school - we got to know parents and children at bus stops, in the playground, at school events and in the community. In one street where we lived our house was an open house for all 23 children in the street (21 of whom were girls!).
• Through sporting teams - my daughters played sport summer and winter in the primary school years and generally I ended up coaching their teams. As a result, I had opportunities to know the team members and their families.
• Through other out-of-school activities like dance classes and music lessons.

I have no idea what influence my wife and I had in these years but I do know that we were enriched by these opportunities, and that we began to develop a concern for these children and their families. With this came opportunities for prayer and for us to share our faith. As well, our own daughters saw us relating to other children, which I'm sure was helpful for them in the formative years of their faith. Christians must not be part of the disappearing group of "caring adults" that Nicole talks about in her post.

Related posts

I wrote an article on families in Case 12 (here) that considers research evidence on the importance of fathers have a special role.

I’ve also written a number of previous posts about families, including:

a) how time spent with children matters (here),
b) the negative impact of the reduction of time spent sharing meals (here),
c) the role of fathers more generally (here),
d) shared community responsibility for children in crisis (here),
e) being a church that welcomes and includes children (here).

Finally, I've written a number of more practical posts about fathers on my other blog 'Literacy, families and learning' (here).

Loving your neighbour's children

In a recent post on his blog titled How children bless - Part 5, Tim Adeney asked the excellent question:

"How do you feel about other people's children? Do you see them as people worthy of your time, effort, prayers and affection?"

Love your neighbour as yourself

I responded to his post because it's a question dear to my heart, and in the process I began thinking about how I was treated as a child and the impact it had on my life. Tim's question of course was directed to those in the church, and is worth asking within the church alone, but I have always felt that as Christians we are far too ready to place a fence around our concerns for others. While there is good biblical justification for the priority that parents are to give to the care, concern and spiritual growth of their children, we can easily become oblivious to the needs of our neighbours. By neighbours, I mean the broadest sense of the word, the Luke 10 sense, where Jesus challenges the expert in the law ("lawyer" ESV) who had just tried to challenge Jesus himself. You no doubt know how it unfolds; the lawyer asks, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus responds by asking him "what is written in the Law?" The lawyer then quotes from Leviticus 19:8 - we are to "Love your neighbour as yourself." Jesus then responds with the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan and makes it clear for the lawyer that the extent of his love and concern for others should extend beyond his family and fellow Jews even to a stranger (Luke 10:25-37), in fact in other places Jesus extends this even further - "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:43-45).


Some decent men in my life

When I reflect on my first 31 years as a non-believer and atheist, I can identify a number of decent men who took an interest in me; who saw me as their 'neighbour'. These were men who demonstrated in the richest sense of Jesus parable what it is to be a neighbour to other people's children. I'll share how just two of them did it.

There was Paul, the owner of the local slot car track and pinball hall. As a young teenager I would spend up to 25 hours per week at the slot car track - playing pinball machines, racing and repairing slot cars, messing around and hanging over the counter talking to Paul about sport, cars, girls and life in general. Paul had his own wife and two children and his mother-in-law living with him. He was a devoted husband and father even though like most small business owners he worked long hours. He was always quick to give advice - "Don't talk like that!" "Don't you need to go home to do some school work?" "Do your parents know that you're here so late?" "What are you going to do with yourself when you leave school?" "One day I want to be able to tell people that you're an engineer not unemployed."

There was Mr Campbell my 4th grade teacher. I was a grubby and chubby little kid who would try to sit at the back of the room, with the seat out of my hand-me-down pants and a neglected appearance that was brought to the attention of DOCs on at least one occasion. He was the first teacher who recognised some things in me that others had missed. He took an interest in me in and out of the classroom. He would talk with me in the playground when I drifted towards him. He would encourage me inside the classroom, calling on me to answer questions when my hand didn't go up, setting me work that would challenge me, talking patiently with me when I messed up, and looking for ways to challenge me. He gave me several jobs. One of them was to put me in charge of the brand new school aquarium with tropical fish. I'd never seen tropical fish before. I'd seen goldfish and the mullet I caught from the creek, but never fish like this. I was entrusted with the only local source of knowledge "An introduction to caring for tropical fish" and encouraged to take care of them; and I did with great success. Eventually, he gave me my first public speaking opportunity, a talk I delivered on tropical fish to the class. I was now an expert on something.

There were other people (a baseball coach, a cricket coach, a high school geography teacher, the father of one of my closest mates) who also demonstrated that they were concerned for me and that they were interested in my life and my welfare. None of these men were Christians, but each was a decent man and each had a significant impact on my life, second only perhaps to that the only significant Christian influence, my grandfather. While God was to use a variety of Christians later in my life (between the ages 20-31) building on it my Grandfather's godly example, God also used these few decent men in my formative years.

The challenge

For me the challenge as a Christian is this. If God can use a few decent men who didn't know him or his eternal purposes, how much more can God use godly Christian men in the lives of their neighbour's children? Furthermore, how available am I to be used in similar ways? In fact, how can I ensure that I am seeking to be used by God in this way? Am I even conscious that God might use me this way? Of course, I know that God expects me to do more than live alongside people, he wants me to share my faith in Christ with others. But how seriously do I take to heart that I am to love my neighbour as myself? And perish the thought, am I so bound up with caring for my own nuclear family that I have no time or interest in my neighbours (young and old)?

There isn't space to go into much detail, but my personal challenge, and one I hope readers will share, is for each of us to do a quick assessment of the type of neighbour we are to the other families even in our street or apartment block. Of course for this to happen, our lives need to intersect with their lives in some way. How can we make this happen? This will vary depending on our circumstances - whether young or old, married or single, male or female etc. If for example, you have a young family, you have a great opportunity to involve yourself in other people's lives. When my children were growing up my wife and I had wonderful opportunities to be involved with other families. For us there were three areas where we had numerous opportunities outside the church:

• Through school - we got to know parents and children at bus stops, in the playground, at school events and in the community. In one street where we lived our house was an open house for all 43 children in the street (42 of whom were girls!).
• Through sporting teams - my daughters played sport summer and winter in the primary school years and generally I ended up coaching their teams. As a result, I had opportunities to know the team members and their families.
• Through other out-of-school activities like dance classes and music lessons.

I have no idea what influence my wife and I had in these years but I do know that we were enriched by these opportunities, and that we began to develop a concern for these children and their families. With this came opportunities for prayer and for us to share our faith. As well, our own daughters saw us relating to other children, which I'm sure was helpful for them in the formative years of their faith.

A related post

I have written about the importance of communities being concerned about children more generally in a previous post titled "Other people's children"

Truth & the Internet 2

In the latest edition of Case magazine I explore the topic ‘Truth and the Internet’. Does the Internet change the way we learn and acquire knowledge? Does it pose a threat to truth? What are the implications for how we engage with and use the Internet for God’s purposes?

Above: Could they have had any idea of what was to come? U.S. Army Photo, number 163-12-62

In a previous post on this blog (here) I commented on the challenge of discerning the difference between truth and falsehood and the special problem that children have on the Internet (e.g. the challenge of a tree dwelling octopus!). And in an earlier post (here) I discussed the impact of new communication technology and the benefits and opportunities of the Internet for communication, learning and evangelism.

I’m a keen user of the Internet and appreciate that it is a useful tool that has great benefits for learning and communication. But I also know that it also poses threats to God’s truth and to the very definitions of truth and knowledge that shape our worldviews. In my Case article, I suggested that there are a few things that are critical if Christians are to make the Internet our servant, not our master:

• We need to rely on God’s word and give it first priority as the source of knowledge and truth about our God and his eternal plan for his people.
• We need to understand the interpretive communities (virtual and real) that we negotiate each day. We need to enter and participate in virtual communities with the same respect, purposes, enthusiasm and preparation with which we enter any physical community.
• We need to test the validity, accuracy and truth of anything we find on the Internet.
  

a) Avoiding being shaped by the Internet

There is a danger that in embracing the Internet we may be shaped by it. The postmodern thinker lives in a world of openness, doubt and uncertainty. The Internet as a platform for information exchange is a tool that sits comfortably with relativistic and postmodern thought. Meta-narratives like the Christian gospel can so easily be dismissed as just one telling of humanity’s story, just one possible truth amongst many, or perhaps even just one story amongst many stories.

It seems obvious that a key priority to avoid being shaped into the world’s mould is for the Christian to continually place a priority on God’s word. We should use the Internet both to strengthen our faith and to share it, but we need to do so with a healthy understanding of the varied epistemologies that we will encounter. Don Carson (in The Gagging of God) rightly suggests, that in a world dominated by radical hermeneutics and deconstruction, it will take diligence to fight against the tendency to accept that all interpretations of texts are equally valid.

The Christian needs to rely on God’s word as the ultimate test of what is right and true. Christians are people who “guard [their way]” according to God’s word, “storing up” God’s word in their hearts, “meditating on” and “delighting in” his statutes (Psalm 119:9-16).

b) Take care in, and show respect for, the Cyber communities we enter

Just as we must take care with the networks of people we join in the physical world, we must take care with the cyber communities we enter. The insight that interpretive communities and status hierarchies shape the understandings and beliefs of the individual is not a new one. Jesus himself asked the religious elite of his day, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44).

We need to understand the interpretive communities we visit, and engage in them with full understanding of the foundations on which they share their experiences and insights. Just as Christians share common beliefs based on their reading of God’s word and their understanding of it developed in interpretive communities (e.g. families, churches, Bible study groups etc), so too non-Christian networks and groups share common understandings gained as part of interpretive communities. The atheist, the Rotarian and the sceptic all share common views of the world within their communities. What is different is that Christians claim a shared understanding of the Living God and our confidence in this comes from the truth we see in God’s word. The Bible claims that God is the foundation and author of all truth and that this is focused on the person of Jesus who claimed, “I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:1). This truth stands above and shapes all other ‘truth’.

c) Test the validity, accuracy and truth of anything you find on the Internet

While the Internet can be useful for communicating truth, readers need to be able to assess information to judge if it is true. I continue to be amazed just as much by the inaccuracy of Internet, as I am by its comprehensiveness. Even an Oxford Press published book by a leading international scholar is to be questioned. How much more carefully should we read with discernment the words of an unknown person, representing an unknown organization, with unknown qualifications? As Howard Rheingold has pointed out, "the responsibility for determining the accuracy of texts shifted from the publisher to the reader when the functions of libraries shifted to search engines". This is not inherently bad; in fact, I see much that is good about this shift. Both children and adults need to ask themselves more questions of the content they encounter:

Who wrote this piece? What is the author's claim to expertise and knowledge in this area? From where does the writer derive his or her sources and how well regarded are such sources? What is the purpose of the writing? What are the underlying assumptions, ideology, values and worldview of the writer? How do the claims of this text match the claims of others?

Summing up

The Internet offers new possibilities and also threats. John Stackhouse points out in his excellent book “Humble Apologetics” - “If we are going to defend and commend our faith, we must do it in a new mode: with a different voice and in a different posture. Our apologetics must be humble.” This is a great challenge to me personally; both as a reader or lurker in numerous virtual communities of which I am part, or as I seek to invite others into one of my own virtual communities, such as the readership of this blog.

Above: Just one more connection! US Army photograph

Other people's children

Like all Australians I was shocked and saddened by the news that 18-month-old twins were found dead last week, weighing less than 4 kilograms. It appears they had probably been dead for over a week when found by an 11 year old sibling. The mother commented to police "I don't think I fed them enough". The likely cause of the twins' death was malnutrition. However, both parents have been charged with murder. Neighbours have been stunned. Their comments have included "We're shocked", “the kids were neglected”, “I wish I’d said more” etc.

A second case of alleged child neglect emerged this week with children as young as five found living in "unhygienic" conditions in the heart of Canberra. Three boys and a girl were taken away after being found home alone at a house littered with rubbish, dog bones and discarded toys, just a few kilometres from Australia’s Parliament. Their 35-year-old mother remains in police custody after yesterday being charged with four counts of neglecting a child and a charge of threatening to kill a person.


I could go on citing more examples, but it’s too depressing. As usual, we’ve had the same responses from the popular media blaming the Department of Community services for not acting sooner, asking when the government was going to do more, and interviewing family members and neighbours. Once again, some had little to say, some blamed others, a few expressed regret for not doing more when they noticed the obvious neglect.

It seems to me that we need to stop blaming everyone else for these terrible cases and begin to question how each of us look out for others in our communities. Yes, we also should rightly question the role that extended families play in supporting family members, but what do WE do? Do we accept some responsibility for other people’s children? Do we even know our neighbours? Could we recognise a case of neglect? Would we do anything if we did?

One of my colleagues from the United States, Professor of Early Childhood Education Lilian Katz, offered this comment some years ago on the community’s responsibility towards other people’s children:

"Each of us must come to care about everyone else's children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people's children. After all, when one of our children needs life-saving surgery, someone else's child will perform it. If one of our children is harmed by violence, someone else's child will be responsible for the violent act. The good life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people's children."

The Greek philosopher Socrates some 400 years before Christ was born also saw the need to value children:

Could I climb to the highest place in Athens, I would lift my voice and proclaim, "Fellow citizens, why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth and take so little care of your children to whom one day you must relinquish it all."

Parents have special responsibility for their own children, as do other family members, and there is a place for government and charitable agencies to support families at risk. But we all collectively share some responsibility in any community for the children of others, including strangers. While I’m not sure what Lilian Katz meant by the ‘good life’, the Bible points us ultimately to our relationship with God through Christ as the ultimate good. The good news of Christ leads to the ultimate good, being part of the Kingdom of God (Matthew 9:35). We should want this for our children and for other people’s children. As Katz points out, ultimately, the lives of our children and other people’s children in any community are interwined.

Jesus showed how precious children are and how important their future should be to us. He rebuked the disciples when they complained about parents who were bringing their children to him:

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." (Matthew 19:14)

Christ raised the status of children by this statement; revealing their worthiness. They are not mere ‘objects’ of pride for the parent, nor simply a resource to be utilized by the family; they are potential heirs of the kingdom of heaven!

How do we show that we value children?

We start by showing that we love our own children, by caring for them and nurturing them physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our families should demonstrate to others biblical patterns for family life. Our priority should be to see our children come to faith in Christ and to grow in their understanding of God and their desire to serve him all the days of their lives.


We will demonstrate it within the church in the way that we treat other people’s children; by caring for them and supporting parents to raise them to come to faith in Christ. We will treat children as potential heirs of the Kingdom of God and demonstrate this in the way that the church teaches, supports and loves them.

We will show it in the way we show concern for our neighbours children. We will hopefully notice cases of neglect and abuse and do something about it. Perhaps this will involve offering support of some type to the children themselves, particularly those who go to school with your own children, or who simply live in your street. It might involve reaching out to parents who need help. And in extreme cases, it might require you to speak to a government agency to suggest they intervene.