How should churches relate to the world?

My family enjoyed watching the movie, The Two Popes. It focuses on a speculative history of the personal relationship between the two most recent popes, Benedict and Francis. It highlights their contrasting backgrounds (Germany vs. Argentina, Rich world vs. Majority world), theologies (traditional and conservative vs. less traditional and flexible), lifestyles (ostentatious vs. simple), and leadership styles (aloof vs. personable), ...
In spite of these significant differences, they are able to build a personal relationship built on mutual respect, appreciation, and companionship.


I found the following four things about the movie most striking and valuable.

First, there is a strong message of how personal failure and regret can be redeemed by the grace and mercy of Christ, following the confession of sin.

Second, the Western world is so different from the Majority World. The West is characterised by prosperity, political stability, peace, secularism, and declining churches. In contrast, the Majority World is characterised by poverty, political instability, violence, spirituality, and growing churches. This is powerfully portrayed by flashbacks that Pope Francis has about his past, particularly the violent repression that occurred during the military dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s. Here I beg to differ with A.O. Scott, the New York Times critic who said

If “The Two Popes” had consisted entirely of two old men talking, it might have been a masterpiece. But the conversation is interrupted by flashbacks that chronicle Bergoglio’s early life, as a young scientist called to the priesthood and as head of the Jesuit order in Argentina during the military dictatorship of the 1970s.

Third, the humanity of both men and their relationship is moving, and even endearing. This occurs in spite of their differences, which begin with harsh words for each other.

Finally, the movie captures many of the tragic failures of the churches through history, both Catholic and Protestant: seduction by wealth, power, and pomp; worship of church leaders by their members, anachronisms (talking in Latin!), sexual abuse of children, covering up scandals, being more concerned about public image than integrity, ....

Highly recommended!

Counting: the sin of metrics, from King David to modern socieity

One of many strange stories in the Bible is the following from 2 Samuel 24.

Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, ‘Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.’

2 So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, ‘Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enrol the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.’

3 But Joab replied to the king, ‘May the Lord your God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?’

4 The king’s word, however, overruled Joab and the army commanders; so they left the presence of the king to enrol the fighting men of Israel.

....

8 After they had gone through the entire land, they came back to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days.

9 Joab reported the number of the fighting men to the king: in Israel there were eight hundred thousand able-bodied men who could handle a sword, and in Judah five hundred thousand.

10 David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.’

There are many questions associated with this one. But, a basic one is: why was it sinful to count the fighting men. I presume it is because this reflected David trusting in the strength of his army and not that of the LORD. Such trust goes against what a young David said before he fought Goliath (1 Samuel 17:47)

All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's,..

Is there something in this passage that is relevant today. Partly with tongue in check, I wonder if it is relevant to the obsession of society today with counting (metrics) to measure performance, particularly in workplaces and sadly often in churches. In this vein, Mike Higton, a theology professor at Durham University, has an article,  The Research Assessment Exercise as sin.

The dangers of unrestrained global corporate power

Here are the closing words of the book, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple.

The East India Company remains today history’s most ominous warning about the potential for the abuse of corporate power - and the insidious means by which the interests of shareholders can seemingly become those of the state. For, as recent American adventures in Iraq have shown, our world is far from post-imperial, and quite probably will never be.
Empire is transforming itself into forms of global power that use campaign contributions and commercial lobbying, multinational finance systems and global markets, corporate influence and the predictive data harvesting of the new surveillance -capitalism rather than - or sometimes alongside - overt
military conquest, occupation or economic domination to affect its ends.
Four hundred and twenty years after its founding, the story of the East India Company has never been more current.

Helpful summaries of the books are a New York Times op-ed piece by Dalrymple and an interview in an Indian newspaper.