My twelve rules for life

To many one of the surprising phenomena of the past five years has been the popularity (and animosity towards) Jordan Peterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, who has become a Youtube "celebrity", both for his lectures (some of which engage with the Bible) and his live interactions with his opponents on TV talk shows.  His book, Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos has sold five millions of copies. In some ways, Peterson has become a key figure in the "culture wars" in Western society. People either love him or loathe him. He is particularly loved by young single secular men who find that he has provided orientation and purpose (for better or worse) to their lives. The New York Times columnist, David Brooks, noted

My friend Tyler Cowen argues that Jordan Peterson is the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now, and he has a point.

The purpose of this post is not for me to take sides in the debate about Peterson, rather it is to engage in an exercise that Peterson has stimulated others to do. Write down their own "rules for life", particularly those that they would recommend to younger people. Examples are Tyler Cowen's 12 rules, and Megan McArdle's.

At first, I did not see the point of me writing down my own 12 rules. Why not just say, "obey the Ten Commandments"? However, it was pointed out to me that the problem with that stance is that secular young people will not engage with such sentiments.  So, here are my "laws". I should explain the approximate criteria that I have tried to use in coming up with them. Their goal is to promote human flourishing, particularly for individuals facing the challenges and opportunities of the postmodern Western world. They are "exhortations" of things to think and do, not observations about the way that the world is. But, I would like to think that they are based on observations about the way that the world actually is. There is some overlap between the different rules.

 

1. Accept that life is not all about you

This may go against all your instincts, wishes, and what you have been told by parents, teachers, school counselors, and advertising. Being self-centred does not work. You need other people, both to function in this world and to have a meaningful life. This is why you need to observe the next law.

2. Cultivate and preserve relationships
They are central to everything in life. We need them to survive, to function, to prosper, and to flourish.

3. Listen and learn

Most of us like to air our opinions and be the centre of attention. But, we are very finite and have limited knowledge, understanding, and life experience. The only way we can address that is by taking the time and energy to listen attentively to others. Listening and conversation are arts. Express sympathy before solutions

We need to listen not just for the words but the feelings behind the words. Then we need to respond not just at an intellectual level (particularly by presenting our "solutions" to other people's "problems").

4. Expect, respect, and learn from diversity

You are unique. No one else in the universe is like you. Your DNA, life experience, strengths, weaknesses, and personality are like no one else. Hence, don't expect other people to be just like you, try to make them like you, or marginalise them because they are different to you.

5. Don't let money determine everything

This world is obsessed with money: salaries, investments, purchases, economic growth, shopping, budgets, fundraising,... But, money tends to skew priorities in the wrong direction, too often harms relationships, and leads to disappointments, whether you gain it or lose it.

6. Get a dog! 

Then you won't take yourself and life so seriously. You will have more fun. You can see these rules, unlike Peterson's, are all a bit too serious and not very funny. Just like me. A dog helps. Get one.

7. Accept that some things are more complex than you might think
The world is complex and life is complex. That can be overwhelming, scary, and confusing. Perhaps too often may think we understand things and be drawn to simplistic solutions. [Elect this politician and the country will get better, The answer to drug addiction is ...., ]. A lot of life is gray, not black and white. Accept nuance. 

8. Accept that some things are simpler than you might think

On the other hand, some of us have a tendency to make things very complicated, whether it is academic jargon, training programs, or bureaucratic procedures. We also may procrastinate about concrete action because we want to make complex plans. For example, on the one hand managing people is complex. On the other hand, if you do just a few simple things: listen, show an interest in them as a person, and adjust their job to their strengths, you can be quite a successful manager.

9. Aim to live in reality, not in fantasy

We all wish that the world was a certain way; that it conformed to our view of it. It may be scary and disorienting to accept that it may not be like that. However, because we are so finite, we need to be open to the fact that we may be wrong, be willing to change our views, and how we live as we butt up against the way the world really is.

10. Practise forgiveness 

No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, some big, some small. When we are wronged by someone, whether intentionally or not, our relationship may be at a crossroads. Too often we are unwilling to forgive, even when an apology is offered. We destroy relationships and live in bitterness. Forgiveness is powerful and can heal us and our relationships.

11. Focus on your own shortcomings rather than those of others
Our natural tendency is to be blind to our own shortcomings, weaknesses, and failings but to have a highly tuned sense of the failings of others. This hinders both personal growth and good relationships.

12. Consider Jesus

Arguably, he is the most influential person in human history. His teachings, life, death, and influence over two thousand years are worthy of serious study and engagement.

One may notice that perhaps the most common themes in my laws are those of humility and the importance of relationships.

I welcome comment on my rules.

Science and theology in different contexts

 How are science and theology related to one another? Given that all theology is formulated and discussed in some context, we should consider how attempts to explore the relationship between science and theology also occur in particular contexts.

There is no such thing as the relationship between science and religion and this is the book about it.

This statement is made by David Livingstone in Which Science? Whose Religion?, the last chapter in the insightful book, Science and Religion Around the World, edited by John Hedley Brooke and Ronald L. Numbers.

Aside: The author is not the famous missionary from the 19th century, of the same name.

Livingstone reviews the chapters in the book to show the diversity of interactions between different religious traditions and different sciences (from astronomy to anthropology) in different locations and at different times. To understand the complexity of interactions he considers a set of imperatives: pluralise, localise, hybridise, and politicise.

Pluralise

There is a plurality of religions and within any major religion, there is a plurality of traditions. Consequently, the interaction with a specific science or issue may also be incredibly diverse. There is also a diversity of sciences.  A specific science can be viewed from many different angles: knowledge content, method, philosophy, ethics, history, or practitioners.

Localise

Any interaction needs to be considered in its geographical location. Many traditions and perspectives are unique to a particular location. Even something as narrow as Calvinism can vary significantly between countries and communities.

Hybridise

Consider cross-cultural syntheses between different conceptions of science and religion. This is particularly true in this era of globalisation, whereby what people believe and how they live can be a mix of Western modernism, postmodernism, capitalism, and distinctly non-Western worldviews. For example, an astronomer in South Asia may be quite comfortable consulting an astrologer in order to determine an auspicious date for the wedding of their daughter.

Politicise

Political contexts do have an influence on both science and on theology: what topics and perspectives gather the most attention, funding, and debate. Furthermore, these political contexts can significantly influence discussions, whether it is discussions about biological evolution in the USA or about astrology in a South Asian country. 

Livingstone's imperatives (pluralise, localise, hybridise, politicise) are oriented towards describing and understanding a specific science-theology interaction that has happened or is underway. But, there is a question that is important to discuss and has contested answers.

How does one discern what might be normative in a science-theology interaction in a specific context?

A related question is what should be normative in contextual theology?

Behind these questions, there is a general philosophical problem that reflects the is-ought problem, the fact-value distinction, and the relationship between descriptive and prescriptive statements. 

Latin American conceptions of the Kingdom of God

This week at the theology reading group we are discussing In Search of Christ in Latin America: From Colonial Image to Liberating Savior, by Samuel Escobar. It takes a historical approach to Christology, surveying how ideas about Christ developed over time in Latin America. Particular attention is paid to the changing context: cultural, political, economic, and literary.  Previously, I posted about some of the earlier chapters that discuss the period up to about 1950.

Here are some of the things that I appreciate about the book, and why it should be read by those outside Latin America.

A model for doing contextual theology

The many different ways of doing contextual theology. They all have strenghts and weaknesses. Escobar recounts the long and substantial efforts of Latin Americans to do theology in their own context. They took their own context (historical, cultural, religious, literary, economic, and political) seriously, particularly with regard to politics, justice, human rights, and poverty. They brought that context into dialogue with their theology and with the Bible. In particular, they worked very hard to engage with the Bible and biblical scholarship at a deep level.

Respectful and substantial engagement with other views and traditions. 

Although distinctly Evangelical, Escobar carefully engages with a wide range of views different from his own (Marxists, liberation theologians, missionaries from the USA, public intellectuals, Catholics, ...). He takes their views seriously, does not caricature or dismiss them, and appreciates, while also sometimes giving significant critiques. It refreshing that the book has a generous and gracious tone. 

The view of theology and mission is holistic (integrated) and multi-dimensional. For example, the redemption and reconciliation offered by Christ are deemed to be personal, social, global, and cosmic.

The multi-dimensional perspective on the Kingdom is nicely summarised in a quotation at the beginning of Chapter 10 (page 173).

All these explicit or implicit, understandings of the Kingdom, throughout Christian history, have focused on some aspects of the kingdom at the cost of others, by putting emphasis on its present or future reality, on its historical or eternal nature, its social or personal dimension.

Each interpretation has understood a part as being the whole, thus contributing to a distortion, an eclipse, a reduction of the biblical message of the Kingdom. It is time to risk recovering the totality of the kingdom Gospel, to appreciate its multidimensionality and to take on our commitment to that the kingdom presents to us here and now. This requires sincere biblical exploration.

Mortimer Arias, Venga Tu Reino

I agree as I consider that theology is intrinsically multi-dimensional, and any theological discussion must seek to find a balance between a range of interpretations and intrinsic tensions or dialectics (e.g. the action of humans and the action of God, Jesus being human and divine, grace and law, faith and works, ...). However, too much theology is partisan and excludes such multi-dimensionality.

David C. Kirkpatrick completed a Ph.D. at Edinburgh University on the history of Latin Americans contribution to global evangelicalism. He expresses admiration for Escobar's book in a recent review in the journal Church History.

[Escobar] moves seamlessly across fields to fashion a book for which I know very little comparison.

... one of the particular strengths of Escobar’s book: careful attention to the transnational nature of Latin American Protestantism without overlooking local Catholic and Protestant constructions.

...one of Escobar’s strengths: his willingness to give credit where credit is due, even if it cuts across political narratives or appears to export agency to northern thinkers.

While Escobar pays careful attention to a broad spectrum of literature, his work should dispel at least one surprisingly persistent myth: Latin American Protestants lack their own intellectual tradition. 

Perhaps the only weakness I see in the book is its lack of depth in its engagement with the social sciences, including Marxist perspectives, and economics, including discussions of capitalism and socialism. Sociological perspectives are referred to but it is not clear what key methods and concepts from sociology are actually being used. 

Escobar presents a view of capitalism and socialism is somewhat one-dimensional and dualistic. Must one choose one or the other? Unfortunately, Latin America has suffered from countries veering to extreme forms of either socialism or capitalism. Both forms have been corrupted by entrenched oligarchies and foreign interference. Some of this history and the associated problems are documented in  Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson.  They argue that a key to posterity is to have inclusive, rather than extractive, political and economic institutions. The iron law of oligarchy is that if the leaders of an extractive political institution are replaced, particularly in a revolution, that the institution will remain extractive. 

Transformation in theology and mission

“I am making everything new!” 

So proclaims the One who sits on the throne as a new heaven and earth come into being (Revelation 21:5).  The Apostle Paul proclaims (2 Corinthians 5:17):

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 

The concept of transformation is central to the grand narrative of the Bible. God transforms bondage to freedom, hate to love, alienation to relationship, lost to found, poor to rich, darkness to light, infidelity to faithfulness, injustice to righteousness, and death to life. God has transformed, is transforming, and will transform individuals, families, communities, churches, and nations. The Kingdom of God is all about transformation.

Transformation is qualitative change. The new state is qualitatively different from the old state. It has a quality that the old state did not have.

For several decades my fellow "holy" scribbler, Charles Ringma, has taught a course on Transformational Theology at seminaries in Australia, Canada, and Asia. He recently reflected on this experience, noting dimensions that students struggled with, and raised several important questions about transformational theology. This has stimulated the following post, which mostly reflects on what the social sciences might contribute to this discussion. Here I bring my perspective as a condensed matter physicist with an enduring interest in complex systems and the concept of emergence. I start with several claims (presuppositions) to justify why this perspective is possible and may be useful.

There is a dialectic between our actions and the work of God in the world. We live in a material world that functions in certain ways. The book of Proverbs is all about discerning wisdom: how the world actually works (the physical and moral order) and living accordingly. Acting according to wisdom or folly will produce good or bad outcomes, respectively. This world is both created and fallen, good and bad, of great potential and fundamentally flawed. We are constrained to live and act in this world. We are creatures living in a creation. We have autonomy but are constrained. 

God is sovereign, the Holy Spirit is always working, and God does do miracles (events outside the normal pattern of regularity, such as raising Jesus from the dead, speaking to people's hearts and souls, causing nations to rise and fall). But, arguably most of the time God acts through normal processes associated with human action (speaking, loving, serving, listening, planning, ...). Even God's acts of judgment on Israel and other nations were performed through human agents such as Assyria and Babylon.

If we are concerned with mission as transformation, i.e., acting in ways that promote the transformation that God desires, then we need to observe and learn how the world actually does function. This reality both creates possibilities and imposes constraints. The material world behaves according to the laws of nature, that physics, chemistry, and biology, aim to encode. Are there "laws" of transformation? How does transformation occur in individuals, families, institutions, communities, and nations?

Charles noted that

Many students worked on the assumption that if we get our theology right (orthodoxy) then good strategies and practices will follow in impacting others and our world.

This reflects a common problem that people too often have implicit beliefs (i.e., unstated assumptions that are embedded in a particular worldview or life experience). In this case implicit beliefs about how transformation happens.

Today we know more about answers to the last question above than we ever have before. Scholars in history, sociology, political science, anthropology, and psychology have greatly increased our understanding. This does not mean that we have complete understanding or that all the scholarship in these fields is reliable or sympathetic to the values of the Kingdom of God. But, there is much we can learn from this scholarship to aid us in our journey to partner with God in transformational mission. 

A significant idea is emergence: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Emergence is one of the most important scientific concepts developed in the second half of the twentieth century. It is relevant to physical, biological, human, and social sciences. The possible relevance of emergence to mission has recently been explored in detail by Darren Duerksen and William Dyrness in a recent book, Seeking Church: Emerging Witnesses to the Kingdom. They draw on work by the sociologist Christian Smith. In a recent talk I explored some of these ideas.

An emergent perspective considers a specific entity that we wish to see transformed, whether a human individual or an oppressed community, as a system that is composed of many interacting parts and that, is embedded in an environment of external components. For example, a human individual is not a disembodied spirit but a combination of mind, heart, body, and soul. Furthermore, a person is never an isolated entity but interact with a social network of family, friends, and community, which in turn is embedded in a nation-state and a global economy. If we wish to see an individual come to faith in Christ or to experience healing from trauma, we may need to consider the role of many of these interacting components.

Charles noted that

The greatest overall weakness in papers for the transformation theology course was the treatment of synchronicity. Religious, social, economic, and other factors usually have to combine to bring about significant change. Students tended to operate on the basis that only religious factors were needed.

The characteristics of emergence are as follows. Due to the interactions between the components of the system, new entities can emerge.  The whole system can have properties that are qualitatively different from (and not reducible to) the properties of the individual components. A brain is conscious but a single neuron is not. A dead body has no morality but a living person does. Water is wet but a single water molecule is not. New entities that emerge may be desirable (e.g., a just society or a flourishing church in a slum) or they may not be (e.g., a stock-market crash or a church that becomes a personal empire). Christian Smith, refers to these emergent entities as relational goods and relational evils, respectively.

Quantitative change can lead to qualitative change. Changing the temperature of the water in the pipes from plus one degree Celsius to minus one degree Celsius will lead to the water undergoing a transition from the liquid to the solid state, i.e., freezing and expanding, and bursting your water pipes. Last year in Chile, a 30-peso (four-cent) rise in the price of peak-hour metro tickets led to social upheaval and a plan to write a new constitution for the country.

Emergent phenomena are hard to predict, even for simple physical systems where scientists have an excellent knowledge of the components and their interactions. Hence, it should not be surprising that it is very hard to predict how society and the economy will behave. For example, economists cannot agree on an answer to the simple question, "Can government "stimulus" spending actually prevent an economic recession?"

Central to describing and understanding emergent phenomena are a range of scales in time, space, and numbers of components. For example, transformation of a society can be viewed at the scale of individuals, families, neighbourhoods, cities, and nations. Insight and discernment are required to decide which of these scales may be most significant, and thus key to our understanding and action.

I now give a specific example to illustrate how emergent phenomena are hard to predict and often surprising. 

The emergence of social segregation

Many churches are very homogeneous with regard to the demographics of members. Many Christians do not have many non-Christian friends? Why is that?Segregation is a common social phenomenon: groups of people clump together in spatial regions (or relational connectivity) with those similar to them. Like attracts like. Examples range from ethnic ghettos and teenage cliques to "echo chambers" on the internet.

In 1971 Thomas Schelling published a landmark paper in the social sciences. The motivation for his work was to understand how racially segregated neighbourhoods emerged in cities in the USA, but the ideas are applicable to a wide range of phenomena. Schelling's work surprised many because using a simple model he showed how small individual preferences for similarity can lead to large-scale segregation. 

A major conclusion is that motives at the individual level are not the same as the outcomes at the macro level.  This idea provided the title for an influential book Micromotives and Macrobehavior, that Schelling published in 1978.  People may be very tolerant of diversity (e.g. only have a preference that 30 per cent of their neighbours be like them) but collectively this results in them living in very segregated neighbourhoods.

Practical implications for transformative mission

An emergent perspective should lead to humility. It emphasises how much we do not understand rather than deluding ourselves that we do understand what we are doing and what the outcome will be.

The systems we are interested in, communities of people, are complex. They are hard to describe, understand, and predict. Yet, many of us, and the organisations that we are involved in, have a simple mechanical view of these systems and how transformation will happen. Study at this seminary and you will become a successful pastor. Give money to this family in the slum and it will lift them out of poverty. Preach the Gospel and people will become disciples of Jesus. Elect Christian politicians and society will become more Christian.

Humility means a willingness to learn from others: community members, non-Christian social scientists, team members, and those with a different perspective than our own.

Humility should lead to realistic expectations about the likely outcomes from our actions. On the one hand, we want to proceed by faith that God will do great things "far more than we can ask or imagine." On the other hand, we are constrained by our ignorance, limited resources, and the fallen nature of our world. Suppose, we proceed with the hubris that we actually know what we are doing and that our actions must produce the outcome that we naively believe will follow. Except by the mercy and generosity of God, our efforts will "fail" because they go against the way that the world actually works. This will lead to disappointment, disillusionment, and despair. Countless activists have been burnt out and quit and organisations collapsed because they had unrealistic expectations and did not see the outcomes that they assumed would happen. A humble emergent perspective can lead to a long-term view that makes initiatives sustainable, both at the individual and institutional level.

Most complex systems are adaptive. In response to perturbations, they adapt and re-organise. This is the basis of the law of unintended consequences. Organisations need to be adaptive. One approach is Action Research where action leads to reflection which leads to action.

An emergent perspective on transformation is against the common narrative that great leaders are heroic individuals who have the vision and know the strategy and tactics to get there. As they are immersed in their surrounding corporate culture most Christian organisations embrace this view of leadership. The origins of this narrative are not Biblical but rather the theory of management that arose from the military success of the USA in World War II and of the auto industry in the following two decades. Two experts on organisational development, Gervase Bushe and Robert Marshak, state that

The “visionary leader” narrative and performance mindset that predominate in theories and practices of “Change Leadership” are no longer effective in an environment of multi-dimensional diversity marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

Instead, they advocate an alternative leadership model that starts from the perspective that organisations are emergent and their behaviour is hard to control and predict. Leaders need to find ways to harness the self-organisational and adaptive tendency of organisations. This might be done by influencing the conversations that take place within the organisation, encouraging employees to come up with their own solutions to problems, and creating a culture and structures that are sensitive to the tension between efficiency and innovation.

Obviously, this emergent perspective on leadership and organisational development has important implications for how any organisation selects and promotes leaders, how those leaders act, and what policies and procedures are embraced.

How might Christians respond to poverty?

 On the one hand, the world has never been so wealthy and prosperous as it is today. On the other hand, it has never been so unequal. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Billions live on a few dollars per day. The covid-19 pandemic has made this fragile existence even more tenuous and has pushed hundreds of millions more into poverty. Poverty is not just material but also involves limited access to education, health, social networks, and political representation. There are also psychological and spiritual dimensions to poverty.

Addressing global poverty has become a massive billion-dollar "industry", for better or worse, involving governments, philanthropists, NGOs, universities, and researchers. Yet, the effectiveness of this industry in alleviating poverty is contentious.  

The Bible, from beginning to end, says a lot about poverty, wealth, inequality, injustice, and caring for the marginalised. Hence, addressing these issues should be central to the mission of the global church. But, this is a complex issue as it involves theological, political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions. 

A helpful place to begin is the book, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself, by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett. They state

one of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being of the economically rich—their god-complexes—and the poverty of being of the economically poor—their feelings of inferiority and shame.

There is also an excellent small group guide with videos that my wife and I have used with a church small group.

For those who want to go deeper, either because they are academically oriented or are practitioners, there is a "textbook".

Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development by Bryant L. Myers

Myers worked for World Vision for many years and now teaches at Fuller Seminary. It is comprehensive, balanced, easy to read, and has helpful diagrams. There are many things I like about the book.

Integral mission

"The Christian message is an embodied message, carried by living witnesses." Word, deed, and sign cannot be separated. Poverty alleviation and gospel proclamation are both acts of love that go together. Transformational development has spiritual, relational, and material dimensions. It is central to the Kingdom of God.

Bringing together theology, social science, and activism

Activism and programs need to be informed by both social sciences and by theology. Activism receives motivation and direction from theology, being informed by a Biblical worldview.  That provides a framework to understand who humans are, how they act, and how they change. The themes of creation, fall, incarnation, redemption, and re-creation are central. 

Poverty occurs in a social context. A community is "disturbed" by any outside intervention or internal initiative that aims to reduce poverty. Social sciences can be useful in understanding social structures and dynamics, including designing and evaluating the impact of any program.

A compact overview of state-of-the-art thinking and practice on development

There is a huge academic literature on development, from both Christian and secular, Western and Majority World perspectives. 

Myers provides a succinct introduction to the ideas of Jeffrey Sachs, William Easterly, Paul Collier, Banerjee and Duflo, Muhammad Yunus, Amartya Sen, ...

There are methods for planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluation of projects. These include The Logical Framework (logframe), Participatory Learning and Action, Appreciative Inquiry, and Positive Deviance. They are all introduced and critically evaluated.

Sensitive to culture and context

Most poverty alleviation programs are led and funded by WWWs (Wealthy White Westerners) but implemented in Majority World contexts that are not WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic). Given the hubris that too often goes with money, power, and education (a god-complex) it is hardly surprising that many programs fail, particularly in the long term, because of a lack of understanding and sensitivity to local culture such as social structures, values, methods of communication, ...

The modern Western worldview presupposes dichotomies between the spiritual and material. The figure below shows pairings of categories, such as religion and science, faith and reason. These pairs are assumed to be in conflict or completely independent of one another. These dichotomies are often presupposed by Western Christians. But, they are not part of a Biblical worldview.

Postmodernism does not accept these dichotomies, and rightly points out they are naive. For example, faith and reason can never be separated, either for a Christian or an atheist. Everyone starts with some presuppositions. Rationality takes place in the context of a particular tradition, as emphasised by Alisdair MacIntyre.

Myers draws on ideas from the anthropologist, Paul Hiebert, who contrasts modern and traditional worldviews, illustrated below. A key idea is that of the "excluded middle" in the modern worldview: there is no room for forces and phenomena that bridge the spiritual and seen world. 

This presents a problem for development initiatives in communities with a traditional worldview; this excluded middle that may be seen to determine health, prosperity, natural disasters, and conflicts. Hence, a community will not be receptive to technical "solutions" that are presented by Westerners.

Treats the poor with dignity  

The poor and non-poor are all made in the image of God. They are of equal value in God's eyes. Hence, the poor should be valued, respected, celebrated, enjoyed, empowered, and listened to. 

Myers reviews social science research that shows that the poor actually know a lot more than they are often given credit for. They are incredibly resilient. It is a miracle how they manage to survive and persevere. Myers describes the work of the Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto who "demonstrated the vitality, creativity, and entrepreneurial activity of Peru's urban poor." However, this positive energy is significantly constrained because they are required to operate in the informal (underground) economy which means they do not have protections from the rule of law or the property titles that others use to access capital. 

Discussion of complexity theory and emergence

Communities are composed of many interacting units (individuals, families, businesses, churches, ...) that are embedded in an environment (e.g. a city and the global economy). For such complex systems, it is hard to predict how they will behave, including in response to a "perturbation". Hence, the concept of emergence and ideas from complexity theory can provide some insight into development.

Principles are relevant to other Majority World issues

The focus of the book is on poverty alleviation, particularly extreme poverty in the Majority World. However, most of the principles (theological and social scientific) and practices are relevant to any initiative of a Christian organisation that aims to have a transformative influence in a community. Part of my interest in the book is because it addresses many issues that we face in the IFES Logos and Cosmos Initiative.

If you want to know more about the book you can download the Table of Contents and Chapter 1. The latter provides a nice overview of the book, introducing some of the key ideas, and describing how it came to be written.

Deep Life

Reflecting on trends in society, churches, and universities, a significant challenge and concern is the accelerating rush to superficiality. Constant electronic connectivity through email, texting, and social media promotes urgency, immediacy, oversimplification, fads, and superficiality. Noise, hurry, and crowds push out quietness, stillness, and solitude. The nuance associated with deep reflection is lost and replaced with a Twitter storm of celebrity, "spin", and conspiracy theories. Money, marketing, management, and metrics dominate discussion and decisions.

On the one hand, this reflects human nature. On the other hand, to see the problem is getting a lot worse consider history, whether that of the church or universities. What individuals, institutions, and work (scholarship, art, music, literature) have had a lasting positive influence? 

Who do I admire and respect? I suggest that two essential features are the depth of what was produced and the long and sustained effort (free from distractions) that was required to produce it. The depth may be in insight, creativity, scholarship, personal integrity, engagement, understanding, or relationships. I see this depth in people such as Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Augustine, Calvin, Karl Barth, Mother Teresa, Einstein, John Stott,...

The figure above shows how some trees have root systems that have a depth greater than their height. The image is from here.

Now I consider how this issue of depth is receiving increasing attention from a range of authors in quite different contexts: business, the knowledge economy, social commentators, universities, and churches.

In the context of the modern information economy the need to turn from "shallow work" to "deep work" has been carefully argued by Cal Newport, a computer science professor, in his 2016 book, Deep Work:

"Shallow work is non-cognitive, logistical or minor duties, often performed while distracted. These efforts require little cognitive effort, tend to create little value, and are usually easy to replicate." Examples include replying to emails, browsing websites, looking at social media, filling in forms, and attending meetings.

"Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”

This ties in with Malcolm Gladwell's argument that the 10,000-hour rule is one key ingredient for professional success.

In a different vein, in The Road to Character, The New York Times columnist David Brooks confesses, “I was born with a natural disposition towards shallowness.” He recounts his efforts to find a way out of shallow punditry and to cultivate personal character, particularly to move beyond "resume virtues", beloved by the modern world, and to move towards "eulogy virtues" such as humility, bravery, and kindness. The book is based on a course that Brooks taught three times at Yale University.

Piling higher

Some of the language that follows may offend some. But consider what the Apostle Paul said in the following verses. Interestingly, most English translations are sanitised. Here are renditions from The Message.

Why don’t these agitators, obsessive as they are about circumcision, go all the way and castrate themselves! (Galatians 5:12)

Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. (Philippians 3:8)

Christian Smith is a distinguished sociologist who has done seminal work in the sociology of religion including adolescent spirituality, racism, and American evangelicalism. (Perhaps I particularly like him because he argues that critical realism and emergence are important in the philosophy of the social sciences). 

Of relevance to this post is that in 2018 Smith published an excellent (but depressing) article, "Higher Education is Drowning in BS: And it’s mortally corrosive to society" in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

Harry Frankfurt, a distinguished philosopher at Princeton University, wrote  On BS  that became a New York Times bestseller. According to Wikipedia,

Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care if what he or she says is true or false, but cares only whether the listener is persuaded.

Anthropologist David Graeber refers to Frankfurt's book in his book Bullshit Jobs, which argues that today, half of the jobs are pointless and are psychologically destructive.

Now I turn to the church in the West. It is embedded in this culture and prone to fads, superficiality, and a focus on the four M's: money, marketing, management, and metrics. In his book, Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World, Michael S. Horton expresses concern about the preoccupation in the USA church with the "next-big-thing" that promises radical transformation, and advocates instead "a renewed appreciation of the commonplace."

The pandemic has made this even more urgent and challenging because the world (including everyday life, work, ministry) has become even more complex, unpredictable, and fragile.

Deep Life in the Bible

The Bible addresses the issue of superficiality versus depth, particularly with regard to integrity and relationships. For example, in Isaiah 58, the Israelites complain to God.

"Why have we fasted and you see it not?. Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?"

God responds that their worship is actually superficial and lacks integrity.

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,

    and oppress all your workers.

4 

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

    and to hit with a wicked fist.

Fasting like yours this day

    will not make your voice to be heard on high.

5 

Is such the fast that I choose,

    a day for a person to humble himself?

Is it to bow down his head like a reed,

    and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?

Will you call this a fast,

    and a day acceptable to the Lord?  

“Is not this the fast that I choose:

  to loose the bonds of wickedness,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
    and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Matthew 13 recounts Jesus telling the parable of the sower, which describes different responses to Jesus' teaching (the Word).

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Jesus' condemned the Pharisees, the religious elite of his day, for their hypocrisy, particularly their concern with outward appearances rather than a deep integrity based on a pure heart. For example, in Luke 11 Jesus says,

“Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you."

We don't need just Deep Work, we also need Deep Integrity, Deep Relationships, and Deep Spirituality. I suggest they are often interrelated. Deep Work is concerned with "cognitively demanding tasks" but we also need to set aside time to focus on tasks that are morally, relationally, or spiritually demanding. In different words, this is about Formacion (spiritual formation and discipleship).

Christian leaders in a smartphone world

Is there depth to how I follow Jesus with my heart, hands, and mind? This involves movement and engagement in horizontal, vertical, and inward directions. Is there depth in my relationships: with God, with family, with co-workers, with students, and with supporters?

A deep understanding is required of God's Word, the world, ourselves, our context, and the university. Such understanding can only come with sustained periods of thinking, reading, writing, learning, listening, praying,... 

How can we move in this direction? It is not easy because we are all constantly being pushed in the wrong direction: noise, superficiality, rush, distraction, ... 

Although it is not possible to cut out all the noise and distractions, they can be reduced with planning, organisation, and discipline, from the individual to the institutional level. Many of the practical suggestions that Cal Newport makes about Deep Work are relevant to other areas of life. His suggestions include quitting social media, digital minimalism, and rigorous scheduling of time for deep life.

Institutions are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. As they grow and age they have a natural tendency to lose the passion, commitment, innovation, outward orientation, and flexibility of their founders. Instead, they tend to become self-focused, bureaucratic, inflexible and centred around the careers and interests of their management. 

Institutions and their leaders can move in the right direction by hiring and promoting people with real depth, implementing policies and procedures that shift the emphasis away from the four Ms, and create space for deep life, including by shifting conversations towards deep work, deep integrity, deep relationships, and deep spirituality. 

The healing power of humility

At the recent (virtual) annual conference of the Christian Medical and Dental Fellowship of Australia the "holy" scribblers made presentations based on their respective chapters in our recent book, To Whom Shall We Go: Faith Responses in Times of Crisis. All of our presentations are available on vimeo.

 My slides are here. A video of my presentation is here.

Jesus' mission statement

What was the central message of Jesus? The word gospel means "good news". What is this good news? In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus began his public ministry in the following manner (chapter 4).

    16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

    18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

because he has anointed me 

to proclaim good news to the poor.

    He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

    and recovering of sight to the blind,

    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

I have often wondered about how this passage should be interpreted. In particular, who are the poor, captives, blind, and oppressed? Is this literal (i.e. material) and/or spiritual? For example, is Jesus only concerned with those who are "poor in spirit", enslaved to their sin, and captive to their sin,...? 

This fourth chapter of Luke gets even more puzzling because of the reaction of his audience. At first, they are enthused and praise him. But, Jesus challenges them by recounting two incidents from the history of Israel. Their praise turns to anger and they try to kill him! Why?

                                                                                            Image is from here.

These issues are addressed in the last two chapters of A New Heaven and A New Earth: Reclaiming a Biblical Eschatology by Richard Middleton. These chapters are a beautiful culmination of the arguments in the previous chapters. Here is a brief summary of Middleton on "The good news at Nazareth." (chapter 11)

The passage from Isaiah that Jesus reads is Isaiah 61:1-2.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;

Middleton points out that the text in Luke (who wrote in Greek and used the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament) is not identical to the text above (translated to English from the original Hebrew text). An important but subtle difference is that Luke's account adds the line "to set at liberty those who are oppressed", which is found in Isaiah 58:6. It is helpful to look at that verse in its context, where God tells Isaiah what to tell his chosen people, Israel, what real worship is.

Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that did righteousness 

and did not forsake the judgment of their God;

they ask of me righteous judgments;    

they delight to draw near to God.

       "Why have we fasted," they say, "and you see it not?"

"Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?"

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,

    and oppress all your workers.

⁴ 

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

    and to hit with a wicked fist.

Fasting like yours this day

    will not make your voice to be heard on high.

⁵ 

Is such the fast that I choose,

    a day for a person to humble himself?

Is it to bow down his head like a reed,

    and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?

Will you call this a fast,

    and a day acceptable to the Lord?  

“Is not this the fast that I choose:

  to loose the bonds of wickedness,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
    and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you; 

    the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

This is clearly saying that real worship involves not just fasting and praying but also being practically concerned for and involved with the hungry, naked, homeless, and oppressed. This makes it hard to take a purely spiritual interpretation of Jesus's pronouncement of the nature of the Kingdom of God. In passing, I note how this all aligns with the judgement of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25. On the other hand, this does not rule out that there is a important spiritual dimension to Jesus mission. Elsewhere he talked about how people were spiritually blind and slaves to sin.

Middleton also puts this "Nazareth manifesto" in the context of the whole creation-fall-redemption-renewal narrative of the whole Bible. He discusses at length how "the year of the Lord's favour" is a reference to the Sabbath year and the year of Jubilee commanded in Leviticus 25. Both years are built around three inter-related ethical practices. The first is that those who were sold into slavery due to indebtedness were to be released. Second, the land is to have a rest, during which time the poor will be able to share in whatever the land produces. Third, in the Jubilee year, there is an economic reset and all land is to be returned to its original owners. "These three practices together embody and an ideal of the periodic breaking of the cycle of poverty and bondage in ancient Israel, They constitute a communal practice, an ethic of redemptive living." In different words, this would make the modern trend of inequality, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer", impossible.

A later post may discuss why the people in the synagogue quickly turned Jesus from a hometown hero to a local villain. They were angry because he told them that the "good news" was also meant for "the other"; those they looked down upon or were their historical enemies.

Relating Word (logos) and World (cosmos)

The last two posts reflected on the nature of the logos and the cosmos. I now consider how are the logos and cosmos to be related. 

What is the relationship between Word and World? More specifically what is the relationship between theology and the sciences? How are cosmos and logos in a university to be related? Going back to Plato there are rich and subtle philosophical issues concerning ontology [what is real] and epistemology [what is true] that are still being explored and debated in universities. Could a Christian perspective be even richer?

A place to begin is to acknowledge the central role of hermeneutics (how we read and interpret a text), not just the text of the Bible, but also how we “read” the world in which we live. To access the living Word requires engaging the text of the Bible in a manner that uses a “hermeneutical circle (or spiral)”, whereby a specific part of the text is related to its context (chapter, book, whole Bible) in an iterative manner that goes from the part to the whole and back to the whole. Any theology should also be constructed in an iterative interaction with the text. Similarly, a local context (cultural, social, political, economic, linguistic, religious) has to be “read”; this requires observation, recording, analysis, and interpretation. Too often this is done in an intuitive manner without reflection or a basis in evidence. However, this “reading” can be done in a more systematic and reflective manner, drawing from methods in the social sciences. The local context must also be related to the global context and one needs to discern the relationship between the particularity of the local context and universals that describe many contexts. 

When relating Word and world things become more complicated, challenging, and rich because these two hermeneutical practices are intertwined, perhaps more than we would like to admit. Again, perhaps the best approach is iterative, whereby both “readings” are done in parallel and allowed to influence one another in a constructive manner. Indeed, Peter Harrison has argued in detail that modern science arose in seventeenth-century Europe because the Protestant Reformation led to new ways of reading the Bible (in particular, a shift from the allegorical to the literal) that in turn led to new ways of “reading” the “book” of nature.

A key issue for the dialogue of logos and cosmos is the tension inherent in the Bible’s picture of the world. The cosmos is God’s creation, made through the logos (John 1:1). Christians need discernment as they live with a tension between the goodness of the creation and the fallen, rebellious nature of the world. What do we affirm and enjoy about the world? What do we deny or critique or resist or seek to redeem? Being made in the image of God, we have an incredible ability to read, analyse, and understand both the Word and the world. Yet, both these processes of observation and understanding are also corrupted by our sinful and rebellious nature. Sometimes we see what we want to see and don’t see what we don’t want to see. Pride, finitude, and self-deception diminish our understanding.

The good-bad tension is present in universities. Some of the logos about the cosmos that is presented to students and "discovered" by researchers reflect God’s truth about His amazing world and some of this knowledge reflects Kingdom values (truth, justice, human dignity, reconciliation, ...).  On the other hand, some of this so-called knowledge is false, hostile to God, or does violence to Kingdom values. Universities grew out of medieval monasteries and were centred around theology until the last century. In the monasteries, scholarship was integrated with worship, service, communal life, and virtue. Today universities aspire to be global corporations with multi-billion-dollar budgets. In the process of this transformation from God-centred institutions to powerful businesses, there is less of the good and more of the bad. 

For IFES some guidance comes from John Stott. In his book, The Contemporary Christian: An urgent plea for double listening, he discusses listening to the world and to the Word.

How can we develop a Christian mind, which is both shaped by the truths of historic, biblical Christianity, and acquainted with the realities of the contemporary world? How can we relate the Word to the world, understanding the world in the light of the Word, and even understanding the Word in the light of the world? We have to begin with a double refusal. We refuse to become either so absorbed in the Word, that we escape into it and fail to let it confront the world, or so absorbed in the world, that we conform to it and fail to subject it to the judgement of the Word. Escapism and conformity are opposite mistakes, but neither is a Christian option. 

In place of this double refusal we are called to double listening, listening both to the Word and to the world. ... We listen to the Word with humble reverence, anxious to understand it, and resolved to believe and obey what we come to understand. We listen to the world with critical alertness, anxious to understand it too, and resolved not necessarily to believe and obey it, but to sympathise with it and to seek grace to discover how the gospel relates to it. 

This is the origin of the title of the IFES journal, Word and World: Theological Conversations about the world students live in. How might we go about relating logos and cosmos? John Stott also says the framework of creation-fall-redemption-renewal is helpful for developing Christian thinking on a wide range of issues. 

Finally, I come back to the role of local context. There is not one world, but many worlds. The beauty and potential of God’s multi-faceted creation can be seen in the diversity of human cultures and local contexts. Tragically, this diversity also reflects the creativity of human rebellion and sin. 

Most discussions about science and theology are dominated by academics embedded in elite Western universities and seminaries. The discussions focus on issues associated with biological evolution, Big Bang cosmology, quantum physics, and human consciousness. Social sciences receive scant attention. It is contentious whether these Western discussions are helpful or relevant to other contexts, particularly in the Majority World.

One model for the logos-cosmos dialogue is provided by the Ph.D. program in Contextual Theology at Asian Theological Seminary in Manilla. Later I may discuss in more detail a few key elements of the philosophy of the program. These include a focus “on empowering local faith communities on empowering the faith community by giving it a language and praxis in its formation, growth, and service in the setting/s in which it finds itself”, bringing the local into dialogue with the global, and inter-disciplinarity.