gregandmeg.net

Last Updated on Friday, 30 July 2010 03:39 Written by Meg Friday, 30 July 2010 02:38

It is hard to believe that August will be here next week.  We have had a great month.  I like to write these "journal-type" news articles to remember back but to also jeep you informed.

1.  We love our house church time.  We meet every Sunday evening rotating between our house, the Smith house, and now, Alfredo and Judith's home.  2 Sundays ago we chose to meet out at a beautiful park.  We grilled out, visited, and shared communion together.

2.  Since Maggie got her harness off, I am LOVING taking her out in the stroller.  Our park is closed on Monday and Tuesday, but I usually take the girls for a walk around the park a couple of times (it is great for the afternoon naps!).  We have been going to the park alot, and since we go during the Peruvian lunchtime we usually have the whole place to ourselves.  :)

3.  This is a big month for Peru.  July 28 is Independence Day.  ALL of the schools seem to have special performances.  This year, Ana played the part of "Criolla" (typically an African Peruvian).  Out of all the costumes, Ana's was the skimpiest of all and she had no problem "shaking her thang" on the stage.  This is what Peruvian schooling is doing for our daughter.  :)  Actually, I loved the performance.  It is such a rich, colorful culture, and dancing comes second nature to these people.

4.  On Saturday we hosted a major library event in Porvenir.  Around 50 kids attended.  I was really happy with the turnout and every child received a children's Bible.  We hired a drama troop to perform, a speaker from the public school to promote literacy, and gave a tour of the library to advertise our events and promote community involvement.  Here is one of our faithful library attendees helping with the Bibles.

5.  Our interns leave us next Wednesday.  Bob has been living with us, and on the 25th of July he turned 25.  After the library event we took him to our favorite restaurant, Zig Zag.  He enjoyed the "Three Meats Plate"--beef, ostrich, and alpaca.  Happy Birthday Bob!

6.  If the weekend hadn't been crazy enough, we left the house at 7 am Sunday morning to head out to Naranjal (Manuela's community).  The guys and interns have been working on the latrines every Sunday morning.  Rachel has started teaching a Sunday school, and Larissa and I rotate who is going out to help with that.  It is quite a morning to wake 2 little girls up, head out in the cold, and stay at Naranjal until 1 pm.  Besides Maggie not getting a great nap in, I love being out there with the people and being in the "country" away from the city noise.  It was my first time to help Rachel.  The kids are so sweet, and I look forward to building stronger relationships with them.  Here we are on the way to pick everyone up (all bundled up), and here is a picture of "Sunday School."

7.  After leaving Naranjal, we brought Manuela home with us.  Manuela's spiritual birthday fell on Bob's birthday.  You can read more of the specifics on her story here.  It was her first time to attend house church with us.  We ended our time together with a birthday cake for the two of them.

8.  Ana has been out of school this week.  Tuesday was a long day, and the beginning of sickness.  I began a small women's Bible study group with Inez on Tuesday morning.  Her cousin will be joining us also (I will probably journal about this at another time).  Late morning, Ana and I traveled to her school for next year to see Isabel (Paty's daughter) perform her in school's Independence Day program.  This is a picture of Angi (Isa's friend that has visited house church) and Isabel dancing as Serranas (rural culture).  For Tuesday lunch, Greg has begun meeting with a young university student interested in Bible training.  He came for the first time, and I look forward to seeing their relationship grow.  Tuesday night, Ana began her first night of ballet class.  Her 3 little amigas are also in the class.  We aren't huge ballet fans. but for the price ($20 for 8 classes!) and the excitement she has about it I am willing to take her.  The picture is horrible, but this is Ana's teacher showing her how to stretch (with Rafa behind her)--I took the picture through a small opening in the door, and the flash didn't agree with me.

9.  Wednesday morning, Greg woke up with fever and a very swollen throat.  After checking symptoms and talking to my Dad, he felt pretty sure that he had tonsillitis. Ana woke up with a rash all over her face.  We have been recuperating since then.  Leaving Greg in the bed, I went and ate Adobo with our landlord's family in celebration of the 28th.  It is Thursday night, and Greg is still on the mend.

That's the news up until now.  August will be here before we know it!

 

Last Updated on Sunday, 11 July 2010 14:54 Written by Meg Sunday, 11 July 2010 14:32

Wow.  July has been crazy busy.  So busy that my dad called last week to ask if we still lived here (I talk with him at least once a week and it had been quite some time).  I have taken pictures along the way and thought I would share snippets of some "moments" from this month so far.

You know you are loved when Peruvians bring the famous plate of Rocoto Relleno and Pastel de Papas to your house for your birthday.  Rosa and Etelvina are two beautiful women that study with Greg on Thursday nights.  They came on a Wed. night to surprise Greg with this meal along with Abraham.

Paty and Isabel came over one Friday evening.  Ana loved playing with Isabel in the park and then baking Reeses Peanut Butter Cup Brownies afterward.

This big girl turns one very soon.  She is already sporting big girl pig tails and a big girl pony tail.  This coming weekend we are a having a big birthday bash for Mags.  Stay tuned for pictures from that.

Rachel's birthday gift to Greg was a free night of babysitting.  We decided to ask Alfredo and Judith out on a double date.  We had a blast!  It was the first time since moving here that we stayed out so late without our kids.  It was a great birthday present.  Thanks again, Rachel!

We met Luz and Lola for lunch one day.  They attend the Bible study on Wednesday nights.  This is Lola with Maggie.

I just had to put a picture of Daddy and his girls.

Our sweet 3 year old and her painted face from celebrating "The Day of the Teachers" at school.

Ana and her playmates Mayereli and Raphaela.  Neither of these girls are in her class this year, but we have stayed in contact.

Our latest house church gathering.  It is a full house which is exciting.

We just hosted a gringo night at our house where everyone brought finger foods to celebrate the Fourth of July.  Here is Rachel with her beautiful star cake.

Last Updated on Saturday, 12 September 2009 21:40 Written by Greg Monday, 22 September 2008 15:42

I am beginning the long process of rereading and revising the papers I have written in the course of my studies.  There will be a whole range of technicality, some far thicker than others.  While very few of these are papers I would deem worthy of formal publication, they reflect a great deal of research and thought, and I figure there is no reason to keep that in a filing cabinet.  I intend to go in roughly chronological order, so the first paper I've uploaded was written in undergrad.  I've cleaned it up a bit, but it still pretty well reflects that stage of my development.  Some of the bibliographic info. is missing, because I simply wasn't thorough with my documentation.  That all changes after Introduction to Graduate Studies (a tip of the hat to Don Meredith's life-long contribution to the red pen industry).

As for the substance of the paper, there is much that I would leave the same in presenting the development of the hermeneutic of silence in the restoration movement (though, of course, with more original sources), and although I would argue some of the theological points more thoroughly and with a different tone, they are not off the mark in my present perspective.  It is noteworthy that this paper was written in a highly polemical situation.  Due to the teacher's proclivities, our senior "seminar in doctrine" consisted of four prolonged discussions of his favorite CofC issues: baptism, the supper, the instrument, and women's roles.  I did not take his selection of material or his presentation well, so sparks generally flew in class sessions.  The tenor of the entire semester influenced my paper, for better of worse.  Here is it, for those who do not want to browse the downloads section.

Instrumental Music and the Hermeneutic of Silence.pdf

Last Updated on Saturday, 12 September 2009 23:20 Written by Greg Monday, 03 November 2008 19:59

'Tis the season, and everyone else is blogging about politics, so it strikes me as a fine time to work through some of my thinking on church and state.  Let me say, first, that I am not stating my position in order to convince anyone that they shouldn't vote--if you were going to be defensive on that point, don't bother.  Also, I would clearly state that this is my position at present, Election Day 2008, and I reserve the right to be utterly wrong.  Lastly, let me mention that if you are a member of the Churches of Christ and don't know about your heritage of political non-participation a la David Lipscomb, you need to do your homework.  Know thyself.

I freely admit that my views on church and state are a right messy hodgepodge of ideas, moreso than any other facet of my theology, I think.  I began thinking seriously about the church-state relationship in highschool, when I did a research paper on the well-known "separation of church and state" from the state side of things.  That is a somewhat different issue, though one about which there is a great deal of ignorance (I'll save that soapbox for another day).  My concern here is not the state side of things but rather the church side of things.  How does the democratic process look from the perspective of my religious commitments, which I hope to be, generally, the church's commitments.  I fear this could get long and tedious, so I'll aim for the summary version.

The theological foundation of my position is truth that Jesus' message--and thus his church--is fundamentally a political one.  It is not that there is some kind of separation between the political and the spiritual, as though they were distinct realms.  There is no part of God's world that is not spiritual, no part that is not the province of the redemtive, restorative, recreative mission of God.  Jesus' message what about a king and a kingom, spoken in political language that his hearers could not mistake, about which his undiscipled hearers were deeply confused because of their expectations about the Messiah's politics, by virtue of which the political powers were deeply threatened and because of which they killed him (N.B., Jesus was killed on a Roman cross, accused and convicted of a political crime against the Roman government). This causes me to ponder the political realities of our world deeply rather than dismiss them easily as though Christianity were a social anesthesia injected to create a comfortable apathy.

Based upon the political nature of the gospel and the political claims it lays upon me, I must affirm in a very substantial, very real way my citizenship in and my allegiance to the Kingdom of God.  Here my point is not yet about how we deal with the existential realities of being a citizen of an "earthly" kingdom as well.  I'll get there, but for now the point is that we must begin with the Kingdom loyalty rather than with anything else.  It seems that, practically, most American Christians begin the other way around, and the statements read or affirmed about Kingdom identity and loyalty are relegated to a less realistic, more spiritual (read Dualism) realm that goes little farther than Sunday rhetoric in terms of actualization.

Now, I must affirm loudly that "Kingdom loyalty" placed in confrontation with Americanism, as it must be with any competing loyalty, does not pan out to be the, frankly, disgusting issue-driven American politics of what has been labeled the Religious Right.  That is, Kingdom loyalty does not translate into voting one way or the other because my loyalties are "Christian."  That is hardly confrontation, and it strikingly similar to what missiologists understand as syncretism.  Given the political nature of the Christian religion and the religious nature of American civil religion, I think syncretism an apt description of what has been happening among American Christians.  The church must come to terms, early or late, with the radically alternative nature of the Kingdom vis-a-vis the world's way of dealing with fundamentally spiritual problems.  Or do we not truly believe that the world's state of affairs has everything to do with humanity's relationship to God?  And do we not truly believe that the Kingdom of God is breaking into this world, that the salt and light of the church is a reality to be reckoned with, that God is in the process of making all things new?  Is it not true that every failure of secular politics is rooted in human sin and human inability to be God, that every success of secular politics is rooted absolutely in the image of God and humanity's God-given ability to be agents (God-dependent agents) of his justice and righteousness?

Thus, I an unconvinced by those who argue pragmatically that this is "the best we've got."  It is not, in either of the two senses that it is said to be.  There are those who, in their religio-political zeal, truly believe that American democracy is the God-given best we've got.  There is profound confusion here, if not a total lack of Christian theology.  Particular moral or ethical decisions aside, there is no more or less Christian form of government.  Political theory is a facet of culture, and culture, it should hardly need saying, is a highly relative thing.  Mission work can be carried out in any culture, the goal of the mission work is never to impliment particular cultural norms (political ones included), and the mission work does not need any particular cultural norms to reach its ends.  From a missional perspective, a benevolent dictatorship is on equal footing with a representative democracy--political theory and stucture just isn't the point.  Then there are those who simply believe that you might as well work within the system, reform it if need be, use it to your benefit if possible, becuase it's the best we've got.  That is, it's the reality and you're not going to change it.  It functions on some level, and if it's neither intrensically good or bad, then why not try to bring some Christian influence to bear and be a little pragmatic about things.  I'm a pragmatic person, and this is a pretty convincing approach, particularly when you bring an attitude like John Piper's to the table (click the link to hear his idea of "doing politics as though not doing them").  My hangup is that I believe the best we've got is the really real reality of the Kingdom breaking into this age. Christian faith assumes a power to affect the world that makes the option for secular solutions seem silly, or perhaps deranged.  Whatever the case, the best we've got is the most efficacious solution in the world--the Kingdom of God.

The sticky problem is how this works out in terms of the church's participation, but I do not believe it can be done through secular politics--not on the church's (Jesus') terms and in the church's (Jesus') way, which are requisites for the realization of the Kingdom.  There is an insurmountable conflict of interest even in the best case scenario.  When it comes to what really matters--and deciding that is the real problem--only the Kingdom offers a lasting and holistic solution. Take one of our hotbutton issues: abortion.  Legislating morality is not only a very partial way of dealing with the issue, it is also the easy way out.  When Christians get really serious about abortion, they will be proactive about being in the lives of women who feel that abortion is the best option, will minister to them in their needs (before and after abortion), will help women work through their God-given freedom of choice (N.B., not State-given freedom of choice), will offer to adopt children carried to term as an alternative to abortion, will address the other social factors that contribute to situations leading to abortion.  These are only a few ideas, the implimentation of which on a church-wide scale would erradicate abortion.  But they are costly and difficult solutions, and they are not solutions that the government can enact. So I ask, where is the church of God?  Outside abortion clinics, toting loveless slogans?  I don't think so.  Legislating away the headache of dealing with people, sin, and hellish situations?  I don't think so.  But that is just one example, though hopefully a good enough one to demonstrate the difference between Christian politics as usual and the impact of the Kingdom.

So, why don't I vote?  Not out of apathy about the imporant issues (please don't read aboration as my big "important issue").  Not out of irresponsibility--the church is very much about response.  Not out of ignorance--though I don't claim to be a political expert.  Not because I think it is wrong.  I just don't find the political scene to be that big a deal.  My confidence is in other means to the ends we seek.  I suppose, theoretically, I could be very preoccupied with economic issues and the like, but even there I wonder if the church doesn't offer a better solution--not that the church could write economic policy on par with Greenspan's ilk or anything, but just imagine if a Christian ethic of stewarship had been governing our use of credit rather than secular consumerisim.  Anyway, like I said, the issues that really matter (my 401k not being one of them) cry out for the Kingdom.  On the negative side, what could the government possible do that the church cannot overcome (and should I be devoted to preventing possible difficulties with a contrary government)?  On the positive side, what could the government possibly do that would not need redemption?  My time, my energy, my emotional investment, my all, is devoted to what matters--the Kingdom of God.  That is where my loyalties lie.