facebook’s sexual piousness. please HELP!

We have this problem in pious Christian circles that we don’t talk about sex. I have a very good friend who was trained at home to never even use the word sex, references to sex had to be done using some obscure phrase like “playing in the bushes” etc. For many of us brought up in pious circles sex was a dirty word. Many have written about the problems with this, but it would seem that facebook might share in this piousness.

One of the problems with this piety, was that healthy conversations about sexuality was stifled in the process as well, questions about sex was killed off, and maybe worse of all, it made it all the more difficult for those who have been the victims of sexual crimes to even mention what happened to them.

Last night Idelette, who is always fighting for justice, tweeted with a reference to a brilliant article about sex trafficking. I read the article, changed the tweet a bit, and retweeted. Tweetdeck found some kind of problem with posting to facebook, so I copied the tweet and tried posting to facebook. At this point I found out that facebook doesn’t like the reference to either sex trafficking or the article, since it said that my update contained content that some might find offensive. I made a second and third attempt, but got the same response.

Since I really believe this is a brilliant article, and wanted to spread the word among my contacts, I then  continued with different options. Changed the shortened URL to the full URL, took out the http:// so it might not pick it up as a link. Nothing worked. I finally took out the link entirely, and this worked. So the reference to “Sex trafficking” wasn’t the offensive part, but the link to the article was.

So after posting the update without the link, and pasted the link as the first comment on the status update. This seemed to work, or so I thought. I went to bed.

I wasn’t able to sleep, so after maybe an hour, probably less, I stood up to work on some stuff, and suddenly I couldn’t come into facebook. My account was suspended.

First test is to recognize a number of faces from friends photos and identify the people. I don’t add random people to my facebook friends list, but I have a LOT of bloggers that I haven’t met face2face yet, so many of the photo’s I don’t recognize. Then I have to answer the security question, which it just keep on repeating even though I answer correctly (when I answer incorrectly it lets me know, otherwise it just ask again).

The only reason I can think of for being suspended, was my continuous attempts at linking to an article on sex trafficking. Is this possible? Can facebook be so much similar to conservative Afrikaner culture? I mean,  get paid suggestions to add scantily clothed woman as friends on a regular basis, similar to the way we watched stories like Baywatch and Vetkoek Paleis but never talked about the realities of problems of sexuality in a healthy manner in homes.

Can this be? Can someone help me?

concerning skin (The Movie) and gender

I’m busy reading Knowledge in the Blood, and Jansen’s exploration of the knowledge of the post-Apartheid Afrikaner children had me thinking at one point that we really need more popular arts to help in the remembrance and and memories of Apartheid. Maybe it was Invictus that also got me thinking. I didn’t really follow the conversation about Skin until I went to watch it, but this exactly the kind of films that we need.

It tells the story of a girl, Sandra Laing, born of white parents, but of polygenic inheritance; meaning that there was black blood in their line, and although it didn’t show in her parents, it reappeared with her. She was a nobody. Officially white, but the older the got, the more she appeared coloured. Times Online has a good article on her story.

The film depicts the complexities of Afrikaner people trying to make sense of the laws which at times simply doesn’t work. It beautifully show how kids were indoctrinated at school, and the culture that taught white kids that only white people require respect. And it shows how powerful political voices can ruin the life of children. It also points out how some Afrikaner people started realizing that they were wrong, in this case the official that was responsible for Sandra’s reclassification from white to coloured.

The school from which Sandra got expelled was Piet Retief primary. The school that I attended as a child. A place that I really loved. The town that rejected her, was my beloved hometown, Piet Retief. The church that didn’t stand up for the voiceless, was the congregation that formed my faith maybe more than any other. Suddenly the perpetrators of Apartheid is no longer people by the names of Botha, Vlok, Malan. But a headmaster from this small school. That not only did what he had to do, but took the initiative to get rid of this kid with her dark skin. I know people who was living in this town at that time, I know a number of people who had to be kids in this school at the time this happened. These people were our friends, people I looked up to, and still look up to. This reality have me want to take the Klopjag route, simply trying to forget that Apartheid ever happened, because the reality of how my own people participated, is just to grave. This is the stories that we would need to work through if we are to develop healthy post-Apartheid cultures.

One thing that I believe the film beautifully portrays, and that I haven’t read anywhere, is the role of gender. Apartheid is a white-man’s system, and the battles are between white men and black men. The woman seem to find ways of overcoming their differences, even in these difficult circumstances, which men find impossible. Sandra and her mother can work on their relationship after she ran away with Petrus, but her father cannot accept this, and rejects his daughter. When the struggle gets bad in the 80′s Petrus continues to blame Sandra, even though she has totally become part of the black culture. But Petrus’ mother, a gogo to Sandra, can keep the relationship open. All over the story woman find ways of building relationships much more effectively than men. Even in the way Sandra two children react to the situation. The importance of woman’s voices in reconciliation is still underestimated! And the importance of woman’s voices in politics, economics and society, to help us in preventing similar atrocities, is still under-appreciated.

Reading Bosch: The importance of Luke 4 and vengeance superseded

In some strange way pages 108-113 in Transforming Mission seem to get missed by many readers. I co-lectured a class in theology of mission this year, in which Transforming Mission was the textbook, and in the oral exams not one student could tell me what passage from Luke according to Bosch forms the basis of Luke’s mission theology. Not one. Almost all of them knew that Matthew 28 was the main passage from that gospel, but somehow Luke 4 just passed over them (if you will be attending this class in future, consider this a tip).

Transforming Mission was not the only place where Bosch talked about Luke 4, the interpretation grew on him over years, and he wrote about it a number of times. But in this book of 500 pages, covering Jesus, three biblical perspectives, 2000 years of mission history, underlying paradigm theory, and 13 elements of mission, 5 pages get spent on just this one pericopé. That alone should get some alarm to go off that this is an extremely important passage for Bosch, and getting under the skin of his interpretation of this passage is of utmost importance.

Although some of it is quite technical, and I’m not going into every detail, the main point is attempting to understand why it is that the people of Nazareth want to throw Jesus off a cliff in the gospel of Luke. And Bosch attributes this to the fact that Jesus left out the part of God’s wrath when he quoted from Isiah 61. According to his view, Hebrew parallelism makes it clear that the “year of Jubilee” and the “day of the vengeance of our God” belong together, but Jesus never mentions the vengeance.

A minority viewpoint on the translation of verse 22 follows, which I hope helps in making sense of the pericopé, but I believe the message can be communicated without this viewpoint, so I’ll give that a skip. But as if Luke wants to make absolutely clear that this is intentional, he then has Jesus use two stories from the Hebrew scriptures, both in which non-Jews find grace from God. This infuriates the people from Nazareth! They have no room for a God that can love their enemies. In short, the God that Jesus talks about has too much grace, and too much love.

What I REALLY contributed to SAMS

If you are 25 and speaking to a bunch of academics, chances are that you won’t contribute much.

If you are 25 and working in a church, chances are you are responsible for the website.

So, if you are 25 and speaking at a theological conference, you might just make a contribution.

Introducing: Amazon Kindle.

Yes, I believe that might have been my largest contribution to the South African Missiological Society.

I was preaching in East-London, in my father-in-law’s congregation a few weeks ago. When I printed out the sermon and liturgy, the ink on the printer was low, and at points the printout was almost unreadable. So I uploaded my sermon to my kindle, and it worked wonderfully. I wouldn’t advice publicly reading a text for the first time in a kindle, since you will have to do a page-flip while reading the last 2 words on one page, and the first two on the next, but for a text that you just somewhat know, it works great.

Plus, it gets you introductions to lots of academics.

Academics love books.

Academics tend to be on the other side of 45 or even 50.

So I delivered my paper, got a few responses, I’m thankful for that.

I delivered my paper from a Kindle, and suddenly the dean of the faculty the conference was held wanted to ask me questions.

I don’t have a large enough portion of my library on my Kindle yet to be able to confirm this, but students and academics might want to check out this post before becoming too excited about the Kindle. I have struggled with the fact that a kind of spatial memory doesn’t work on a Kindle as it would with a paper-book. Hopefully something future e-books might solve.

Mclaren as an example of contextualization in the West

I know some serious academics might find it strange that thoughts that I would hope to publish one day simply end up on a blog. But I can’t think of withholding info from anyone, so this is my presentation from the past SAMS conference I’ve been blogging about. It’s still in draft form, and some of the thoughts I have been challenged on, and wish to refine somewhat. I sincerely hope that if you read this you will provide me with your thoughts as well! Whether critique, questions, thoughts or simply continuing the conversation.

For those who have been following this blog I can give the following summary in short:

I believe we need to understand Mclaren and other voices in the emerging church as attempts at a contextualization of the gospel in there various mostly Western cultures. If we understand this, we can better be in dialogue with them, and resist being simply re-colonized by American voices who prescribe how we should be church in South Africa, but also better understand the contribution they do make to the larger conversation (if at all). What Bosch and others in missiology call interculturation is something I notice in Mclaren’s later work, and on these grounds future dialogue between Mclaren and South African theologians can continue.

SAMS 2010 – Contextualization of the gospel in the West: The emerging church and the example of Brian Mclaren

Four questions on the SAMS conference

Steve Hayes asked four questions from those who attended the South African Missiological Conference. I’ll just answer them today:

1. What do you think was the best paper/presentation?

I think that of Tom Smith. Not necessarily because of some amazing academic insight (although I don’t doubt for a moment that Tom can make a contribution to the South African missiological scene), or because he’s a good friend, but because Tom gave us a story. Not a wow story of someone fixing the world in a few days, but a small story that says a congregation can actually take on challenges which is even more daring than what many at the conference would have thought necessary. I say this was the best, because I saw how voices from different sides of the conversation all thanked Tom for what he said, and how his story was used again and again afterwards. The only paper I think I might vote for rather than this one might have been that of Willem Saayman, but that is only from what I gather from Reggie’s tweets, since I couldn’t attend it.

2. Please give an abstract of the most important points.

Abstract of the most important points in Tom’s story? Well, he’ll do a better job, but let me try.

• • Attempting to work on reconciliation in practice is difficult.
  • Reconciliation between black and white people in South Africa require deep friendships

I hope Tom will write on his paper. But you can also follow much of what he said by reading the stories he writes on his blog.

3. What was the most important/significant thing you learned at the congress (not necessarily from the paperts — chatting to people over coffeee late at night often yields better insights)

The names of a number of local theologians which I must read.

4. Were you inspired to do anything as a result of the congress? If so, what?

Go and read these voices. Break out of my enclosed white theological space even further.

An overview of SAMS 2010

I attended the South African Missiological Society’s (SAMS) yearly meeting from 13-15 January. It was my first time there. I went, as well as presented a paper, because of the theme: “A missional church in Southern Africa 1999-2009 A Moment of Truth?”. But I guess I went more specifically because of the way in which the call for papers was formulated on the Missionalia blog, which referred specifically to “emerging churches”, and since I knew of felt like younger voices, and the voices of those active in the blogosphere, had an obligation to participate at the conference.

Jonathan Jansen opened the conference. I had respect for him in his days at the University of Pretoria, but basically only from the few articles he wrote in the University newspaper that I read. I never heard him speak, or read his books before. He made no secret of the fact that what South Africa needs is racial integration, and he will do he’s part, but that churches who still proceed with segregated worship is not helping. Going so far to say that the Dutch Reformed Church is irrelevant (and this in front of a mostly white crowd).

Of the 12 papers presented four came from the South African Partnership for Missional Churches. Nelus Niemandt, Jurgens Hendriks, Danie Mouton and Frederick Marais (together with Xilele Simon or the last part of the paper). These first four names are all senior voices from the Dutch Reformed Church. Four papers was presented by bloggers (not that this mean they actually form a category in the conference, but they do seem to point to a somewhat different path. Myself, Reggie Nel, Tom Smith and Guillaume Smit.

Four other papers I won’t really mention, either because they talked about some totally different from the above eight papers (Christof Sauer and Billy Gama), I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say (Pastor Des, who talked about something he called emerging/missional), or I didn’t attend (Willem Saayman, which I am really really sad about, because from what I gather from the tweets, he really can help the emerging and missional conversations in South Africa along).

The first eight papers I mentioned all talked in some way about emerging and missional churches. Reggie Nel mentioned in a paper read at last year’s joint New Testament and Missionlogy day-long conference on “The Missionary Task of the Church” that he perceives a difference between those in Southern Africa clustered under the missional banner, who are mostly drawn by the Dutch Reformed Church, and then especially the above mentioned partnership, and those who identified with emergent (I would differ from him, I think emerging is actually the term being used in South Africa), who he says is about a generation or two younger than the first group, and who’s conversation are framed by blogs and social networks.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t find much that overlap between the two groups, there is a lot in common. Neither does it mean that either of the group can be captured in one definition, I think both have a variety of voices grouped under an umbrella term. But I do believe some of the different nuances came out at the conference, although a much deeper analysis of the papers would have to be made to actually point them out. When I do get written copies of the papers I might make an attempt at this.

Steve Hays asked four questions of SAMS participants, which I will answer tomorrow:

1. What do you think was the best paper/presentation?

2. Please give an abstract of the most important points.

3. What was the most important/significant thing you learned at the congress
(not necessarily from the paperts — chatting to people over coffeee late at
night often yields better insights)

4. Were you inspired to do anything as a result of the congress? If so, what?

If you attended, why not answer it as well, on your blog or in tomorrow’s comment section.