Feel Good Story Of The Week

The City Cafe Bakery in Kitchener, Ontario does things surprisingly different. Here is the story from a trade magazine called Baker's Journal:

City Café doesn’t have Interac or accept credit cards. Neither will you see a cash register in the bakery. Instead, customers add up how much they owe themselves and drop their money into a fare box from an old bus.

“I liked the idea of simplifying things and ... the honour system made a whole lot of sense,” Bergen says. “What irritated me about going into Tim Hortons, for example, was waiting in line for something as simple as getting a donut and a coffee. So the thought was, someone can pour his own coffee, grab his own bagel, cut it himself, throw the money in, and walk out. We don’t touch 60 per cent of the transaction.”

Because it is up to the customers to total their purchases, Bergen has simplified the cost structure. “Everything is rounded off to the nearest quarter with taxes included where applicable,” he says. “So every desert is $1.50 (tarts, brownies, and date squares), every pizza lunch is $5, every beverage is $1.25, every loaf of bread is $2.75 (Italian sourdough, multi-grain, and raisin bread on weekends), croissants are $1 each, and bagels are three for $2 (plain, sesame, and multi-grain).”

The bakery conducts audits every six months and Bergen says only once did things come up short.

“Our theory is that two per cent of our sales are being ripped off. ‘Ripped off’ in the sense that there are people who forget to pay or they make a mistake in paying, and then there are people who deliberately don’t pay. And every so often we have to kick somebody out that we know hasn’t been paying,” he says. “But at the same time we figure we’re being overpaid by three per cent. Some people come in and want a $2.75 loaf of bread, but they see we’re busy so they throw $3 in and walk out. Or, although we discourage tips, some people still give them to us. But because the staff is paid well (the average wage is $15.50 an hour), the tips go into the general pot.”

The staff will make change if a customer needs it, but Bergen says they will ask the customer how much they want back because they don’t want to have to do the math.

How does something like this work in a world as screwed up as ours? I think that the theological explanation is common grace, which Nathan discussed here and here.

Because human beings are created in the image of God, they have the capacity to function in a civilized society. Whenever we see examples of people respecting each other and working well together, it gives us the opportunity to praise God for his goodness toward undeserving sinners. And it also gives us as Christians an opportunity to applaud the "good" in the world instead of always pointing out the bad.

Myanmar Needs Your Help

By now the news concerning Myanmar is probably familiar to most of us. As a result of Cyclone Nargis, over 65,000 people are dead or missing, according to state media. Other groups estimate that the death toll could eventually exceed an astounding 100,000.

To put that in perspective, even the current dead/missing toll in Myanmar is over seven times the number of deaths reported in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the current conflict in Iraq combined. If the final figure indeed tops 100,000, it will easily exceed the total number of casualties the U.S. suffered in Vietnam and Korea.

But beyond the staggering tragedy involved with the lives that have already been lost, other serious—some even ridiculous—problems remain. According to a recent MSNBC story, Myanmar’s military government has said it will accept aid from all countries, but has thus far been prohibiting foreign workers from entering the country to help manage the crisis. (Some Western aid experts in Thailand will reportedly have to wait four more days before entering the country simply because the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok is taking a local holiday.) This with nearly 1 million people waiting for food, clean water, shelter, and medicine, thousands of children being orphaned, and the stench from floating bodies described as “beyond words.”

What can we do? First, pray. Pray that God would bring Myanmar’s military leaders to their senses and allow aid workers to enter the country. Pray also that he would provide the necessary resources to manage the situation and bring relief to the people affected by the tragedy. Finally, pray that he would cause many hearts to look to Christ for their ultimate rest and joy.

Second, consider contributing financially. While I admit it’s very easy to see the news reports and simply go on about our day, we might remember an important truth: Christians worship a God who has graciously poured out compassion on us in our desperate need—indeed he continues to do so. That truth should encourage compassion of our own.

You can find contact information for several relief agencies here.

"Other Things"

Last week’s issue of U.S. News & World Report, to which I am a subscriber, quoted Barack Obama on why he believes religious beliefs to be important in a person’s life. According to U.S. News, at a mid-April forum at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., Obama said:

“Religion is a bulwark, a foundation when other things aren’t going well. That’s true in my own life, through trials and tribulations” (4/28/08, p. 14).

What’s your reaction to that statement? Does that assertion reflect your view of your faith as well? If it does, you’re in big trouble.

Now I don’t want to pick on Barack Obama personally or as a political candidate. I certainly do not believe any of the other presidential candidates are any more or less on target than Obama when it comes to the Christian faith. So that’s not my point of interest here at all.

My interest here is in the eventual life crash that will certainly come your way if you in any way share his view. Because if you see your faith as “a foundation when other things aren’t going well,” then in truth your faith is no foundation at all. At best, it is a second best—the undesired thing you turn to only in unfortunate times—“when things aren’t going well”—“through trials and tribulations.” But to you, fortunate times—times when things ARE “going well” in your life—are those times when you don’t really have to turn to religion.

In other words, if your faith is what you turn to primarily “when other things aren’t going well,” then God is not your first choice—he’s no greater than your second. Your greater desires are for other things. And you regard your life as “going well” when you don’t really need to turn to God.

But life will eventually crash ashore on the sharp rocks of reality for us whenever God is not our greatest desire. Our lives are, in reality, NOT “going well” if our greater desires are for other things than God. And we can tell what our greatest desires really are when we consider what it is we would describe as when our lives ARE “going well,” and what it really is when we think “things aren’t going well.”

And we don’t get the Bible’s message at all if we think of God primarily as the One we turn to “when other things aren’t going well.” If that’s our perspective of what it means to have faith in Christ, then we’re trapped in an illusion where our view of reality is the exact opposite of reality. We think “other things” are better for our lives than God.

In his excellent book entitled Lost in the Middle, on p. 52, Paul Tripp offers some penetrating questions that expose where our greatest desires in life are really focused—how we personally define when our lives are “going well” or not. Here are just a few to consider:

What is it that keeps you going?
What makes your life worthwhile?
What are you convinced you cannot live without?
Why do you call one day good and another bad?

It is not overly spiritual to say that, if any of our answers to these questions omit God, then we’re trying to build our lives on an ever-crumbling foundation of “other things.”

Yale Student's Senior Project: Abortion Art

If you’ve had your eye on the news the past couple of week, you might be aware of the recent controversy (to put it mildly) surround Aliza Shvarts, an art student at Yale. Shvarts intended to submit a senior art project that she asserts centered upon a nine-month long process of repeated artificial insemination attempts and possible self-induced miscarriages using abortifacient drugs.

I use the word “attempts,” and “possible” because Shvarts never actually knew whether she was pregnant during the process. I say “she asserts” because it still remains unclear whether the project was a “creative fiction” or Shvarts actually did what she claims. (Read an overview here.)

This story points to an entire host of important issues, only a couple of which I’ll touch upon here:

1. The Yale Daily News reported that “students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock—saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.” As someone with a biblical conviction that abortion is wrong, I would sadly but clearly label Shvarts’ project, if real, as both shockingly tragic and profoundly immoral. In fact, even as a “creative fiction,” I’d be obligated to state the project remains seriously reprehensible. Conversely, it seems much less clear how anyone from a pro-abortion position can decry Shvarts’ actions as anything more than a public relations liability. In other words, from such a perspective, she might needlessly be offending the sensibilities of those on the other side of the issue, but she’s done nothing intrinsically wrong: such actions don’t constitute the taking of a life and individuals, after all, have a right to do with their bodies as they please. As for trivializing the act of abortion, my sincere question is this: isn’t that, in essence, the very thing abortion rights supporters are consistently seeking to do in some measure?

2. The same article quoted Shvarts as saying, “I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity. I think that I’m creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be.” I agree that art is often an effective and powerful means to communicate ideas in both overt and subtle ways. But to consider it solely as a “medium for politics and ideologies”—a perspective that many Christians often share, differing only in the content of the ideology—leaves art indistinguishable from bare propaganda. This perspective forgets that art has worth simply in demonstrating creativity and beauty. These are qualities valued by God himself and, consequently, appreciated instinctively by those he has made in his image. (For similar thoughts, see Lucas Kwong's "Art, Politics, and Sex Week at Yale.")

Prince Caspian

Twelve spiritual lessons from Prince Caspian that might launch a good conversation with a family member or a friend.

What Will Heaven Be Like?

On this blog we are always making the point that your theology makes a significant difference in how you live your life. It's always encouraging to get help getting that point across especially when that help comes from unexpected sources. Recently, the ABC program Nightline ran an interview with N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, England (Anglican), in which he discussed his newest book Surprised By Hope. In the interview Wright lays out the often neglected biblical view of heaven and distinguishes it from the inaccurate version portrayed in the Left Behind series. He also discusses the implications for our daily life and ministry. It's well worth the 5 minutes it takes to watch.

(HT: Evangelical Outpost)

Christian Pop Culture

Have you ever had the experience of being so embarrassed with your fellow Christians that their behavior makes you wonder if you're really a Christian? In a new book entitled Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, Daniel Radosh catalouges the underbelly of the Christian subculture ranging from Bibleman and Ultimate Christian Wrestling to Christian theme parks and "witness wear." I'm not sure if what I've read thus far makes me want to laugh or cry.

Slate's review by Hannah Rosin
Discerning Reader's review by Tim Challies

How to Judge Art-Pt. 4

Having mentioned technical excellence, validity, and content, we can now turn our attention to Francis Schaeffer’s fourth and final general criteria for judging art: the integration of content and vehicle.

The last criterion judges how well an artist has matched her medium to the ideas that she wishes to express. Schaeffer offers T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” as a noteworthy example of this standard:

When Eliot published this in 1922, he became a hero to the modern poets, because for the first time he dared to make the form of his poetry fit the nature of the world as he saw it, namely, broken, unrelated, ruptured. What was that form? A collection of shattered fragments of language and images and allusions drawn seemingly haphazardly from all manner of literature, philosophy, and religious writings from the ancients to the present (Art and the Bible, 47).

Likewise, a work like the animated blockbuster The Incredibles (2004) is also noteworthy in this regard. One of the film’s central themes is that exceptional talents are not to be hidden or neglected, but rather used and enjoyed. It would be difficult to find a better medium for a message of that nature than a story about a family with super powers, particularly when cast in computer animation. Such a combination allows for visually stunning portrayal of this unusual family’s exceptional gifts, as well as situations in which they are compelled to use them. In this case, content and vehicle fit like a hand and glove.

In the final installment of this series, we’ll look at an example of applying all four criteria to a particular work of art.

How to Judge Art-Pt. 3

Having looked at the first two of Francis Schaeffer’s criteria for judging art (technical excellence and validity), we now move to the third: content. This criterion deals with the worldview or ideological perspective expressed within the art. Though some express it more fully or explicitly than others, every work of art—whether painting, sculpture, film, music, theater, literature, etc.—expresses a worldview, a framework of understanding and living in the world. The Christian’s task is to evaluate these ideas in light of biblical truth. Says Schaeffer, “If we stand as Christians before a man’s canvas and recognize that he is a great artist in technical excellence and validity—if in fact he is—if we have been fair with him as a man and as an artist, then we can say that his world view is wrong” (Art and the Bible, 43-44). Alternatively, we may applaud an artist’s convictions and be forced to admit that the execution of the art involved is decidedly sub-par.

It’s worth noting that a work of art will rarely, if ever, be completely consistent or completely contrary to the Christian worldview—a fact that only underscores the need for careful discernment. Such discernment, in turn, depends on a solid knowledge of the Scriptures, a quality in which Christians should be constantly growing.

Schaeffer also adds two additional comments when discussing this criterion. First, “if something untrue or immoral is stated in great art it can be far more destructive and devastating that if it is expressed in poor art or prosaic statement. …Ordinarily, many seem to feel that the greater the art, the less we ought to be critical of its worldview. This we must reverse.” The second is this: “It is possible for a non-Chrisitan writer or painter to write and paint according to a Christian worldview even though he himself is not a Christian" (44-45). The opposite, of course, is also true. This leads to four different possibilities: (1) the Christian who creates art consistent with a Christian worldview: (2) the non-Christian who creates art inconsistent with Christianity; (3) the non-Christian who, for whatever reason, creates art consistent with the Christian worldview; and (4) the Christian who creates art inconsistent with his faith (46).

Culture Connects

As I mentioned in my last post (Cultural Disconnect – April 18), in every culture there are certain common societal assumptions that strongly align with Biblical commands, and at the very same time in the very same culture there are norms that are fundamentally at odds with a Biblical worldview. Of course, our own culture is no different.

In the previous post we considered one glaring example of our current culture’s rejection of Biblical virtue by examining the sexual norms on college campuses today. (See the article Sex Education in the WSJ). However, here, I would like to consider, in Paul Harvey’s words, “the rest of the story.”

You see, I think our first reaction as Christians to articles such as ‘Sex Education’ is to throw up our hands and remind one another that the whole world is going to hell in a hand basket. Just try to stay out of the way of the lightning bolts God will be hurling soon. Safety is found in separating from the culture.

Each culture, to be sure, has certain idols and sins that define it as an overall society. Sexual promiscuity (masked in the language of “freedom”) is surely one of the defining sins of our age. However, cultures as a whole also have moral strengths that define them – cultural assumptions that, for one reason or another are highly motivating to the majority of people and that are also fundamentally Biblical motivations.

For example, in 21st century America, our culture has assumed a keen interest in the social injustices that occur worldwide and cried out against them. Consider our celebrities: the greatest rock star alive today and America’s (formerly) richest man have both switched gears at the height of their success and committed their lives (and fortunes) to battling disease, hunger, and poverty in Africa. As Time magazine revealed by naming them co-persons of the year in 2005, we admire them as heroes.

In addition, consider organizations that have become household names: Peace Corps, Save Darfur, Oxfam. And some you may not have heard of yet: PEPFAR, Mocha Club, kiva, and literally thousands of others.

Even Graham Hancock, in his book Lords of Poverty (who does not speak kindly of the structure and motives of the current foreign aid sector), must admit,

In all Western countries, irrespective of their wealth, and irrespective also of their ideological stance, ‘overseas development’ has been elevated above political debate to become the ‘least questioned form of state spending’

.
Concern for global social justice is not perfect or complete or thoroughly integrated into everything our society does. Instances of injustice obviously still abound. But I would argue that it is a growing cultural influence that is truly motivating more and more individuals to live their lives with an eye toward the poor and oppressed. I would identify it as one of our society’s collective virtues.

The fact of the matter is that the commitments we see in our culture today to help those that cannot return the favor, to have a special eye toward injustices committed against the poor, and to affirm the humanity and dignity of any person regardless of race, class, or sex are fundamentally Biblical commitments.

Read Psalm 41:
Blessed is the one who considers the poor!
… he is called blessed in the land… (vs 1,2)

Consider Jesus’ first words as he begins his public ministry:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. (Luke 4:18)

And James’ letter:
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction… (1:27)

How, as Christians, should we respond to our culture’s keen awareness of social justice? In short, we should be its biggest fans.

We ought to affirm and celebrate all the work and attention that is devoted to causes working for global social justice, caring for the sick, fighting on behalf of the oppressed, and providing for the poor. These kinds of activities fall directly in line with God’s redemptive work in the world.

We ought to partner with organizations working toward this end, (explicitly “Christian” or not). We ought to have a keen eye for the kind of movements in our culture that are in line with God’s will for the world, and support them the instant we identify them.

I think Jonathan Dodson, writing on the boundless website, gets it right. He asks, “How should we pray for our culture?” and answers:

We should thank God for the gift of culture, confessing that all cultures contain truth, beauty and virtue, asking Him to help us recognize and rejoice in these good gifts, which come down from the Father of lights (Js. 1:17).

Alternatively, all cultures also disdain truth, beauty, and virtue. Thus we are dependent upon God to enable us to recognize and reject those things that are harmfully false, ugly and immoral. By asking God to give us the perspective of His Spirit…we can begin to discern between the things which are true, beautiful and good and the things that are false, ugly and evil.

I would highly recommend reading the rest of the post, titled “v. Culture” which serves as a brief introduction to engaging culture as Christians.

Postscript:
The thoughtful blog reader, at this juncture, will of course be asking themselves the following question: how can non-Christians live in line with God’s will? Isn’t “anything not of faith, sin?” Good question thoughtful blogger.

For a good theological framework with which to answer this question, I would point you to Nathan’s recent series of posts on common grace (March 17, 21). I think the points he makes there will go a long way toward answering some of those tough questions we all ask.