WHO IS THE ENEMY

Thought for the Day

You will find here a short thought for each day through November and December, 2005.

Scroll down until you find the appropriate date.

November 1: CHILDREN

“Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me’ ” (Mark 9:36-37). It seems that children have a special place in the heart of God. They may not be able to vote. They may contribute nothing to the economy but rather be an economic liability. They may be dependent upon others for almost everything. When attention is focused on community leaders, moguls of industry, politically powerful people, they can easily be forgotten or overlooked. Yet the God who shows a preferential option for the poor, has a special love for children. To ill-treat a child is to ill-treat Jesus Christ and his heavenly Father who are bonded to that child in love.

November 2: THE TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus faced up to three major temptations (Matthew 4:1-11). One was commercial, the temptation to buy a following by relieving the plight of the poor; another was religious, the temptation to draw a crowd by doing something spectacular and supernatural; while the other was political, the temptation to use force to compel compliance with God’s laws. Jesus rejected these ways of operating. While, on the surface, appearing to be most attractive, he saw that in the long run they were counterproductive. The church has not been so perceptive but all too often has succumbed to commercial, religious and political temptations. Still Christ challenges the church to resist the temptations and follow, as he did, the way of genuine, self-giving love.

November 3: LEADERSHIP

Leadership is for the sake of those who are led. It has a servant role. That is why leadership, in the Bible, is likened to shepherding. A good shepherd looks after his flock, leads them to good pasture and defends them against attack. Jesus is both Good Shepherd and King. This model of leadership represented by the Shepherd-King is still relevant for us today. When we are in leadership positions or given the opportunity to play leadership roles the Shepherd-King model is one for us to follow. That is the model of servant leadership. We need more of this in business, politics, education, and in the Church.

November 4: DUAL IDENTITY

The Church has a dual identity. It is an organization, but it is first and foremost a spiritual reality. As an organization it suffers from all the usual limitations of organizations. It uses techniques common to them. It defines its membership. It codifies its doctrine. It adopts systems of government and decision-making. However as a spiritual reality it is the Body of Christ; a movement produced by the Spirit's movement in the lives of people; the People of God. These two identities are not independent of each other. The organization would not exist without the spiritual community. The spiritual reality does not exist independently of the structures and systems of organization.

RELIGION AND RELIGIONS

November 5: SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION

When speaking about the mystery that lies beyond ordinary, everyday life we can speak only about our human perceptions of it. We cannot describe it in any other way. We bring concepts, images, thought-forms, and language, shaped by the particular tradition within which we stand, and these, in turn, shape our experience of the Beyond. The broad, vague Beyond can only find particular shape when viewed from a particular point of view, a point of view shaped by human tradition and personal experience.

November 6: JUDAISM

Among the various religious traditions, ancient and modern, one tradition stands out as a vehicle for divine revelation. That is the ancient Jewish tradition reflected in the Hebrew Scriptures. It occupies a unique place in history. It led the way in understanding that God is one, beyond physical representation, and personal. They dissociated God from creation itself or any part of it and in doing so did the groundwork that made science possible, and they pioneered the linear view of history—time moving from a beginning toward an end. The Jews have occupied a unique place in world history, but for the Christian their most important gift is that of Jesus.

November 7: A UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION

China, India, the African continent, Latin America, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, European civilization - all have made a significant contribution to contemporary life. But the Jewish people have made a contribution quite disproportionate to their size and territory. They have been scattered. For most of their history they have been under foreign rule. Yet they have given the world a unique gift in their insight and understanding of God. God’s revelation through them makes them the most significant people in the history of the world. Whenever people of any tribe or nation read the Bible they, as it were, go up to Jerusalem, they recognize the peculiar role played by the Jews in world history.

November 8: JESUS, A JEW

Jesus belonged to the Jewish tradition. Christians join with the Apostle Paul in seeing themselves as heirs of that ancient Hebrew experience, widening out to people of all races what started off as a local and nationalistic understanding of God. The chosen people then are not defined by race or law-keeping, but by their faith in God. The promises of God have jumped the fence and become attached to the followers of Christ. “The Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Ephesians 3:6).

November 9: THE BASE FROM WHICH WE WORK

The people in the early Church thought it important to link Jesus with the Jewish tradition expressed within the Hebrew scriptures: “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27). Later when Christians sought to present Jesus to the Greek-speaking world they tried to link him with elements in the Greek tradition. And so it has gone on ever since. Missionaries have sought to present the Gospel by linking it to themes, stories, beliefs and customs of the people to whom they speak. There is a platform in every cultural group upon which the Christian Gospel can be placed. However Christians have retained the Hebrew scriptures as part of their Bible because of its special significance in providing the initial platform for the Gospel. That continues to be the tape measure against which to size up the accuracy of the message in all other cultural settings.

November 10: SECRET DISCIPLES

There are many secret disciples of Jesus around the world today. Captivated by the power and character of Jesus they seek to follow in his way, but they find it difficult to break with family and social conventions. There are others who could be called secret disciples of Jesus but they do not identify themselves with the Church or any formal Christian organization because they have been put off by the failure of professed Christians to live out their discipleship in practice. Like Joseph of Arimathea, “who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews” (John 19:38), they can do something to honour Jesus, but, like him, it is often too little, too late. Our faith is reinforced by gathering together with others who are struggling with their discipleship. We are helped in our discipleship by taking the bold step to declare our allegiance.

November 11: A UNIVERSAL GOSPEL

The light that has shone into the world through Jesus is not for people of his own race only. It is for people of every race. Even within the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament this idea finds expression. It is made more explicit in the New Testament. The revelation made within the Jewish context has to be translated into each and every human context. This broadens the horizon. It takes the message out of a nationalistic context into a universal one. The glory, the power, the wonder, the splendour of God revealed to Israel and in the person of Jesus can now be recognised all around the world. Each perspective sees a different facet of this one diamond. “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Isaiah 60:1).

November 12: THE LIMITATIONS ON RELIGIOUS STUDIES

There is no independent position from which religions can be judged. Exploration of spiritual experience can only be undertaken with tools given to us by a tradition. Even the academic study of religion takes place within a certain cultural framework, one that has its own language and history, its own methods of critical thought and research, its own limitations and advantages. It has the advantage of giving us objective knowledge about religions, but it suffers under the severe limitation of being unable to take us into the sense of mystery and the Beyond from which the religion arises. All we can do is stand on the vantage point given by a particular tradition - academic, spiritual or religious - and interpret our experience of the Beyond in terms provided by that tradition.

November 13: THE MESSAGE OF JONAH

Most people remember the part about Jonah being swallowed by a big fish or whale, but the most important part of the Jonah story is that God was sending him to take God’s message out beyond the boundaries of Israel into the gentile, pagan, politically powerful city of Nineveh. The theme of this book was to counteract a tendency among the Jews which made them see themselves exclusively as God’s people. They believed God had no time for non-believers or people from beyond their chosen race. Its message is till relevant today as a counter-measure to the tendencies toward exclusiveness among Christians or any other group.

November 14: A MAN FOR ALL PEOPLE

Religion often gets tangled up with nationalism and then with nationalistic politics. However in the New Testament we see how that nexus was broken. Jesus, the Jew, became the man for all peoples. He can be properly understood only as a Jew who stood within that Hebrew tradition reflected in the Hebrew Scriptures. But his gospel is for people of every race and nationality. His kingdom is not of this world, therefore he is not to be tied to any particular nationality or nationalism. He finds his home in every nation, but he is not to be domesticated into any. He is for people of all nations, but not the possession of any. “The gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Ephesians 3:6)

November 15: GOD’S UNIVERSAL LOVE

There are no limits to the extent of God’s love toward human beings. Those who see themselves as special recipients of divine revelation are tempted to think that God’s love is restricted to them. This is a very dangerous approach. For example if a Christian should think of God’s love being only for Christians, then they can justify all sorts of terrible things being done to other people. But the Gospel is clear: God’s love knows no boundaries. So every person that we meet is a person that God loves, that Jesus Christ died for, and that God desires to be saved from the drag of human sinfulness. God seeks a living, vital, trust-filled relationship with everyone. “(God) desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).

November 16: IDOLATRY

God’s rivals for our commitment are not so much the gods of other religions or nationalities but rather those powers which we serve like wealth and money, pleasure and self-interest, power and influence. These are the ‘gods’ which must be told in no uncertain terms that God is God and there is no other As we express our heartfelt thanks to God we dethrone these idolatrous gods. As we live in gratitude before God we restrain the insidious powers of these demanding ‘gods’, so widely and popularly served in our society. These ‘gods’ can be harnessed to serve God. That is their proper place - as servants of God and of God’s purposes, not as controlling forces in our lives. “I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise” (Psalm 138:1).

November 17: SELF-CENTRED OR GOD-CENTRED

In spite of the lessons learnt through astronomy, we still assume that the world revolves around us, either individually so that we think that even God is there to serve our wishes, or communally so that we think God favours our nation above all others. A more accurate picture would be of us revolving around the source of all light and life, that is, God. God has no favourites, but in every race and nation there are people who respond to God’s self-disclosure with reverence and with obedience. It is wrong to assume that God is not present among people of another religion or among those who avow no religion at all. Unawares, many respond to the will and grace of God.

November 18: IGNORANCE

Just as we know there is goodness in all people, yet they are less than perfect because of sin, so we know that there is much knowledge, wisdom and insight held by people all around the world, yet at the same time there is much that they do not know. We have, then, no grounds for spiritual pride, nor for claiming an exclusive hold on the truth. We are all ignorant to some degree or other, and this should teach us to listen to one another. We all have more to learn. In this spirit we will approach people of other religions with respect, patience, humility and tolerance.

November 19: TOLERANCE

The Gospel announces God's love for all people. Jesus died for the sake of all people in the world. That means that every person that I meet—Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, etc—is a person loved by God and one for whom Christ died. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). Every person that I meet, irrespective of their religion, politics, nationality, etc, is a person loved by God. Then if they are loved by God, surely, if we have the Spirit of God within us, we should love them too. The knowledge that the person of another religion is a person dear to the heart of God and a person for whom Christ died should open us up to a spirit of tolerance and acceptance. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we will agree with their ideas, but it does mean that, we will approach them in love and tolerance.

November 20: NO NEW EXPERIENCE

For centuries, Christians lived in relative isolation from people of other religions, so that multi-faith tolerance was not a burning issue, although, if you’ll excuse the pun, the way Christians treated other Christians all too often did become a burning issue. The story of the church is filled with persecutions and martyrdoms perpetrated by Christians on other Christians. However the situation that confronts us now—how to live Christianly in a multi-faith community—is not new for the church. For its first three hundred years, that was the social environment in which it existed.

November 21: WHO IS THE ENEMY?

Paul made it clear that the Christian's warfare is spiritual. “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against ….spiritual forces of evil….” (Ephesians 6:12). The Crusades were a mistake. A denial of the very Spirit of Christ. Christians are not called to fight wars in the name of Christ. No person, race or nationality, no religion, can be identified with evil. The people of another religion, like us, are subject to Satan’s infiltration, but, in themselves, they are not satanic. We must avoid the temptation of highlighting the evils in other people, races, nationalities or religion, while seeing only the good within our own.

November 22: LIMITS TO TOLERANCE

There is an incident in the life of Jesus that people often refer to that seems to show marked intolerance on his part. It is the story of the cleansing of the temple as, for example, in Mark 11:15-19. There must be limits to what we are prepared to accept. Christ does not call us to be tolerant of evil, nor to be tolerant about wrongs being done to other people. We are not called to put up with injustice, cruelty or oppression. In fact the Hebrew prophets condemned the people of their time for being indifferent about these goings-on in their midst. Christian tolerance does not mean anything goes. It does not mean the abandonment of standards or an easy surrender to powerful evils.

November 23: DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY

It is hard to be tolerant toward the person who is intolerant toward us. Yet the ways of God’s kingdom are clear in the teaching of Jesus: “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (Matthew 5:39). Jesus, in his arrest, trial and crucifixion, lived out this counsel of perfection. It is hard to be tolerant when under threat. Fear naturally leads to either fight or flight. But we are encouraged to love our enemies, to love when under threat. That’s not easy! The only answer seems to lie in Christ-like, Spirit-inspired love. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear,” (1 John 4:18). This was written about our relationship with God, but it can apply to our relationship with other people too.

November 24: DIALOGUE

Many a misunderstanding, many a conflict situation has been cleared up when people sat down and talked together—talked and listened. Dialogue is helpful in local community or church life, and also in relationships between people of different religious traditions. Some have pointed to different kinds of dialogue: the dialogue of life that takes place at the level of human interaction at school, workplace, neighbourly meeting etc; the dialogue of action, that is people of different faiths working together to meet some need; the dialogue of discourse when scholars of different traditions share and discuss their beliefs and practices; and the dialogue of religious experience which takes place when believers share together in prayer and worship

November 25: REVELATION

For the Christian, God's clearest, decisive revelation has been made in Jesus Christ. That is not to say that God has not been revealed to people in other religious traditions. In fact, experience teaches that people of various faiths can have very real experiences of God. However the Christian sees God's presence and action in other religions in the light of God's presence and action in Jesus. He is the measure or touchstone by which we identify what is of God anywhere.

November 26: THE BASIS FOR TOLERANCE

Some say everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. There are no right or wrong answers. No absolutes. Everything is relative. Some confine religion to the private sphere of life and treat it as unimportant for ordinary, everyday life. Freedom of religion is accepted as a basic human right provided it doesn’t interfere with other people’s rights. But this is not what we are talking about when we talk about Christian tolerance. The results may look much the same, but the motivation is different. Christians and secular humanists may be able to work together with a shared spirit of tolerance and acceptance of the people that they are helping, but Christians do so in keeping with the spirit of Jesus Christ. The Christian basis for tolerance is not popular opinion, but the mind and Spirit of Christ.

November 27: ADVENT

Advent is the story of God's great adventure (A-D-V-E-N-T-ure). Adventure involves risk. In coming to Earth in Jesus, God ran great risks, symbolised by the vulnerability of the child. Jesus could have let him down. After all Jesus had freewill and lived in a social environment where sin was constantly thwarting God’s intentions. But he didn't. And God continues to expose himself to the risk of rejection by those who hear the Gospel. Whenever we reveal something of ourselves to others we run the risk of rejection. But without the risk there is no relationship. Advent announces that God continues to run that risk with us.

EXPERIENCING THE BIBLE

November 28: A SHARING OF EXPERIENCE

Through listening to old hands and through years of experience the fisherman learns where and when he is most likely to catch fish. It is like that with God. Through listening to people of old tell about their experiences of God and through our own personal experiences we learn where and when we are most likely to be made aware of God’s activity. The Bible, stories of faithful people, and the testimony of people we meet cannot bring God to us, but they can open us up to the possibility of God’s approach to us. They help us to focus attention on the One who cannot be seen and to hear the voice of the One without vocal chords. “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; I will remember your wonders of old. I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds” (Psalm 77:11-12).

November 29: THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES

When reading the Bible it is important that we bear in mind that we are reading the outcroppings of a long history dealing with God and Israel. There is much to be learnt from the Old Testament. The Hebrew Scriptures can become the vehicle for God’s Word. But the fullest revelation of God was that made in and through Jesus. In the light of that revelation, some attitudes and messages expressed in the Old Testament need to be discarded, others are reinforced. The idea of God sending evil needs to be abandoned, although the concept of God bringing good out of evil need to be retained. Through tragedy and sorrow we may still hear God’s call to repentance. Even in times of pain and loneliness God can still do a healing and constructive work.

November 30: CULTURAL BLINKERS

We shudder when we read passages like, “Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill” (1 Kings 19:17). And this was the word of the Lord to Elijah! Bloodthirsty stuff! It contrasts sharply with the attitude of Jesus: “All who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Does God then change? It’s a matter of what people can hear. We can only hear what our culture will allow us to hear. A culture informed by the life and kingdom vision of Jesus is markedly different from one that is warlike and nationalistic. It is not enough to question whether our personal perception of the word of God is accurate; we need to question our society’s perception of what is acceptable and right. For the Christian, the measuring rod will be Jesus Christ.

December 1: THE BIBLE IS FOR POETS

The Bible is for poets. Given the unpopularity of poetry, it’s not surprising that the Bible has been neglected by many and misused by others. What happens to the poetic imagination when trapped in a prosaic world? It is vilified, criticised and condemned. This has happened to those who approach the Scriptures with the poetic approach with which they were written. Unfortunately the Bible has been imprisoned by the literalism of fundamentalism and the historicism and rationalism of liberalism. What was meant to stir the heart has become a battleground for the mind.

December 2: TRUTH

Truth cannot be captured by words. All words can do is bear witness to it. Yet, over the centuries, there has been, within the Christian Church, a preoccupation with verbal expressions held out to be the truth. Truth may be witnessed to by scientific statements, by rational argument or by historical research; yet just as validly truth may be witnessed to by poetry and art, stories and drama, insight and intuition. The biblical witness to truth comes in various forms as it is expressed in various forms of literature, but images, metaphors and stories predominate.

December 3: EVOLUTION VERSUS CREATION

The Bible has been a battleground over creation versus evolution, but it should not have been. The theory of evolution is a scientific hypothesis, testable only by scientific method. Creation is a doctrinal statement testable only by spiritual experience. They operate on two different planes. It is just as wrong to defend creation by trying to use scientific method as it is to try to make evolution a statement of faith. The Genesis stories were not written as scientific theses. They are statements of faith loaded with valuable insight into the human condition and our relationship with God.

December 4: AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURES

The Bible is authoritative for Christians, but what gives it that authority? It was not dictated by God. It did not fall out of the heavens miraculously complete. Although the early Church declared it to be authoritative, its authority was not given to it by the Church. Christians during the first few centuries of the Church simply recognised the authority already there. No, the authority of the Bible comes from the impact of God on the reader. As the Spirit of Christ opens up the scriptures they come alive, and the reader comes alive to God. It is the power of the Bible to move and motivate, to inspire and challenge, to reprove and encourage, to give vision and to change lives that gives it its peculiar authority. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32).

December 5: FROM EXPERIENCE TO EXPERIENCE

The Bible is the product of human experience. It is a collection of writings reflecting people’s experience of God—the ancient Hebrew experience and the experience of the early Church. As with all experience, the authors express themselves in language, terms and concepts of their own cultural milieu. Yet the Bible speaks with such power and, in spite of an amazing diversity, has its own peculiar unity—all of which suggests that it was more than just a human enterprise. The Christian claim is that it was brought into being by God’s activity in the Holy Spirit. It is when the same Spirit of God impacts on our experience today as we read the Bible that it comes alive and becomes the Word of God to us.

December 6: MANY FORMS OF WRITING

The Bible contains many different forms of literature; e.g.: myths and legends, history, poetry and songs, letters and drama, law, apocalyptic, sermons and gospels. It is silly to read it all as though it were systematic theology or scientific fact. One reads poetry in one way, but history in another. Of course we can check details against archaeological discoveries and other historical sources, we can try to harmonise what we read with accepted scientific fact and we can bring logic to bear, but we must not allow these to divert us from an awareness of God’s activity in the past as expressed under many different forms.

December 7: THE BIBLE NEEDS INTERPRETATION

The Bible grew out of a faith tradition and it is within that faith tradition that it finds its interpretation. From its beginning, the church has used preaching to interpret the Scriptures, first the Hebrew Scriptures and then the whole Christian Bible. We are indebted to scholars and translators; they help us understand the text. We are guided by the accumulated wisdom and doctrine of the church when we read the Bible today. The person who says, ‘The Bible says’ is deluded if by that he or she means that the Bible speaks without any interpretation. The book of faith needs to be read with the eyes of faith if it is to be understood properly. “So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8).

December 8: PAST EXPERIENCE GETS FILTERED

Why is it that heroes of the past loom so much larger than people of our own day? Why is it that people in the past heard God speak to them so clearly, but we do not hear with that sort of clarity today? Why do political issues look so simple when we look back upon them in history, but we find it so difficult to make up our minds about issues today? Time acts as a filter. It filters out extraneous matter like jealousy, pride, spiritual apathy and fear of what others might think and concentrates the attention on certain salient points. When we read the Scriptures it is our spiritual ancestors telling us about the deeds God performed in their time stripped of much of the extraneous matter than gets in the way of our being aware of God in action. “We have heard with our ears, O God, our ancestors have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old” (Psalm 44:1).

December 9: BRIDGING THE HISTORICAL GAP

You will find two basic approaches to the Bible in the Church's educational programs. One starts with the Bible story or passage and tries to find some application to life today. The other takes a good look at a contemporary life-situation and tries to bring the message of the Bible to bear on it. Either way there is a gap to be jumped between then and now, them and us, past history and present experience. For example, one approach accepts the New Testament world of demons and exorcism as a template to interpret life today. The other approach sees demonic forces at work today, in individuals and in society, and then, in the light of Scripture, declares God's victory over them.

December 10: READ IN THE SPIRIT

If the Spirit of God worked in the storytelling and letter-writing, the oral pre-history and the documents preserved in our Bible, if the Spirit was behind the writing, collating, editing, and positioning of the writings, if God was involved in their selection and preservation, then it is God the Holy Spirit that should lead us in our reading. It is hard to believe that God was not involved in such a complex and long-drawn-out task. We need the Spirit to lead us in our reading, if it is to speak God's Word to us today. So the Bible is to be read in the Spirit. That's what it means to read devotionally.

EXPERIENCING RELATIONSHIP

December 11: RELATIONSHIP

The kingdom of God is about relationship. Salvation is about relationship. Life is about relationship. Religion is about relationship. Fancy reducing God to an abstract idea, or salvation to a cold, rational doctrine! Fancy thinking that relationships were not important in life and can be sacrificed for selfish goals or desires! Fancy belittling religion so that it becomes merely a system of priests and pastors, rituals and buildings, codes and dogma, vestments and special music! It's relationships that make life worthwhile. It's relationship with God and with others that religion and salvation are all about.

December 12: GENESIS 3:1-19

The wonderfully insightful story about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden is about sin disrupting relationships. God's intention is right relationships, but the powers of evil are out to destroy them. The happy relationship between Man/Woman and God is broken - they hide from God in the garden. The happy and innocent relationship between man and woman is broken - they hide from each other by making clothes. Their happy relationship with the world around them is broken - they are cast out of the garden There is no greater condemnation of sin than that it disrupts relationships.

December 13: WE NEED RELATIONSHIPS

We need relationships. We are not human without them. While we might think of ourselves as individuals, even as independent individuals, we are part of a community, and the community has helped to make us what we are. We have learnt our language, our customs and habits, our thought forms, our dress sense and a host of other things from being in relationship with other people. It's a strange aberration of modern life that there should be people who think that they can get along without other people. It's less that human.

December 14: THE COST OF RELATIONSHIPS

We know deep down that we need relationships. We want them badly. But they are costly, and we are sometimes put off by the price we are asked to pay. Of course there are damaging and corrupting relationships, and no one should tolerate them. But even good and happy relationships demand effort and time. There is a price to be paid. Good relationships impose restrictions on our freedom, constraints on our time, even monetary and financial costs. But the choice is before us: accept the costs and find fulfilment through those human relationships or refuse to pay the price and live as a spiritual, emotional and personal pauper.

December 15: HONESTY DEMANDED

The one thing that kills a relationship quicker than anything else is dishonesty. Healthy, open, loving and respectful relationships only grow out of honest expression of feelings, hopes and intentions. This is true of human relationships and it is true of our relationship with God too. That is why confession of sin is so important for our relationship with God. It tears aside any mask that we might have been wearing in God's presence, and openly admits our failure. Confession or repentance is part of the honesty necessary for a renewed relationship with God. It is also necessary when human relationships have become strained or broken.

December 16: ADULTERY

The grounds for condemning adultery have changed. When the Ten Commandments were promulgated the prohibition against adultery was to protect the other man, the woman's husband, for it despoiled his property. But although such patriarchal attitudes hold no water with us today, the prohibition remains as a safeguard protecting the relationship between husband and wife. Adultery is either an act of dishonesty that injures their relationship or it is a severing of sex from any real significant relationship. Either way it treats the relationship as rubbish.

December 17: SEX

It is part of the genius of humanity that we can humanize our basic physical instincts. We can transform eating and drinking into relationship-building occasions. And so with the sexual drive. It can enhance deep and lasting relationships. In fact, the vast wealth of human experience has shown the necessity of channelling sexual fulfilment within those sort of relationships. What is more important than sexual orientation or anything else is that it be expressed within a secure, enduring interpersonal relationship.

December 18: SEX AS SACRAMENT

From a Christian point of view, the act of sexual intercourse can be seen as sacramental. That is, it is a physical action that gives expression to and strengthens a spiritual relationship. To sever sex from inter-personal relationship is to debase it. To build a relationship simply on sex is to belittle inter-personal relationship. Both belong together - the physical and the spiritual. But the real power in a relationship is spiritual rather than physical, and for that reason the establishment of a secure, love-filled, and trusting relationship should precede the act of sexual intercourse. That's what is meant by advising young people, "Wait until you're married."

December 19: HEALING BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS

Our relationship with God can be interpreted in terms of inter-personal relationships. Our human relationships help us to understand our relationship with God. But it also works the other way round. Our experience of relationship with God gives us guidance for handling our human relationships. In our relationship with God, we have learnt that a broken relationship can only be restored by a costly act of atonement, by confession and forgiveness. And so it is in our inter-personal relationships. A breakdown in relationship can only be repaired as someone is prepared to apologize, to admit error, for that to be accepted, and for forgiveness to be given and accepted.

December 20: RELATIONSHIP IS SPIRITUAL

The first indication that a person has squeezed the spiritual dimension out of life is a willingness to sacrifice relationships for other things like pleasure, power, affluence, ambition, or self-importance. Family is neglected, the marriage relationship is treated casually, children are given money instead of time, people are treated as commodities or as objects to be manipulated. For most people, the strongest awareness of a spiritual dimension comes in the love and warmth of family life, in the intimacy of a love-filled marriage, or in the closeness and affinity one feels with friends. To crowd this out is to stifle one's own spirituality.

December 21: MARRIAGE

Marriage is spiritual. It is the linking together of two people in spirit. But spirit is never divorced from the physical in our present experience, so the physical linkage is also an essential part of it. There is something special and unique about every marriage. To have sex with someone else other than one's marriage partner is to degrade the relationship. It not only creates tension and suspicion between the partners, but it undermines that special relationship. It is the spiritual bonding that makes two to become one that lies at the heart of marriage - not law, not custom, not society or what people say, not lust, not emotion, not merely physical attraction, it is the peculiar and special relationship between the marriage partners.

December 22: THE GOSPEL IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

The Gospel is all about relationships. But someone will say isn't it about Jesus being Saviour and Lord? Exactly! To say Jesus is your Saviour is to say that he restores you to a right relationship with God, and to say that Jesus is Lord is to affirm an on-going relationship in which he gives direction and leadership. The kingdom of God is a realm of right relationships. Jesus used the word love to describe these relationships - love to God and love to neighbour. That is what he calls us to. He does not call us to believe certain doctrines or to join certain organizations, but to live in right relationships with God, with each other, with ourselves and with the environment.

December 23: THE FRAGILITY OF RELATIONSHIPS

Relationships are fragile. They can fall apart. When they do, they expose us to the risk of being hurt. But to avoid relationships out of a fear of being hurt is to diminish ourselves. It is to live like a frog at the bottom of a well when we could be flying high like an eagle. Sometimes, out of an awareness of the fragility of relationships, people cling to others, possessing them, but in doing so, they destroy the very thing they are afraid of losing. We are all, in a sense, dependent upon other people, but to live in a spirit of dependence is to lose the real character of a healthy relationship - mutual respect, acceptance and helpfulness.

December 24: PEACE AND CONFLICT IN RELATIONSHIPS

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" (Luke 2:14). Christmas is often called a season of peace and goodwill, but that means it's time to emphasize right relationships between individuals, within families, between nations, within communities and most particularly to give thanks that through Jesus we can all come into a right relationship with God. Real peace is not just the absence of war: it is living in right relationships. That is not simply attained by trying hard; there is something in the nature of a gift about it. It comes as we accept a place in God's kingdom of peace.

December 25: CHRISTMAS

Christmas centres on a tiny baby, a baby in very humble surroundings. But it is not just a beautiful Christmas card. It is the expression of a profound theology for this child is revered as the Son of God. The implications are staggering. They require a re-writing of our understanding about God. Christmas announces that God has handed himself over into human hands, becoming as vulnerable as a tiny baby, capable of being neglected, starved, abused, dropped, rejected, or manipulated. God is made known in weakness, not in power; in gentleness, not in aggression; in simplicity, not in sophistication; in self-sacrificing love

December 26: DIVORCE

Relationships can be reflected in legal arrangements or in social expectations, but neither law nor custom can hold a relationship together. Divorce is a recognition that a particular relationship has broken down. If there is, in fact, no spiritual relationship remaining that binds the two people together, it is wrong to insist in the name of God or social convention that they have to remain married. And if a relationship has irretrievably broken down it is wrong for the Church or anyone else to say that those people are not free to enter again into the intimacy of a spiritual bonding in marriage.

December 27: COMMITMENT

Relationships require commitment. Some people hesitate to get married because they are not prepared to make the long-term commitment that a real spiritual relationship requires. And marriages fall part because people are not prepared to put the effort into them that they require. But no real relationship develops without this commitment of one toward the other. The ideal of marriage is that two people make a commitment to support, encourage, help and comfort each other for the rest of their lives. They undertake to work at their relationship, to protect it, to defend it, to give it such priority that it will grow and mature as the years pass by.

December 28: FAITH COMMITMENT

Our relationship with God requires commitment on our part. It's no use coasting along only when the weather is fine; we have to remain committed when the dark clouds have obscured the sunshine of God's love. While acceptance with God depends entirely on God's grace, we have to be warned against "cheap grace" - taking the grace of God cheaply. Our relationship with God will not grow if we only give ourselves to it when we feel like it or when it is convenient to do so. Our faith relationship with Jesus Christ is for the long-haul: "Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us." (Hebrews 12:1)

December 29: CROSSING BOUNDARIES

If we gave more attention to building relationships we would help toward a better and fairer world. Suspicion grows out of ignorance and ignorance abounds when relationships are not built up across the divides of race, class, language, sex, age, religion and nationality. The future of the world depends upon better relationships, not just between leaders of nations, but between ordinary citizens. This requires real effort because it is much easier to stay in the company of "people like us" than to build relationships with people who are different. But when we do, our own worlds are enlarged, our own spirits are enhanced, and possibilities for peace in the world are advanced.

December 30: NO COERCION

Relationships cannot be coerced. Warm, healthy relationships cannot be manufactured at will. They come, as it were, like a gift, maybe within the home, within the wider community, or within the life of the Church, wherever. In some societies, marriages are arranged and frequently, given the attitude and expectation of the couple concerned, they develop a real relationship later. In Western society it is expected that people will enter marriage by their own free choice and with love for the other person. But what is clear is that no one can force the spiritual bonding of two people in a strong, healthy, love relationship. We say that there has to be a certain chemistry between them.

December 31: CONSTRUCTIVE RELATIONSHIPS

Healthy relationships are constructive. They build each partner up. But sin in the human soul ensures that relationships are not always healthy. Child and sexual abuse, bullying, cruelty, domination and attitudes of superiority, selfishness, deceit, resentment are destructive of people and of their relationships. God's work is always constructive. Even if someone carries out destructive practices in the name of God, they are not of God. They never have been, and never will. The relationships that God wants for people are such as to build them up, make them more human and open them up to the spiritual dimension, particularly a spiritual relationship with God himself.

Piula Publications Faith Formation