Will we now abuse the abuser?

Hubby and I finally managed to get our act together and have officially moved cities. After an eventful move that included our truck tipping over on the motorway and our car getting stolen, we arrived in one place, found jobs, bought a new car, and have got ourselves a house. All that is left is the final unpack, buying a kitten or two (because...KITTENS), and finally sitting in our own home with a nice cold glass of something and curling up into the foetal position until the next time someone

needs us.

I have moved many times before, including moving cities on four separate occasions, so I thought I knew how this all went, and wasn't too worried about anything going wrong. 

Boy, was I wrong on that!

Everything that could possibly go wrong did. Though no one got hurt, the mental and emotional stress that we have been under is insane. Today, after we signed the contract for our house, both of us immediately felt exhausted. We had done it, but it had been a hard road.

God is good though, and through it all we have been blessed.

We have been blessed by the fact that we could stay with our parents and store our stuff for free in their garage while we sorted life out.

We have been blessed by the help we have received from family and friends in moving and through prayer and love.

We have been blessed that it really didn't take as long as we thought it would to get settled here.

Everyone, including ourselves, had predicted that it could take months to find jobs in a small town, and those jobs would probably pay a lot less than our jobs in the big smoke did. But this has not been the case. Both of us found jobs within a week of moving down and both jobs are at better pay than what we had previously!! In our minds this fact cemented that we are doing the right thing.

I am working now at a charitable trust for Maori. I process grants which help encourage the health and education of the local iwi/tribe. Though i may sit behind a desk, I find it very fulfilling knowing that I am helping a people that have had much work against them.

Hubby is working as a supervisor as the local Alternative Education centre. This is a centre for kids aged 13-15 who have effectively been expelled from the local high school and yet, by law, have to still be enrolled in school. They are all from rough backgrounds, most are related to gang members, and 95% of them are Maori. His job helps give my job even more meaning.

Needless to say, his work stories are far more interesting than mine, and far more heartbreaking.

He comes home with stories of drug use, abuse, crime, kids not having lunches, being picked up by the police, and getting in fights. They are hardened criminals, who also turn into excited little children when he teaches them ukulele. 

I breaks my heart when he tells me these stories. I mean, these are little kids and yet he laughs if I offer to invite them round for dinner. My instinct is to mother them. Yet, if I did that, we could/would be targeted by gangs intent of burglary or other devious crimes. They are children on the outside, and yet their lives have taught them only violence and crime as survival instincts.

I feel hopeless when I think about this. The reality is that these children are going to grow up and be, whether willingly or forced, part of a gang system that will feed them nothing but hate and drugs. And there is nothing I can do about it, because I can't get involved. Even hubby has limits as to what he is allowed to do within his role.

So how do you help a kid who you can't give things to, who it isn't safe to bring back to your house, and who you know is vulnerable and needs love? 

Does my safety trump bringing them home?

It messes with my mind when I try and bring my sacrificial faith face to face with the reality of what would happen. And I know what would happen. Hubby's mother works in the police down here and knows the families of these kids well. She knows what they would do. And it wouldn't be pretty.

So I pray, and I cry, and I physically ache for these kids. And I try my best at a workplace that would try and change the inevitable for these families. But mostly, if I am really honest, I try not to think about it. I don't want to feel hopeless and helpless, so I block it out.

Until I read an article like the one linked here.

If you can't be bothered reading the link, here is the cliff notes:

1. abuse is bad

2. here are some signs of how abusers act

3. abusers are out to get you so watch for signs

4. we will help you if you are in an abusive relationship

Now I agree with 3 out of 4 of these points. And point 3 is not explicitly stated, it is more the way that the author talks about the abuser, as if they were purposely acting in such a way in order to fool you.

I don't think this is the case at all.

When I hear about the kids at the AE centre, what I hear about are children who have been brought up in an environment perfect for producing an abuser.

They own nothing.

They lack love.

They respect no one (especially women).

Figures of love use violence.

Violence is how they solve their issues.

If they want something they take it.

This list is exactly what happens in an abusive relationship. But I don't think an abuser looks a someone and thinks "right, I want to abuse them, so I need to con them into loving me and then beat the s**t out of them."

Rather, what I think happens is that they are genuinely looking for love, it's just that they have been taught that love is possession and control. It's not that they necessarily WANT to hurt someone, it's just that they have no other tools in their emotional toolbox to deal with relationships, jealousy, love, anger, or anything. So they use what they know.

The sad thing about our society is that we demonise those that abuse. Yet they have often been at the hands of abuse for so many years that nothing short of extreme, extravagant, loving help is going to make any difference. 

But instead of help, they receive misunderstanding. Instead of compassion, they receive death threats. Instead of love, they receive hate layered on top of hate layered on top of hate. They are told they are devious and wicked, instead of being told that they too are a victim. They are told they are as bad as socio and psychopaths, instead of being nurtured into healthy communication. 

Society is trying to heal hurt and anger with segregation and hate.

It won't work.

And yet we persist in this kind of thinking and acting time and time again. Even if we go to something less extreme as abuse, and look at bullying, the same response dominates how we treat those who victimise others.

Case and point is the X-factor debacle that dominate NZ headlines recently. Cliff notes again, judges said nasty things to contestant, judges were fired. From that one, very brief, story, news agencies around the world went crazy.

And so did the responders to the judges. 

It is unfathomable to me how we can yell against bullying, but then do it by bullying the judges themselves!! Hate messages, mail and tweets poured out towards these two judges who, to be fair, had been told to be harsh to make good tv. What was said about them was worse that what was said by them at times.

Society thought it was permissible to abuse an abuser.

Why?

Why do we think that pouring out hate towards those who have shown hate can possibly rectify a situation?

Is it still a form of 'a tooth for a tooth' mentality? 

Because that is not what we are called to. Jesus refuted this way of thinking by calling humanity to something greater. Not a tooth for a tooth, he said, but love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Turn the other cheek to those who hurt you.

I AM NOT CONDONING ABUSE IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.

If you are in an abusive relationship then get out, so you can get help, and so that they can get help outside of the volatile situation that is your relationship. Neither of you will heal or grow if you stay where you are.

But as a society we are not called to defend the honour of victims by making more victims. We are called to show love and understanding in order to offer arms of healing. We can point out bad behaviour by refusing to take part in it. 

Be better than those who hurt others. Don't stoop to their level by showing only hate and refusing help.

I would like to finish with a quote by Martin Luther King Jnr. that pretty much sums up everything I want to say about this; why try say it better when a master has captured it so eloquently.

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, 

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. 

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar, 

but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. 

Through violence you may murder the hater, 

but you do not murder hate. 

In fact, violence merely increases hate. 

So it goes. 

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, 

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. 

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: 

only light can do that. 

Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

We Will Remember Them...(a not so ordinary memorial)

Today in NZ it is the 12th of September but in Americaland it is the 11th. September 11. Will that day ever mean anything else except death and fear?

I remember being at school on this day 12 years ago (has it really been that long) and hearing, incorrectly, that America had been bombed. The rest of the day went out the window as we sat in our classes glued to the tv watching repeats of the crashes, then people jumping out of windows to escape the fire. The images are burned into my memory and still make me feel physically ill.

Years on now and my view on this historic event has changed. 

It is still disgusting, barbaric and gut wrenching.

It is still a day that is worth remembering.

But as my understanding of world politics has grown so has my compassion for people that I never thought I would have compassion for.

So today I would like to add my own memorial.

"WE WILL REMEMBER THEM"

Today as we remember the planes crashing into buildings I choose to remember the plane hijackers who chose to kill innocent people. I choose to remember all those who have been subjected to brainwashing and have hurt themselves and others in a deluded attempt to do the right thing. I choose to remember their hate, and I chosoe to forgive it as Christ forgave those who nailed him to a tree and then jeered at him as he died.

As we remember the flames that burned with enough force to melt a building I choose to remember those in every country who have burned in the fires of war and terror. I choose to remember Americans, Afghani's, Iraqians, Iranian, Syrians, Pakistanis, African and South American Nations, and every other people, person, mother, child, father, brother, sister, wife, husband who has instigated or been the victim of war and hatred. I choose to pray for those who kill and those who are killed that the justice of God might be known throughout the world and God's peace may reign over all.

As we remember those that were crushed in buildings that came down on top of them, I choose to remember those that see their way of life destroyed in front of them and have no money to rebuild. I choose to remember those that are poor and helpless and do not have an economy or a government that will help them with medical costs and welfare. I choose to remember the parents who watch their children starve because they have been forgotten by the people with money and power. I pray that they may know that God is with them in their suffering, that Jesus suffered as they suffered, that he had no home or income and that he loves them and will wipe their tears from their eyes.

As we remember the nationalism that swept America after the fateful events of September 11 I choose to remember those that are in nations that use nationalism to wage wars and incite the people to hatred. I choose to remember the conditions and environments that breed young people and teach them to hate those from other countries and different religions. I remember those that have never heard of the gospel of peace and instead chose revenge and murder. I pray that God will forgive them, and that they will learn to turn from what they do.

I will remember them.

All of them.

Cool guys don't look at explosions....

      

SPOILER ALERT!!

I am sitting at my in laws house watching the above movie. 

Now I have always been a keen action movie fan. Despite the crap scripts and easy to guess plot lines, and despite the fact that the main characters always have more muscles than acting talent,watching stuff explode followed by the inevitable witty one liner has always appealed.

So let me say I am more shocked than anyone else to find that this has changed!!

I mean Bruce Willis!? Who can say no to a good Bruce Willis flick??

And yet something is sitting ill at ease with me as I watch cars flipping and the chandeliers falling and the gratuitous use of swear words and the name of Jesus used as a profanity. And not for the reasons you are thinking.

There seems to me to be someone fundamentally wrong with a world that pays millions of dollars to watch a movie that cost millions of dollars to make because it blew up millions of dollars worth of stuff.

Does any one else wince when hundreds of cars are destroyed simply to make a good 30 second shot? Does anyone else consider it an injustice to a country to go into the poorest parts in order to cheaply destroy and rebuild people's houses in order for entertainment? Does anyone think that it is bad form to pick at the worst parts of a country's history in order to create a plot line or a believable villain?

Does anyone else think that the movie industry earns its money by playing of the real world horrors of war, murder, death and destruction? Not to mention the twisted use of sex.

Now maybe I am getting old, or maybe my study has warped my brain, but when I watch people purposely smash into cars I tend to think of innocents who in real life may have had their lives destroyed by uncaring drivers. I watch people get their brains blown out and think of the families that never get to see their loved ones after they have died overseas in war.

Movies like these hold no joy for me anymore. The more real they get the more I am disgusted. The more the cool guys pay no attention to the havoc they wreak, the more angry I become with the industry as a whole.

Movies are our new day colosseum games. We watch the gladiators kill each other in ways that put us right in the ring with them. The reality of what we watch in a movie means we may as well be watching the real thing. The blood splatter, the life like choking of people, the use of people as pawns in a game. 

Why do we need this? What drives our blood lust? What makes us want to watch body bits blown off people? What makes us cheer when the good guy walks away without looking back at the explosion?

I am coming more and more to think that it is our fallenness humans that fuels the movie industry. Our desire for bigger, better, faster. Our drive for sex and violence. Our altruistic tendencies that turn people into objects to be watched. We know it is acting and no one is really getting hurt so we excuse the fact that we are turning war into entertainment, that we revel in true death of the baddy, that we want revenge and not forgiveness to win out in the end. As long as the good guy gets to walk away in one piece we will quite happily forget what he did to the hundreds of people he left in tatters behind him. We want a hero, not a saint, and heroes make things messy sometimes.

There are too many movies out there that sell on sex and death. There are so few stories of real redemption, forgiveness and healing. There are so few stories that show the best of humanity rather than the worst. And as I write this I am watching a man be thrown into the blades of a helicopter instead of being arrested and taken to trial. His daughter is killed too, instead of getting counseling for having a psychotic maniac as a father. Makes my point quite well I think.

*sigh* theology has destroyed my ability to mindlessly watch anything anymore.

I guess I will stick with Despicable Me.

Warrior God & Prince of Peace

This semester I have taken on the mantel of running a young adults group at my church. I love it! It is awesome to just sit and chat with people about real stuff that they are struggling to understand in the bible and to offer any wisdom or knowledge that I may have accumulate over the years. 

The dealio goes, if it is bugging you then ask and we will study it. So one of the peeps decided to bring up the issue of how do we reconcile the violence of the old testament with the 'love your neighbour' of the new?

Brilliant question. I am now officially leaving as leader....

Jokes. Though this question is one that I have struggled with for years. It is a question that usually haunts anyone who has been a believer for any length of time. In the Old Testament you have a God who is proclaimed as the Warrior God of Israel (Ex 15:3). In Jesus you have the acclaimed Prince of Peace (Is 9:6). 

Juxtaposition much?

I really don't like the violence in the earlier half of Scripture. It really bothers me when genocidal actions are attributed to God. It is totally at odds with everything I know of God being kind, loving, and a healer. It makes me unhappy.

Based upon a comprehensive study into the prevalence of violence throughout the Old Testament, Raymond Schwager calculated there to be “six hundred passages of explicit violence in the Hebrew Scriptures, one thousand verses where God’s own violent actions of punishment are described, a hundred passages where Yahweh expressly commands others to kill people, and several stories where God kills or tries to kill for no apparent reason (e.g. Exodus 4:24-26). Violence, Schwager concludes, is easily the most often mentioned activity and central theme of the Hebrew Bible.” 

That is a lot of killing.

Some Christians have found this to be waaaaaay too much to handle so they, like a dude called Marcion in the 2nd Century, throw out the OT and focus only on the NT. This is a heresy called Marcionism. The thing is, we may not literally tear our bibles in half and throw away the first lot like he did, but a lot of us don't read our OT because we don't understand it. Instead we read the NT, the stories about Jesus and the church, and we stay in our safe zones, not venturing out into the vast unknown of the Israelite world. 

But you can't understand Jesus if you don't know the OT.

Jesus came to fulfil the law, not to abolish it, and that means that in everything that Jesus was and did he was the pinnacle of what went before.

So you have to know what went before to understand how he fulfils it.

Which means delving into the angry God stories.

I am not going to do that today, the point of this blog is very different.

What I want to do is to encourage you to read what makes you uncomfortable, to wrestle with it, struggle with it, pray about it, and talk about it. Don't ignore it or run from it, that solves nothing! Take the bull by its horns and stare it in the face knowing that the God you are trying to learn about won't let you fall if you are placing your faith in him.

And the God we place our faith in shows us most fully what he is like in the person of Christ. So while you are struggling and wrestling with difficult passages, remember that it is in Jesus that we see the full picture. It is ok to come back to the person of Christ as a safe zone while you roam through the foreign land of the Bible. It is ok while sitting in the tension of how to reconcile the two to look at Jesus because he is the FULL image of God. 

Just don't give up. It is worth it if you keep pressing forward in hopes of understanding God.

Thesis Update - Halo, Skyrim, Heroes and Saints.

As you may be aware if you are reading this update, I am doing my Masters thesis on biblical ethics and gaming (see link here if you want the low down).

I love getting into reading and trying to take what people have already said and apply it to what I am thinking about. Yes, I am a nerd. I am doing a thesis on gaming!! I think NERD is really an understatement.

Anywho, I have been reading aaaalllloooooooooooot for this thesis already and am really interested by the ideas that are coming out. And as promised, I am going to share my musings with you lucky lucky people.

Got your snacks and beverages? Ok, let's get this thing underway.

A am currently totally in love with the work of one particular ethicists called Samuel Wells. Particularly his book called Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (which can be found here).

Mind blowing stuff I can tell you.

The overly simplified version of his argument is that "ethics presupposes context, and an understanding of context presupposes narrative; yet if context is to be understood as genuinely communal, and ethics as genuinely interactive, then narrative must be understood as drama." (59)

So what he is saying is that ethics needs to be for people in a time and place, and you only understand that time and place if you understand the story that brought the people to it. You with me? So if that time and place is for a community (not just an individual) and ethics is something we do (not just think about) then the narrative is not just a story that people tell, it is one that is lived out and one that ethics has an impact on.

You following still?

He goes on to argue that for ethics to really really engage with a community (in this circumstance a Christian community that uses the Bible as Scripture) then the Bible is not a text that we memorise and then act out, as a drama would imply. Rather, it is a story we immerse ourselves in to the point where we know it so well we can improvise while remaining faithful to the text, to God, and to our community.

Like I said, this dude blows my mind! Loving it!!!

So even though that in itself is an amazing concept, it is not what I want to look at today.

What I want to engage with is Wells' idea that secular ethics is looking for heroes, while Christian ethics is about making saints.

Bear with me, all will be revealed.....

.....now.

Well's talks about how Aristotle, the Father of ethics, talked about virtues as the way a character of a human should be, rather than ethics being about decisions we make in crisis situations.

Virtues = character.

He held up as the pinnacle of a person who had mastered the virtues the idea of the 'Hero'. The Hero is someone who is strong and brave. They protect the weak and use their strength for good. They rely on their own strength rather than on the weakness of others, and if the fail it is catastrophic for not only themselves but the people they are protecting. The best death would be one in battle, as it takes the most courage to go out and fight so to die this way would be exemplary. 

The Hero = Superman (Christopher Reeves style)

On the other hand you have Aquinas, one of the early church Fathers. He liked the idea of the virtues but he changed them around a bit and said that instead of heroes, the biblical values built Saints. The Saint is someone who is serving of others, filled with the fruits of the Spirit (love peace patience kindness etc), and the virtues help them to follow Christ. 

For the hero the story is about them. For the saint it is about God.

For the hero the story is about celebrating their strengths. For the saint it is about celebrating faith.

The hero will die fighting in inevitable conflict. The saint will die as a martyr because they refused to fight for they believe that Christ has already won.

Hero = Soldier

Saint = Martyr

So this got me to thinking:

What stories are games portraying? Who are they honouring, the saint or the hero? What are they teaching us is the better thing to be?

If you look at any game you can see that it is the Hero that is celebrated. You need to fight well, protect others, be strong and courageous. Death isn't really wanted, but you can rejuvenate and better to die in a battle that to not battle at all.

Gaming loves Heroes.

Because really, what kind of game would it be if the main character was a saint who didn't fight!!?? It wouldn't sell, people don't want to be that character.

And I think that is the thing that most interests me about all this. That deep down we all want to be heroes. We don't want to not pick up a sword/gun/laser and not fight. We don't want to be seen as weak and pathetic. And gaming latches on to that need in all of us to be the hero. We won't accept that maybe only a few people ever will be real heroes, we want to be it too!! We won't accept that in this life there may not be opportunities to be heroic, we want it now!! And we certainly don't want to be told that we SHOULDN'T be a hero, that it is opposite to the biblical message.

So where this has left me is wondering if there is something to being a hero in games that is redeemable. Can we live out of a belief that would have us be martyr's but play games where we get to feed the fantasy of being the opposite?

Can we reconcile the Hero of gaming and the Saint of the Bible??

Alex Cross kicks some ass

I am an avid book reader. I can read through an average size 300 page book in a day, stopping for meals, if I am in the zone. And I am in the zone fairly often. These Christmas holidays alone I have read ten novels and a bunch of books and articles for my thesis study. I love love love books.

One of my fav authors at the moment is James Patterson, especially the Alex Cross series. If you don't know them then let me give you the run down (SPOILER ALERT):

Alex Cross is a big black dude. He is over 6 feet tall and built like a mac truck; all muscles. He is a detective who lost his wife to a mindless killer and has got a bit of a saviour complex out of trying to deal with that one. A workaholic, he goes through relationships like they are going out of fashion and seems to be so blinded by pretty woman that, in one case, he doesn't notice that they are a serial killer. 

He loves his kids and his Nana Mama (his grandmother who raised him after his parents were killed), is a Dr of behavioural psychology and attracts psychos like bees to honey. 

He is bad ass.

I love it!

The thing is, my thesis is on morality and ethics in video gaming and the biblical viewpoint on violence in these games. I am being convicted about the glorification of violence and death in media.

So the last time I read an Alex cross novel (about a week ago) I spent most of the time wondering what God thinks of it. I have to admit it, it kinda ruined the experience a tad for me.

Only a tad.

Because when I think about it, Alex Cross hates violence but works with people who are violent and so ends up in situations where violence happens. The great thing about the novels though is it shows the emotional impact that this violence has on him.

Instead of him being the hero who walks calmly away from the destruction all around him, he weeps when his friends die, he goes into shock when he has to kill people, he panics in moments of craziness and protects his family out of desperation more the heroism.

He acts, in short, like a real person would.

And something about this really appeals to me. The violence isn't glorified in the books, even though it is there in bucketfuls, it is more seen as part of a messed up world that people have to do something about.

And when it gets a bit nasty, I just switch off my imagination, or skim read the descriptions.

I am not gonna go to the film.

Firstly, movies ruin books (except maybe in the case of LTR).

9 times out of 10 what the producer imagines from the book is not what I imagined and I come away disappointed. And then I can't read the book again without imagining the producers characters. It annoys me, coz I like to re-read books until the pages fall out!

Secondly, movies glorify  violence in a way that books don't. In a book you can 'hear' what the character is thinking about a situation, 'see' the emotional impact, and grieve with them.

The movie for Alex Cross is going to be a Hollywood extravaganza focusing on the badges getting taken down, the gunfights, and Cross's huge biceps. The books are action filled, the movies will use that.

In the gruesome bits it will show it in detail. My mind is still innocent enough that it can't imagine the scenes that are described in the book, or it does so in a way that it doesn't see it happening to real people. On screen the reality of the violence is that much more real. It isn't imagination anymore, it could have happened to your next door neighbour. And as my husband can testify, I get upset and cry for the families of the extra's  in films let alone the main characters.

And once those images are in my head there will be no getting rid of them. The emotional Alex Cross, who tells his bff Sampson that he loves him, will be lost to me forever.

I am just not prepared to let that happen.