Help me why is it so?

Help me why is it so?

Talking to my friends in the USA who know these things, and also to people in the UK parliament they tell me that the rudest letters, the most vitriolic complaints almost always come from those who say they are Christians.  Why is that so?

Talking with a Christian Journalist friend, he tells me that the worst letters of complaint the most condemning and nastiest come to him from Christian readers, why is that so?

I know that when people find their way to Jesus, they are often not nice people, usually they know that and that is why they come to Christ for help, for change, for a new right life.  I have often had people say to me you need to love me as I am God does,  my often thought with such people is, that’s very hard because you are horrible, you are just not nice.

I do know that God loves us as we are, there would be no hope, or grace if He did not as a Muslim friend once said to me, if God does not show us Grace there is no hope for any of us.  However it is very clear that the plan for those who follow Jesus is that we should not remain as we are ‘Horrible’ if you will, but the plan is to change us, make us more and more like Jesus.  So his values become our values.

I constantly find that people who call themselves ‘Christians’ do not seem to haves the values of Jesus and although they claim to be following him their actions really give me a problem.  Yet I find some who make no claim to be a follower of Jesus, having values, actions, grace and concern for others in a Christ like way.  They may even call themselves atheists or people without faith.

 Even Paul had those who were Asiarchs in Ephesus who did not share the 'Jesus-bit' but were ardent defenders of him even when their own future status and comforts were greatly under threat. 

A friend of mine said ‘The tension comes when we view evangelicals as 'brothers and sisters'. I don't think my discernment is simply cultural - I think I discern it in the Spirit. But working together with a number of them is all-but impossible, or, there is a small uncomfortable area where we can work together.  Then, with those who are not believers, I do not discern that bond, but find where they share the values of Jesus we can go a long way forward.’

Let me tell you a personal story, I was part of a church group, working with them I bought a house they provided the deposit however from then on I paid all cost mortgage, repairs everything.  Then they fell out with me; silly me had put the whole property in the name of the group, it seemed spiritual at the time!

It did not seem so good when they issued an order ejecting me from the property, a life on the streets with wife and three young children did not seem a good idea. Fortunately God was there and I was able to buy back the property I had paid for, at a very inflated cost, my ‘brothers and sisters in Christ making a goodly profit out of my distress.

So reason for this story, well at the same time as all this happened I had entered into a seven year contract to rent a shop, we were about three years in.  I read the contract carefully, should have done that when I signed it. I realised that I had signed away a lot and given the landlord great power over me.  What to do,

I went to see them, one Muslim one Hindu owing the shop.  I showed them my contract saying I realise you have lots of power to take me for everything.  They both read it carefully, yes they said we have defiantly got you, however we are also in business, so we think we should be kind to you, you are released, and they ripped up the contract.  I was happy but disappointed too; I was puzzle as to who was Christ like, who really were my brothers and sisters, who had the Jesus value.

So now can you help me understand?  Maybe C.S. Lewis had it right in his last battle.

Emeth, one of Rishda's men and a devout follower of Tash, insists on seeing his god. Rishda tries to dissuade him, but Emeth enters the stable, and the dead body of another soldier, who was stationed in the stable to murder the rebellious Narnians, is thrown out instead.  Aslan invites him into His world, Emeth says he cannot come as he has never severed Aslan, always Tash, Aslan say all you did was for me even though you thought you were serving Tash.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+last+battle+by+cs+lewis

http://3generations.eu/blog/archives/9082

Adrian Hawkes

adrianhawkes.blogspot.com

W. 834

Refugees: the current issues - is there a solution?

Refugees: the current issues - is there a solution?

I was privileged to have been able to speak at the United Nations on the subject recently. The reality is that this is the worst refugee crisis since World War Two; actually, in regards of displacement and movement of people, it’s worse. According to UNHCR there are currently 59.5 million displaced people in the world at the moment.

In the UK there is a lot of anti-immigration press, telling us how many "illegal people" there are and the fact that they are taking jobs, school places, and homes. This has created a great deal of tension and distrust.  Many of the figures quoted are not true, and when you look at real figures from reliable sources you find that the story is very different.

There is another story too, that is not being talked about much and that is one that needs to be brought to Europe's attention. In Europe, UK, Germany, and Italy particularly, there is a need for young workers who pay tax. The reason being that in the UK and other European countries the indigenous populations are getting older.  Most of us have things like state pensions, paid from taxes.  When these were originally introduced with a male retirement age of 65 and female retirement age of 60, life expectancy was between 68 and 69, very different to today predictions. The current life expectancy in the UK is heading towards 100 years. Who is going to pay for all those retired people? Whose taxes will fund it? We need the refugees' help to do that.  Politicians don't have very much to say about this.

There is a lot of nonsense being spread around too, that the refugees are just economic migrants. Really? The millions from Syria are just after better jobs are they? I don't think so!

We also talk about how many are coming to Europe, but in real terms it is only a small percentage of those displaced. In fact, in 2014 the UK took in 31,945 refugees compared with, say, Turkey's 1. 8 million, or the 600,00 in Jordan. Tiny Lebanon, with a population of just 4 million of its own people, took in 1 million refugees. We need to be talking about the millions in places like Jordan, the overwhelming number in Lebanon and the massive camps in Turkey.  Some politicians tell us, "We are doing our fair share; we are taking a big slice of the cake." Are we?

We also need to be asking the questions as to why the rich countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia etc., at the moment seem to have no refugees from the war areas of Syria, yet they speak the same language.

Note also that in the Middle East those calling themselves Muslims have killed more people calling themselves Muslims than any other group has.

I note that a friend of mine in Poland has come under quite a bit of flak for persuading the government there to give refugee status to people from these areas that have some kind of Christian background, that we should just take all comers or none.  Well, I think we should, as countries, be taking those in need, but we should note that in many areas it is the minority groups like Christians and the Yazidis who have come under the most pressure. Many have even been thrown overboard and drowned from the boats that they were escaping on, by others who did not like their Christianity.  Many Christian groups also saying that even in the refugee camps the discrimination against them is too hard to bear.

I recently wrote to the UK prime minister with my suggestion for dealing with the problem. Sure, my solution would not deal with the short term issues; for that we have take in refugees. However, these problems are not going away any time soon.  The prime minister's answer to me and others is that we have to deal with the source. Maybe, but who is going to do that, and in the meantime, what do we do?

My mad suggestion is that we lease land for 99 years and start a new big city; like a new Hong Kong.  We put it under the laws and administration of a country like the UK. We use aid budget to fund jobs in the new land, creating new housing, roads, schools, hospitals and general infrastructure, charging a levy to the EU for asylum seekers that they did not take. The country setting it up has first bite of infrastructure contracts, thus benefiting its GDP.  The new occupants are given passports, possibly stamped and not allowed to work or receive benefits in Europe, a bit like the stamp on Channel Island passports, who of course hold UK passports.  Mad? Of course it is, but we need a mad answer to such a mad situation. I am glad as I watch the global response to such madness, that there are other mad people out there that think this is a possibility. Recently an Egyptian multi-millionaire offered to buy an island to do just what I am suggesting. Another rich philanthropist in the USA also wants to buy an island, and then in the UK Lord David Alton recently put the whole idea to the British House of Lords. (http://davidalton.net/2015/07/10/2015-the-year-of-the-refugees-just-put-yourself-in-their-shoes-full-house-of-lords-debate-and-government-response-and-a-reply-from-a-north-korean-refugee/)

I started by saying I was privileged to have been able to put the problem to a UN audience recently, but talking is not enough. We have to do something. I am glad that the pressure being put on the government by the ordinary person is having some effect, and note that the UK will now take 20,000 refugees. Even Iceland has offered places for 10,000. In terms of the pressure being put on governments by their populace to do more, at a recent march to put on the pressure in London, I was amused by some of posters. One youngster carried one that said, "A refugee can come and stay at my house and play mine craft." Though I thought the best was one that said, "We need to be more German," especially as the UK had just agreed to take 20,000 people over five years on the day that Germany took in 40,000.

Adrian Hawkes

w.1056

Edited By: Kirsty De Paor

www.adrianhawkes.blogspot.com

Morality

Morality.

The subject I observe presents such problems.

I was part of a government think tank looking at OFSTEAD inspections of schools; one of the things they look at is the moral part of the schools ethos.  My problem is how does one obtain morals?  In my small discussion group there where Moslems, Catholics, Jews, Evangelicals, and humanists; all of us apart from the humanist agreed that morals have to come from some kind of Law giver, and actually in all of our thinking that must be God, apart, that is, from the humanist, who said there isn’t a God so morals must come from somewhere else.

I went on to argue that in terms of generosity, in such things as tsunamis, famines and the like the UK is actually quite generous in its giving, I put this down to the Judeo Christian influence in the background of the nation. The humanist said, “now don’t be silly, its due to the fact that we were once great colonists.”   To which I responded, “I thought that was about greed, trade, and getting lots of things for ourselves?”

I was one of those interviewed by Richard Dawkins for his ‘Religion is the root of all evil’ programmes. After which I found stuff all over the internet, usually from many of the so called ‘learned’ atheists poking fun at my opinions.  Funnily enough I have read Richard’s book, The God delusion, and one of the things that struck me is how often the base of whom we are and where we are comes down to ‘luck’, at least according to that book.  God seems a better thesis to me.

And of course both in the programme, on the net, and definitely in Wikipedia comes the discussion of mortality.  I am amused that in at least one article, the fact that we live in a moral universe and one ‘without God’ according to the ‘atheists’ is argued from the fact that some fish have a symbiotic relationship with ‘cleaner’ fish, the action of the one fish on the other fish actually protects them; therefore arguing that we don’t go around on our streets killing each other because it’s wiser not too.  One of the things that Richard Dawkins said to me in the interview for his programme, (which I have not seen on the programme or the Utube repeats, so I guess it’s on the cutting room floor), was, Richard said “I am more righteous than you. “ I of course said, “Oh and how is that?” to which he replied, “I don’t go around pillaging and raping, and I don’t need a God to stop me, you need one to stop you.” To which I answered, “bully for you, you maybe ought to watch the news!”

One Swallow does not a summer make.

 Richard Dawkins often says that being an atheist is not one with a depressing philosophy, actually he say it makes one appreciate life more and love life.  Again I say, ‘bully for you’, the problem is that you don’t have to travel very far to find people who are starving, people who have been enslaved, people who have every reason not to love life, if you now want them to believe that this atheism is the truth, and not be depressed by such a philosophy all I can say is HELP!  It’s the most depressing view of life that I can imagine; 

So where does morality come from, I note that even some of the comments on what I think that are listed in Wikipedia note that I am saying that we live in a moral universe, and there is a base line for morality and that comes from somewhere, God I would say.  Yes that is what I am saying, morality without a giver is craziness, it is not morality; as Charles Finny would have put it: “Opposed to this is willing self-gratification; a practical treating of self as if the gratification of our own desires, appetites, etc., were of supreme importance. Now in this ultimate choice of the good of universal being, or of self-gratification as an ultimate end, moral character must reside. Primarily, surely, it can reside nowhere else. It is this ultimate choice that gives direction and character to all the subordinate actions of the will; that gives direction to the volitions, the actions, and the omissions of all our voluntary lives. This ultimate choice is the root or fountain from which all volition and all moral action spring.”

 I guess even Richard would agree with some of that, as the basic premise is that morality only comes from our own selfishness to survive or not be killed that is why we don’t have mayhem on the streets.  Although I wonder if we perhaps do, I live in an area where we have postcode crime, knife and gun crime, so the morality is you don’t live in my postcode area, you are there so you need killing. That seems a great morality!

Going back to that statement I made earlier, ‘bully for you’, seems to take no note of the Hitler’s, Pol Pots, and Stalin’s of this world, which again makes me think if morality is only up to our moving to a value system that selfishly benefits us only, and we can get around it, then why not? If it is to my benefit to circumvent the law? If there is not ultimate sanction or moral law giver?

It has always interested me that the Bible talks about giving ‘light’ to every person who comes into the world. What is that light? Personally I have always seen that light as being that conscience that dwells in each and every person.  We can obey it or disobey it, it is, if you like, a little bit of God in us, if we obey it we feel good, if we disobey it we feel bad, but it does not force us either way, we have the freewill, we have choice.  Again to quote Finny on conscience, he talks about moral insanity:

“Moral insanity, on the other hand, is will-madness. The man retains his intellectual powers unimpaired, but he sets his heart fully to evil. He refuses to yield to the demands of his conscience. He practically discards the obligations of moral responsibility. He has the powers of free moral agency, but persistently abuses them. He has a reason which affirms obligation, but he refuses obedience to its affirmations”.

So where do I think morality comes from? I think it comes from the law giver - God, he has created, and designed a moral universe, a universe that ultimately works towards the best good for all, the created order, us, and God too.  We can pretend it is not there, we can work against it, we can listen to our conscience, we can ignore it, but none of those things make it not there.

Adrian Hawkes

For Wikipedia

For Adrian’s Blog

Edited by: Technicolour text

W. 1175.

The Phoenix Community Care Story

The Phoenix Community Care Story

It was a sad occasion as Pauline and I visited Alan Pavey in hospital, we knew he was very ill and in fact dying, which he did not long after our visit.  But while there he turned to us both and said, “you need to be helping refugees.”

We both asked, “What do you mean by that?”

 He replied, “You just need to do something about them.” I guess we both saw this as some kind of prophetic word; the problem with prophecy is that you don’t always know how to react or what to do and at that time we didn’t!

A few weeks later we were watching the news together when, and some of you will remember it, a Norwegian boat picked up refugees in the sea off the cost of Australia, and then tried to help them to land, the Norwegians rescued the refugees from drowning. As I watched the news item, I thought how awful to risk your life in such a way just to escape from where you live and go to an unknown land.  The prime minister of Australia refused to allow the refugees to land and I think some of them subsequently died. This story had a major impact on Pauline, she wanted to catch a plane and punch the Australian Prime Minister for his inhumanity and lack of human concern.

As a couple we had fostered children for the local authority for 15 years, giving homes to around 30 children.  We had been wondering what we should do with our experience, the news item became a catalyst. While Pauline was angrily jumping up and down, I was protecting our TV from being attacked and trying to diffuse the situation. I said to her, “Pauline, there are many refugees in the UK, why don’t you start there rather than spend the air fare going to deal with the Australian Prime Minister, who might not see you.  Why don’t you start by phoning social services, they know us and perhaps they have some kind of refugee department?”

I listened to Pauline talking to the social services operator, she asked, “do you have a department that deals with refugees?”   By her smile I assumed they did have such a department, it turned out that the man to whom the call was eventually connected knew Pauline, they had worked together delivering training to the local authority foster carers. 

Once the call was connected he said to her, “we have so much need in this area, I am now managing the authorities’ refugee department, and if there is anything you can do to help we will be more than happy to have you on board.”

What to do? How to help? We did our research and discovered that the Muslim community in our area had already stood up to the plate and were meeting the need with many homes.  We turned to them for help and advice on to how to start and what was needed.  They suggested people who would advise us and we ended up using much of their expertise.  We were somewhat sad that there seemed to be no Christians on the block doing anything to help. For that reason, as we moved into this new arena with our  offer of help, we did not come with a ‘Christian’ agenda, or a church based view, rather we came simply as willing helpers; Phoenix Community Care organisation came into being.

The refugee department was very happy with our suggestions to help, but the programme we envisaged needed to be accommodation based. We were perplexed about how this could be accomplished, our daughter Carla, her husband and three sons said, “We want to help, I tell you what I will do, I will redecorate our house, and then move out and you can use that.” To cut a long story short, that’s exactly what happened and that house became our first property which we housed refugees .  There were months of jumping through fiery bureaucratic hoops and endless   regulations which often make it very hard to help  But we soldiered on and today we have ten houses and can accommodate over thirty  people.

We still remember, and actually are still good friends with our first ever client. The process works like this.  Our company gets a call from Social services saying, ‘we have such and such a person can you help?’  If we have space we usually say, ‘yes.’  We then arrange a collection, usually from a social services office, occasionally a police station.  On this first occasion Pauline went herself. These days one of our key workers would usually go. When Pauline arrived at the office the social worker pointed to a young lady huddled and slumped over   in a chair, on her knee she clutched at a solitary plastic carrier bag, she was pale and drawn, in fact she looked totally drained.   Once introductions had taken place Pauline drove the young lady to the house.  We have a policy of trying to make the accommodation as welcoming as possible, which we define as ‘having the wow factor’.  Pauline She showed the young lady the bedrooms, and the food in the kitchen, and said, ‘as you are our first ever guest you can choose your room from the whole house’.  The young lady chose her room and simply said, ‘may I now sleep?’ She then climbed into bed, coat and all and immediately dropped into a deep sleep.

Pauline drove the car around the corner, parked up, and wept bitterly about the terrible situation of the refugees. She then mopped her face, dried her eyes, pulled her mobile out of her handbag and called me. “Quick!” she said, “Get another house; we need to be helping these people!”

We have expanded since those early days, not only do we accommodate young people who are refugees but we also have our own foster care agency. This was initially conceived because although the refugees we deal with are aged 16 and over, there are in fact those who find their way to the UK who are much younger. Alongside that we formed another company, London Training Consortium, which handles the youngsters’ educational requirements, particularly ESOL, speaking English as a second language.

There is still a great need for people to help in this area, despite the fact that the government is always trying to discourage refugees from entering the UK. As we watch the news and see the wars and dangers that people are in, we can see that people are going to run somewhere, and some will make it to the UK. Often we can tell by the clients who come to us, where the latest ‘hot spot’ or war area is.

Incidentally although we did not announce that underneath it all we have the love of Christ constraining us, nevertheless social services did latch on to the fact that we were people who were ‘followers of the way’ and they often said of Phoenix Community Care and its placements, “you people seem to go the extra mile,” which seems like a good Scriptural principal Matthew 5:41 comes to mind.  We hope we still do.

Adrian Hawkes

For Mari

8^th March 2011

W. 1216

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