Adventures in Parenting

Yesterday as I sat with Elisabeth in the playground, I re-read selections from Lesslie Newbigin's writings. He describes his context in a blighted section of Birmingham, England:

"Every home has a television and this provides, for most of the time, the visible center of life in the home. The commodity in shortest supply is hope.

The older inhabitants speak much of earlier times when there was a closely packed community in which neighbors knew and helped each other. Much of this was destroyed in the name of 'improvement.' The terrace houses were pulled down and their inhabitants forced to move to the suburbs. One 18-story tower block was built; those who inhabit it have one main ambition, namely, to escape. Older people comfort themselves with nostalgic memories of the past, and are fearful of the present. For young people, especially for those of the Afro-Caribbean community, there is little reason for hope about the future. There is a famine of hope.

We have good news to tell. Before we think about how it is communicated, it is well to begin with a negative point. It is not communicated if the question uppermost in our minds is about the survival of the church in the inner city. Because our society is a pagan society, and because Christians have in general failed to realize how radical is the contradiction between the Christian vision and the assumptions that we breathe in from every part of our shared existence, we allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking of the church as one of the many 'good causes' which need our support and which will collapse if they are not adequately supported. If our 'evangelism' is at bottom an effort to shore up the tottering fabric of the church (and it sometimes looks like that) then it will not be heard as good news. The church is God's keeping. We do not have the right to be anxious about it. We have our Lord's word that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The nub of the matter is that we have been chosen to be the bearers of good news for the whole world, and the question is simply whether we are faithful in communicating it." (Missionary Theologian pp143-4)

I could read those words, and look up and see the people around me in our urban context living in a similar famine of hope. The older generation indeed have the nostalgia of which Newbigin speaks, and the younger generation have the hopelessness he describes. Here, as there, the television is the center of the home for most of the time, and simultaneously both mocks hope and presents false hopes.

And I, quite true to his description, so often do think of the church as one of the many 'good causes' that needs my support. Consequently what little sharing of the good news I do is not bold and happy in God's authority, but timid and apologetic (in the wrong sort of way).

I need more frequent rebukes from this wise old man to remind me of how influenced I am by my pagan society.