Protecting our children

I watched the BBC documentary series Protecting our Children with some very mixed feelings about the program..   Why is it even called protecting our children, surely this is the wrong message and sets social workers against parents from the get go?  Isn’t this issue more about how we raise children?

The program stirred in me some very big questions...  Where is the extended family? What friends are helping to support them? Toby is likely to spend his entire childhood in foster care - how is that really better? How does a social worker help struggling parents by giving them a 'plan?'.  What care was there for Tiffany once her children were in care?  Mike clearly has some developmental issues of his own - how was he supported?   Did Tiffany love her children - I think she did..   and if she was making progress (as seemed evident) how can it be that she then 8 months later came to a decision that giving them up was better for them - or indeed for her?  I really hope this was nothing to do with 'CLASS' or 'ECONOMICS!'...  Suzanne's admission is she 'hoped' life would be better for Toby, but what checks are in place to make sure they are? 

It is distressing that there are so many people in our nation who really struggle to care for themselves (basic care) let alone care for others..  As a society and individually don’t we need to take a good hard look at ourselves and ask why that is?    If all we do is get upset, tutt and wonder how this could happen and yet drive past people who are clearly struggling without becoming their friend and coming alongside them, supporting, loving then shame on us.   Let us be better than this.   Social workers do a very difficult job, made more difficult because the rest of us often think caring for others is someone else's job.  They can only do so much, and are limited in what they are 'allowed' to do.  I'm glad they bought him a bed, but couldn't they have ensured it was set up?  Isn’t that something though that a friend could do? Surely, it's practical help and emotional support that people need, and that is often treated with suspicion when offered by social workers because the threat is 'do what I say or lose your kid'..    those without the power to remove kids, people like you and me, need to step up to love the parents, help them learn what to do without making them a mini-project, without talking down or judging them, and without taking over.   Let's use our anger, our distress and our new-found awareness to make a real difference this year to the lives of families, not just children in difficult or dangerous situations. 

I don’t believe in Social Action

Too often social action is described as a project to meet a need.  Some projects and organisation to meet objectives are really helpful, important and necessary, but the poor and needy are not projects to be managed, they are people we are to love and be responsible for.   We cannot, we mustn’t think that because we’re involved in a socially minded project we have fulfilled our obligation to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, heal the sick.  Instead I believe a better terminology would be social responsibility.   It means being aware that our neighbours and strangers we meet have needs, and that we are responsible for meeting those needs. It is to our homes that we are to welcome the stranger, to our table the hungry to be fed, to our wardrobe that the naked are clothed, from our businesses the poor find employment.

If we are blessed with a place to rest our head, with food in our cupboards, with clothes on our back, with employment to earn a living we must not hold it only to ourselves. There is much good that can come from employment and having possessions to share, but we must not become consumed with self advancement or only benefitting our family or our friends. We must walk with eyes open to see where the needs are among our communities.  Galations 6:10 says that ‘as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people…. that doesn’t sound like a project environment to me, instead isn’t it a readiness to respond to needs as we discover them.  What then do we need to do differently to be in a responsive position?  Perhaps it might be that we purchase extra food so that we can bless our poorer neighbour (do we really need a food bank to do this? – though again they can really help) it may be that we cut the grass for all of our neighbours. Maybe we take out all the bins. Maybe that we take people shopping or offer to do laundry.  Maybe we look after people’s children so they can go to work? Maybe we help them organise their money?   Whatever the needs are around us, the peril for not responding is clear…  Ezekiel 16:49 tells us that The sin of Sodom was that they were proud, well fed and comfortable but “did not help the poor and needy”..    I hope I can become more socially responsible!

Changing roles of marriage and sex

 

The variety of ways our society adapts marriage to accommodate different outlooks and desires is as complicated as it is numerous.   I came across a diagram by Franklin Veaux that perhaps exemplifies some of the more common approaches that we might discover if we are to probe beyond the venear of ‘married’ sorts to see what lies beneath.

 Click here to open a very large version of the Map, with labels.

 

Many of the people who are involved in so called alternative lifestyles  often describe themselves as ‘spiritual’ and are therefore prime candidates for us to introduce to the ‘God they don’t yet know’. But for many, their sexual identity is as important to them as their spirituality and many of us will struggle to get beyond our feelings about their sexual lifes to see the person with spiritual needs beneath.

There are (or should be) many similarities between people who are living any sort of radical life, so we should be able to find a great deal of common ground on which to open conversations

For instance:

• Communication, Forgiveness, honesty are integral to sharing and being open.
• Community [‘belonging'] and acceptance [common ground] is shared between many people who practice similar lifestyle choices
• These relationships take a great deal of work to keep together (just like any marriage)

however, many Christians will struggle to deprogram their judgement that sex outside of marriage is wrong sufficient to enable any such dialogue to open up easily.  It is quite natural for those in these lifestyles to feel ‘different’, ‘outside’ of our expectations (the very term alternative suggests not ‘mainstream/normal/acceptable’ to many…) and the challenge to us is to know how to be loving towards these very different yet searching people.

People not projects:

I think one of the reasons we struggle is because we can’t projectise reaching these communities.  It’s hard to imagine church missionaries going into swinging clubs, disrobing and attempting to get on ‘their level’.  While we can meet prostitutes on the streets as they go about their work without being one, we can’t very well turn up at a couples home pronounce our judgement and then expect them to listen to us telling them how they should be living their lives.  So clearly designing a project to tackle the problem is NOT going to work.

But relationship evangelism, seeing a person and loving them… could that work?

If we can see people as people ‘not projects’ or ‘unsaved’ then we have an ability to love them.   What we would perhaps naturally do with our friends, we would be able to naturally do with people who are different to us.. ? As with all our neighbours, it starts with starting to talk.. Say hello. Invite them for coffee, talk about your life, talk about theirs. Don’t condemn, judge or give opinions. Listen and understand what their life is like. What makes them tick. What’s important to them. Talk about what’s important to you. Find common ground.

If someone were to come to our church meetings, we will need to be more careful.  Pastors and welcomers have a supremely important job to protect people under their care.  That care can be temporary (for the time they are in the building) or extend towards offering services (counselling, practical help) and SHOULD include keeping at bay well meaning but ungracious/unskilled people.  It will have taken amazing amounts of courage or a significant need to cajole someone so obviously different in lifestyle to walk through our doors, and the way we approach them should not be left to chance.

People who are naturally good at making friends should be introduced especially if there are things in common such as employment type, children, geographic location or history. But their remit should be specifically to grow freindship, not to counsel.

Is the Church really the hope for the world?

The developing thought stream on Martin Charlesworth’s blog and his observations through to part 4 of  Jesus's manifesto resonated with me deeply, but I was caught off-guard by the inclusion of Bill Hybel’s quote that "The local church is the hope of the world". I haven’t read where that particular quote comes from (though Bill's twitter page includes a quotation that embodies a similar theme), but as I read it, and connected it with Martin's observation of Jesus's mission in manifesto part 4, I thought ‘surely, Jesus Christ is the hope for the world?’

I fully appreciate that in any Christian quiz unless the answer is a squirrel, it is always Jesus, and it is so in this case isn’t it? When the church with it’s projects and activities, becomes more important than Jesus, when our actions are tempered not by his grace and mercy, but by our missional objectives, don’t we begin to believe that our program is what will save people, rather than salvation being a sovereign work of Christ by grace through faith?  [When we think of our Catholic brothers isn't our observed criticism that it's their tradition that has replaced relationship with Christ? That format and function has replaced action and purpose?]

Secondly, though Martin affirms "that the life of the church should naturally spill over into the society within which it is set", he appears to miss that the reason “social activists feel marginalised in local church” is not because the church doesn't provide programs, but because the church refuses to legitimise their participation in anything that is not church branded/run (as if church meeting or project participation is the only contribution that matters). 

Don’t we have to cease the somewhat childish pursuit of identification through branding? Isn't the identification of being 'follower of Christ', 'salt and light' enough?  It is surely wholly irrelevant whether a member of our community serves in our local church project or in some other (church or secular) project, so long as we have contact with those in need and are able to help, expressing the love of God as we go? Isn’t it true that where 2 or 3 are gathered there he is amongst us? If 2 or 3 are serving, isn’t church existing and visible? If the only way we can accept that the church operates in social action is in function, project and structure we surely miss the countless thousands of souls who would pass by our buildings and projects unaffected because we wouldn't step outside our paradigms to meet them.

Martin is right though to highlight that church leaders have a pivotal role in empowering it’s social activists, and I appreciate too that he hasn’t in this post (or yet in this discussion) outlined the ways in which that empowering might occur - so he may be coming to observations similar to mine, but I sincerely and humbly hope that he agrees with me that unless Church leaders legitimise life giving activities outside of the four corners of their building [and continue instead to attempt to squash God given passions into the restrictive shoes that the leader provides or his programs enable] we will not recover the everyday social action that was prevalent in the early church.

Finally, though I’m in danger of standing on my soap box ranting… the western middle class church has become clunky and unwieldy, stylised and way too comfortable and ineffective [reminiscent of the churches many of us left 30 years ago!]  It’s almost as if we need to hear Christ tell each one of us to ‘sell our possessions and give to those in need’ before we will be confronted with just how far we have moved from the early church life and the love and care they expressed to each other in the course of their daily life. When we are giving only from our plenty it is costless to us. When a Basic’s bank for example is established, it is not food from our table that we are sharing with the poor it is too easily Pharisaic-like wealth that we are showing off. May the Lord have mercy on us and preserve us from our church branded 'plenty' schemes for we know not what we hypocritically do to further damage people or damage the name of Christ however well intentioned our actions.

1 Timothy 4:7-10 (Amplified Bible)

⁷But refuse and avoid irreverent legends (profane and impure and godless fictions, mere grandmothers' tales) and silly myths, and express your disapproval of them. Train yourself toward godliness (piety), [keeping yourself spiritually fit].     ⁸For physical training is of some value (useful for a little), but godliness (spiritual training) is useful and of value in everything and in every way, for it holds promise for the present life and also for the life which is to come.     ⁹This saying is reliable and worthy of complete acceptance by everybody.     ¹⁰With a view to this we toil and strive, [yes and] ^[a]suffer reproach, because we have [fixed our] hope on the living God, Who is the Saviour (Preserver, Maintainer, Deliverer) of all men, especially of those who believe (trust in, rely on, and adhere to Him).