I would like to respond to Vinh’s questions from his personal reflection on the new kind of Urban Christian by Tim Keller

 
Jeremiah 29:7, “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper,” particularly resonates with me as I have been prayerfully reflecting about the Chinese Diaspora and our current and potential roles in God’s plan to build His Kingdom by virtue of our presence in almost all corners of the earth.
What are your thoughts on Keller’s question to us to be countercultural and to seek the common good? Further, are there specific roles that could refine/define the contributions of Christian members of the Chinese Diaspora to this common good?

Three brief thoughts on this. One is that we as Christians in the 21^st century need to look more and more at the exilic prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel to inform how we should live as 21 century Christians.  We live in a post exilic era.  Christianity no longer is the informer for what the cultural values.  Thus I whole heartedly agree with Keller looking to Jeremiah about how we live.  We do not need to guess at how God wants us to live as God has revealed Himself in a similar age to our age, the exilic age.  Eugene H. Peterson, one of the premier prophets of our age, writes in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places,
 
 As I was learning how to lead my congregation into an obedient life of worshipping and following Jesus, I was struck by how extensively the cultural and spiritual conditions in which I was working matched the exile conditions of the Hebrews in the sixth century before Christ (exilic times- my addition): the pervasive uprootedness and loss of place, the loss of connection with a place of worship, the sense of being immersed in a foreign and idolatrous society? (p. 64)

Secondly we need to be grounded in God’s word and be sure that we are living for the glory of God.  In the exilic and post exilic books we see that the prophets have great visions of the glory of God (e.g. Ezekiel 1, Isaiah 6) that they are to relay to God’s people.  Especially in dark times we need a fresh vision of the great glory of God.  We see also that the prophets internalized the word of God (Ezekiel 3:1 and Jeremiah 15:16) literally eating God’s word.  Not necessarily talking about eating our Bibles (I used to work in the paper making industry and would not recommend it!) but internalizing, digesting and applying God’s word to out lives so that we have the ability to live counter culturally as Keller suggests and not to be swept away in the secular tide.
 
Lastly, we are to live this life among the people that we rub shoulders with.  In exilic times you need not go anywhere.  Ezekiel writes in Ezekiel 2:5-6
 
5 You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and difficult language, but to the house of Israel- 6 not to many peoples of obscure speech and difficult language, whose words you cannot understand.
 
Later on in Ezekiel God calls him to be a watchman.  To comment on Vinh’s question, I believe this is the specific role that God has for us as well.  A watchman in Ezekiel’s day would stand on the highest part of the city and inform the people of the progress of the battle.  As a spiritual watchman we would relay God’s word to the people.  And God’s word to the people would include encouraging them, giving them hope, warning them, and working for peace.  Not as a passive observer but as a person whose life is tied and coupled to the life of that city.
 

Not so long ago, Tabi, the boutique shop, had a special program to evaluate its employees. The company hired people to pose as customers, aiming to test the skill and patience of its employees. I am not sure how long the program lasted, but I happen to know the lady who came first nationally. Since I do not have permission to use her name, I will simply call her “Miss Tabi”.

Miss Tabi was very modest. She said she was totally surprised about winning the competition. Besides being given a gold-plated certificate, she was allowed to choose to work at any branch across Canada.

“How did you win the national title?”  I was curious.

The simple answer is that she really did not know. There are so many customers that it would be impossible to identify who is real and who is fake. But looking back, she had some probable guesses.

For several evenings last fall, an old couple came to the shop. The husband wanted to buy something nice for his wife, but had a hard time making up his mind. The wife just stood there, thoroughly enjoying her husband’s attention. They tried scarves, skirts, blouses and many other items but were not able to decide what to buy. In the end, they only bought a rather inexpensive scarf. By then, they had been through every corner of the store, leaving numerous items turned upside down and inside out.

“I was impressed by the husband’s persistence to please his wife,” Miss Tabi explained with a smile. “Frankly, I was quite tired by the end of the day, and at that time, winning the national title would be the last thing on my mind.”

Well, of course, may be the odd couple were real customers who had nothing to do with the competition. Who knows?

I am reminded of the parable of the sheep and the goat (Mt.25:35-36). Jesus once told his disciples, “When I was hungry, you gave me food to eat. When I was thirsty, you gave me water… When I was in prison, you visited me.” The disciples were surprised. Then Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Some commentators think that the “brothers of mine” refer only to the Jewish people, but if we put this verse together with other similar verses (Mt.10:42, Mk.9:41), we can safely expand its application beyond the Jewish circle.

Martin Luther used the term “the mask of God” to describe how God hides behind the faces of people that we serve. He challenged Christians to see through the mask and serve others as unto the Lord (Eph.6:7). 

Miss Tabi took her job seriously and accepted the responsibility assigned to her. However we Christians define vocation, it should include at least this attitude. 

The following postings are excerpts of an article from Christianity Today, May 2006. The article entitled, “A new kind of Urban Christian” by Tim Keller poses a most relevant and important question for Christians within the context of citizenship.

 “How can followers of Jesus be counterculture for the common good?”

Keller makes his case for a new kind of Urban Christian with the following points:

More Christians should live long-term in cities - Historians point out that by A.D. 300, the urban populations of the Roman Empire were largely Christian, while the countryside was pagan….The same was true during the first millennium A.D. in Europe—the cities were Christian, but the broad population across the countryside was pagan. The lesson from both eras is that when cities are Christian, even if the majority of the population is pagan, society is headed on a Christian trajectory. Why? As the city goes, so goes the culture. Cultural trends tend to be generated in the city and flow outward to the rest of society.

Christians should be a dynamic counterculture - It is not enough for Christians to simply live as individuals in the city. They must live as a particular kind of community. Jesus told his disciples that they were “a city on a hill” that showed God’s glory to the world (Matt. 5:14-16). Christians are called to be an alternate city within every earthly city, an alternate human culture within every human culture, to show how sex, money, and power can be used in nondestructive ways.

Christians should be a community radically committed to the good of the city as a whole - We must move out to sacrificially serve the good of the whole human community, especially the poor. Revelation 21-22 makes it clear that the ultimate purpose of redemption is not to escape the material world, but to renew it. God’s purpose is not only saving individuals, but also inaugurating a new world based on justice, peace, and love, not power, strife, and selfishness.

So Christians work for the peace, security, justice, and prosperity of their city and their neighbors, loving them in word and in deed, whether they believe what we do or not. In Jeremiah 29:7, Israel’s exiles were called not just to live in the city, but also to love it and work for its shalom—its economic, social, and spiritual flourishing. The citizens of God’s city are the best possible citizens of their earthly cities.

Christians should be a people who integrate their faith with their work - Most fields of work today are dominated by a very different set of answers from those of Christianity. But when many Christians enter a vocational field, they either seal off their faith and work like everyone else around them, or they spout Bible verses to their coworkers. We do not know very well how to persuade people of Christianity’s answers by showing them the faith-based, worldview roots of everyone’s work. We do not know how to equip our people to think out the implications of the gospel for art, business, government, journalism, entertainment, and scholarship. Developing humane, creative, and excellent business environments out of our understanding of the gospel can be part of this work. The embodiment of joy, hope, and truth in the arts is also part of this work. If Christians live in major cultural centers in great numbers, doing their work in an excellent but distinctive manner, that alone will produce a different kind of culture than the one in which we live now.

Personal Reflection

Keller’s quotation of Jeremiah 29:7, “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper,” particularly resonates with me as I have been prayerfully reflecting about the Chinese Diaspora and our current and potential roles in God’s plan to build His Kingdom by virtue of our presence in almost all corners of the earth.

What are your thoughts on Keller’s question to us to be countercultural and to seek the common good? Further, are there specific roles that could refine/define the contributions of Christian members of the Chinese Diaspora to this common good?

Keller’s entire article can be viewed online at the following site.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/005/1.36.html

Alternative Title: Are Jobs are for the Masses and Vocations for the Bourgeois?

Ted Ng

Let me light a little fire…

I often wonder if our conception of vocation is based on our middle to upper class assumptions. We can afford to choose our professions and therefore intimate that there is something divine, something important, something noble about what we do. We call our work a “vocation,” a calling.

We often go as far as projecting this ideal onto those with menial jobs, whether they are picking up garbage for a living or digging ditches. Does the boy who delivers hundreds of cups of chai in the alleys to Bombay for pennies a day call what he does a vocation? What about the illegal immigrant working in a sweat shop sewing dresses to pay for her passage to the U.S.A? Is her vocation sewing? Is cleaning toilets and mopping floors a vocation? Or are they jobs? Jobs that need to be done simply to survive, to put bread on the table for hungry family members, pay debts and get ahead in life? Is our conception of vocation skewed towards those who have the luxury of choosing their professions?

In the affluent Christianity of our society, do we hide our guilt or greed by saying that what we do is a vocation? We may just happen to be lawyers or doctors or business people who live rather comfortably because living comfortably is better than struggling with the bottom line. What the heck, we may as well say God has called us to it too.

Come to think of it, did God call people into particular professions in Scripture or did he call them into something else; something more? Things like faithfulness, sacrifice, responsibility and relationship?

You see, if I say my job is my vocation, I may actually be lying to myself and denying my true vocation, my true calling in life. And that is a perilous thing.

I have the suspicion that God’s calling for us is far more profound than we might ever imagine. That his call transcends our categories of work, permeates them, circumvents them, shattering our dour and limited perspectives. Perhaps it is only a gnawing feeling, but could it be that God calls us not only to a way of doing but a way of being? A Kingdom oriented perspective?

But then I suppose when we wake up groggy to another day of work, the dream fades and we are left with the need to motivate ourselves by elevating our jobs to the level of vocation. Or perhaps we will have truly peeled back the veil to discover that in our hearts, in our lives and by extension of that, our jobs, be they menial or celebrated, the Kingdom has come!

Bill Wong writes, “Who is in control of your career and your life…right now?”

Thanks Bill, for raising this question. It is a good reminder.

Sometimes we can be so focused on excelling at what we do, becoming that well-known lawyer, entrepreneur, journalist, or ministry leader etc. that we forget the work that God has placed right in front of us.

I believe that God desires for us to be present with Him at every moment, lifting areas of our lives to Him and sharing in the way He works in our lives with others. There are opportunities for this everyday, if we look for it.

While pursuing excellence professionally is good, are there people in our lives that we have neglected because we are too busy trying to secure a place for ourselves?

Perhaps reconciliation with a co-worker is long overdue and we need to make amends, or we have needed to show more appreciation for someone’s work when they have really done a great job.

We never know where we might find ourselves professionally and when people need a touch of God. Whether we are at the peak of our careers, or finding our way through unemployment, the work of Christ continues to flow through us.

If we are not attentive to our relationship with Christ “now” have we missed out on the very work God has called us to, today?

Well, these are my thoughts. I would love to hear your comments.

When Jesus Christ said that His disciples were to be salt and light (Mt. 5:13-16), He was including every area of life: He said salt of the earth and light of the world.  As we study this passage closer, we notice that Jesus did not give us the option of choosing when and where to be salt and light.  For those of us who work, this must include the place where we spend much of our time – the workplace.
 
Some followers of Christ do make a real difference in the workplace.  Unfortunately, many of us get so caught up with our careers that we never consciously make the tough decisions to stand up for Him.  We just let our organizational cultures decide for us, de facto, when we blend into the way things get done in our workplace.  We are too busy putting out the proverbial fires to be proactive with our faith at work.
 
Thus, we might serve Christ in just about every other arena of our lives, but when it comes to the moral and spiritual issues that impact our careers, research has shown that there is not a clear difference between those of us who claim to follow Christ and our secular colleagues.

Unfortunately, those of us who need Christ the most are often the ones who don’t make the time.  We may reason, “Once I get my career under control, then I’ll take the time to reevaluate my life.”  But that brings us right back to the key question: “Who is in control of your career and your life…right now?”

Pastor Fred has done a fine job of stirring up some good discussions. I am going to raise another somewhat related topic: the tentmakers.

When you Google up “tentmakers”, you get quite a few sites.

Here are some examples: