The Grove Is On Fire

Victim Mentality: Notes From Reaching the Unreached

Friday, 27 May 2011

One of the reasons I wanted to go the Reaching the Unreached conference was to hear Duncan Forbes speak about how the Gospel applies to people with victim mentality. These aren't so much notes, as thoughts in response to what he said.

Victim mentality is when everything is someone else's fault. The reason you didn't pay for the bus and then got a fine is because someone didn't pay you in time, so you couldn't get a bus pass. The reason you didn't come to school was because your mum didn't get your stuff ready. We all do it to a certain extent, but with victim mentality that's the predominant way you view the world. You're a victim, it's always someone else's fault. So comments said to you that should be taken positively "hey, you've done a great job raising your children on your own!" is taken as a veiled criticism "well you would say that because you haven't had to deal with all the crap I've had to deal with in my life." Everyone makes excuses for their sins in different ways. My fairly sweeping observation is that people from a more benefits class background (and sorry, that's a horrible term but I'm not sure I can think of a better one) excuse their sin by blaming someone else, by saying "yeah, that was a sin, but it's not like it's my fault". Middle class people –again sweepingly&dnash; excuse their sin by explaining why it wasn't a sin –by self-justifying, saying "oh that, that's not wrong, that's just playing the system". Duncan first point is that Adam shows some of this attitude in the garden of Eden. God asks "where are you?" Adam answers, "I heard you in the garden" and then later "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree". I was hiding because of you, it was the woman's fault, the woman who you put here, which makes it even more your fault!

The way to deal with victim mentality isn't to say "shut up, your life's great, stop blaming other people for your own problems." Actually you need to affirm that people are victims of sin. You don't want to undermine people's responsibility for their own sin; if they've sinned, they need to repent and confess it and not blame someone else, but that doesn't mean they aren't the victims of sin and Satan. The answer then is to point people towards the only true innocent victim, Jesus. Duncan spoke about the power of showing people Jesus as a suffering innocent victim who died for us. Here is a man of whom we can truly say "he was despised, and we held him in low esteem... but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;" (Isaiah 53:3&5).

There have been a few times this week where I've had young people come to me and I've gone to say one thing and stopped, because I've realised that my response was going to be something like "stop moaning". I haven't managed to come out with anything profound instead, but gosh, is it something I need to think about. The talks are going up online soon on the Reaching the Unreached website, this one especially is worth a listen again.

First Thoughts: Reaching the Unreached Conference 2011

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

I'm not much of a conference professional. Aside from the last few years of the Bible Centred Youth Worker and working at Soul Survivor for the last ever, I can think of two conferences I've been to in the last eight years of my life (and one of those was pretending it wasn't a conference anyway). I went to the first ever Word Alive conference, but I was nine at the time and more interested in the swimming pool than the conference. All that said will significantly reduce the impact of this statement, but this year's Reaching the Unreached Conference was the most at home I've ever felt at a conference. Reaching the Unreached is an initiative and conference set up to explore how best to take the gospel and build churches in areas that the church in the UK isn't currently reaching, because while the church is alright at reaching the middle classes, it's not so good at reaching the council estates, the people on benefits, and the areas of deprivation. And yet the word of God is the power of salvation for all people, whether they are more familiar with the bookies and the laundrette than Starbucks and Terminal 5. And that makes me feel at home, much more than most conferences where people are working with the middle class.

And so I felt at home, because these are the groups of people we're trying to reach here, but I think it was more than just that, because what struck me more was the acknowledgement that this was really hard work where fruit was slow in coming. To hear that was a real encouragement when work feels so hard and frustrating sometimes. And more so than even that, it was encouraging to hear people not coping out of these issues but faithfully engaging with these issues with the gospel. So often youth workers have gone to to work with harder to reach young people and they've not seen salvation and so settled for less or compromised the message. Instead of trusting and depending on Christ and His gospel for the fruit we've gone down the path of social transformation and justified it with liberation theology or universalism or a sloppy view of the image of God. But here were people who were taking seriously the idea to preach the gospel where it was hard work, and acknowledging that while it was very hard work the gospel was still powerful to save and we must be faithful. I'll post notes as I work through them.

How Christians React On the Internet

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

Here is what seems to happen when a mildly controversial event happens in the Christian world. An event happens [Osama Bin Laden gets killed / Rob Bell posts a video implying he might be coming out as a universalist / Secret footage is released revealing a major Christian celebrity has eaten all the pies]. Someone of influence [Mark Driscoll / John Piper / The sub-editor of Christian Dog Walkers Monthly] picks up on this and states their obvious conclusion [It's good news that Osama Bin Laden is Dead / Rob Bell's ministry is over / That celebrity is a glutton and a fraud] on their preferred medium [Twitter / Youtube / their Livejournal account]. This gets bandied around [Re-tweeted / linked to / e-mailed to their grandma] and quickly someone else probably less influential replies with disagreement ["They're wrong" / "This is not Christian" / "I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed"] and takes up the opposite position [It's the worst tragedy that anyone has died / Rob Bell is telling the truth that no-one else will / eating pies is enjoying God's creation which you clearly hate]. Meanwhile various people are agreeing aggressively with both sides, far more aggressively than the original posts were. These posts in turn spark off their own aggressive disagreement from other people, and soon a whole budding and flourishing system of disagreement rolls out across the land. Then the last stage comes, someone posits a safer middle ground where points from both sides are accepted and unity and generosity is encouraged [It's good and sad that Osama is dead / Rob Bell is probably wrong, but we should wait to react to his book / Pies are a gift from God, but like all gifts shouldn't be abused]. This, humanity's poor attention span, and some new distracting controversy [Why are we celebrating a royal wedding? / First Past the Post is morally wrong / Why aren't we celebrating a royal wedding?] pretty much finish the topic off. Until next time.

Predictable, but so what? Is there a moral to all this? A lesson to be learnt? I say yes. Three lessons in fact. First, maybe think before you speak. I know this is obvious, but when you say something on Twitter all you get is 140 characters. You don't get much room for clarification, and you don't get any real control over the context in which your 140 characters appear. If you won't back up your statement and if you won't concede you're wrong if shown to be, then maybe don't say it. Secondly, the internet and Twitter especially are anonymous mobs. It's easy to be carried away and lynch someone without thinking "hey, lynching is wrong". There is a heat of the moment on Twitter. Thirdly –and this is less obvious so maybe most important– just because some nice middle way comes out towards the end of this discussion doesn't mean that it is the right response. One of the extremes may still be correct. The temptation of today is to always look for a nice acceptable middle ground where no-one is offended, but avoiding offence is not an inherently good thing, and sometimes one extreme is right and the middle ground is wrong. To give an example; if someone says something extreme that is true ["There is definitely a God"] and someone responds with the opposite ["There is definitely no God"] then the middle ground ["Maybe there is a God"] is also not true either. It might be a less offensive thing to say, but it is also an evil and wrong thing to say.

All these things are matters of discernment, and we deal with matters of discernment like we deal with everything, by looking to Jesus. Not just looking to Him so you know what is true, but also so you trust in Him to be bold when you tell the truth and not conform to everyone other than Him, and even more also so you conform to his loving heart, and seek God's glory, not your wittiness or your desire to put people down. What here will build up and edify (even if to build up you have to cut down)?