Choosing the right sight! (yes I mean sight.)

Following my last blog, another tent-maker commented, the institution that seeks to save its own life shall lose it, but the one that loses it, shall preserve it? and I thinks that this is a good introduction to the examining the next of Hugh Valentine's obstacles to tent-making ministry.

He writes, "Organisations tend to be self-replicating. Candidates for non-stipendiary ministry in England tend to be like those doing the selecting - safe, middle-class and mainly conformist." So my first question is, why?

There is a human tendency to focus on what we know and as a consequence we can find ourselves worshipping our comfort zone, our heritage our ideals. What we forget is how frail we human beings are, how readily we fall into selfish, hurtful, and wicked ways, and how frequently the good we do and the good we intend is mixed with evil motives and evil consequences.

Recently, I have become reacquainted with the work of the anthropologist, Professor Dame Mary Douglas where she explores the barriers and boundaries communities build in order to keep a semblance of social purity. She uses the religious context of the Hebrew Scripture to examine how the chosen people followed the purity laws of Leviticus. These laws were preventive statues to ensure that the community is not infected by that which is different. Psychologically, this difference gradually takes on the nature of that which is abhorrent and must be avoided at all costs. Today, much of the subconscious nature of discrimination stems from such culturally evolved precepts.

Two quotes from her prolific work articulate this protectionism philosophy. "The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall. "

and

"The theory of cultural bias... is the idea that a culture is based on a particular form of organization. It can't be transplanted except to another variant of that organization."

Not long before her Death in June 2007, Douglas spoke about 'enclaves' at the Young Foundation. She defined them as the small groups that at their most extreme, become terrorist cells. Where others emphasise their strengths, she emphasised their weaknesses: how prone they are to splits and sectarianism, and how hard it is for their founders to enforce rules. To survive, enclaves create around themselves what Douglas called a "wall of virtue"—the sense that they alone uphold justice, while all around them are suspect—yet the very thing that bonds them together encourages individuals within them to compete to demonstrate their own virtue and the failings of their peers. The only thing that can override this fragility is fear of the outside world—and so sects, whether political or religious, peaceful or violent, feed off the hostility of outsiders, using it to reinforce their own solidarity. The implication is clear for western governments: in the long term, defeating terrorism depends on ratcheting fear down, not up, dismantling the "walls of virtue" rather than attacking them head on with declarations of war.

But as I read this commentary, I could not help but feel Douglas was elaborating Hugh's view, that churches are indeed "Organisations tend to be self-replicating" and do so out of fear of infection. Has the church become too self image concious rather than focusing on the significance of the other or too uniform to the degree of obliterating the multifaceted nature its real membership by excluding and restricting anything that smacks of difference.

In a sense I want to use JB Phillips version of Romans 12:2 replacing the word world with church

"Don’t let the church ...... squeeze you into its own mold, but let God re-mold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity." or as the Message paraphrases it.

"Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you".

What a wonderful multiplex image.