Skip to main content

why

We are doing a series on healing in our small group. Tonight we tackle the topic of "why?" Why are there destructive patterns in our lives, why do we sabotage the very processes that are meant to mature us? Why are we sick and poor and needy in the first place? An interesting theory is that if we never get to the "why?" we will never change, for we spend all our energy on managing the problem instead of eradicating the cause. We may be able to turn lemons into lemonade, but without uprooting the lemon tree from our garden, the fruit will always be with us. Yes, I know, we kind of like lemonade, but try to work with me on what the analogy is saying, people.

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine about the legalisation of prostitution in Amsterdam. A law was introduced in 2000 recognising prostitution as a legal profession in an effort to reduce crime and protect prostitutes.

The authorities try to regulate prostitution, aiming at protecting minors, eliminating forced prostitution and combating the new phenomena of human trafficking. Any sex business must obtain from a municipality a license, certifying that it has fulfilled the legal requirements to operate.

While I am all for protecting women, I do believe this is another case of trying to manage a problem instead of dealing with it. Just last year, Amsterdam made a decision to close down 30% of the brothels because they were attracting crime and money-laundering to the area. One thing we should know by now: sin management never really works towards a solution. It just tidies up the outside so that we are not as repulsed by our evil and selfish hearts. All too soon, just like trying to stop a leak in a corroded sewer pipe with a little caulking, the filth will find another way to surface.

As to the answer to the big "why," Jesus gives a good one in John 9 when his followers ask who sinned to cause a man to be born blind.

You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. - from John 9, The Message

In the middle of the brokenness of this world that I daily contribute to by my lack of wholeness, may I look for what God can do. What we really need is for Him to rescue us.


This is a picture of some lights (red and other colours) from the skyline of Montreal.
Labels:

Comments

Shelley said…
I heard a woman on CBC radio talking about prostitution and this whole discussion about legalizing it. She was a cop who used to work undercover on the street to catch pimps. She said something like "how can we talk about legalizing prostitution? Prostitution is abuse of women, plain and simple. No little girl dreams of being a prostitute when she grows up."
4:39 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...
3 comments
Read more

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...
9 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   C...
10 comments
Read more