Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host of The Daily Challenges and today is Tuesday, so it’s the day we take the topic we’ve explored this week and we try to see what the Bible has to say about. Yesterday I talked about how following Jesus means a reset to everything in life, including our attitudes around our work. That can be hard because work is such an overwhelming aspect of our lives. It can drive so much of what we do and say in life. We spend most of our waking time working. Even if it’s unpaid work, it’s still work that we find ourselves engaged in day to day. We need a sense of how do followers of Jesus see work a little differently than others. It’s going to come from an unlikely source. It comes from a letter than Paul wrote to Christians in a city called Colosse. It’s called the letter to the Colossians and as part of that letter, directly addressed what he called bond servants.

Here’s what he had to say. Bond servants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service, as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, hearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. Well, bond servants isn’t really a term we use very much today. For us, it’s probably analogous to employees, but back then, bond servants were sort of a blend of what we would know as employees and what we would call slaves today. It’s hard because slavery has changed over the centuries.

When we think of slavery in our culture, we generally think of North American slavery and the horrors and oppression of that mode of slavery. No kind of slavery is all right, but we just want to understand a little bit of the culture that Paul was writing to. It was a culture where slavery was very much a reality. It may have been an unquestioned reality for people. It was just the way of the world worked. What Paul does is he undermines a little bit. He subverts it. You can hear him speaking directly to the bond servants, the slaves. Those who, for one reason or another, found themselves wholly owned by someone else. What he does is he tells them they are not wholly owned, even though that’s what it may say on paper, even though that’s what people may assume in their culture.

Those who happen to be followers of Jesus are being told directly by one of Jesus’ first followers, one of his apostles, that they are not wholly owned by their earthly masters. He distinguishes between the earthly masters and their Heavenly Master. They are actually wholly owned by their Creator, by God. Although in this world, the kingdom of this world, there maybe people who think they wholly own other human beings, they are not. Can you imagine the freedom that comes from knowing you are not wholly owned when everybody you know thinks you are and when the legal system thinks you are wholly owned by someone else. Imagine the freedom that that gives to someone in a system that oppresses them, knowing that they are free.

Now, unfortunately, this passage and others like it, have been used to condone horrific abusive forms of slavery like those we’ve seen in North America in the last few centuries. Those need to be condemned and they have been condemned by Christians. Unfortunately, there are those who have found in the Bible words that they could twist and use to justify terrible crimes. That’s happened. It continues to happen and Christians need to continue to read the Bible as a whole to wrestle with God’s words in the whole of the Bible about the dignity of human beings and speak out when that kind of oppression happens at all and especially when it’s justified using the words of the Bible twisted for people’s selfish gain. One of the biggest hints that this passage can’t really be used to condone slavery where people are wholly owned and abused and oppressed is that Paul addresses his passage to the bond servants and to the slave owners. What he wants the slave owners to know is that they need to remember the dignity in every human being. That those who work for them are not wholly owned by them. Those slave owners will have to answer to God some day because He is the one who created us all and who owns everything on this earth including the atoms that we were put together with. They are all His and although we have care of it for a time, what we could call stewardship, like an investment advisor takes care of somebody’s money, we take care of God’s creation.

We need to remember that we are not our own and we are especially not in any position to own and control and abuse another human being. He wants both slave owners and the bond servants to have the same attitude of seeking out first the kingdom of God where all humans have equal dignity, where all humans are equal in the sight of God, where all humans have a responsibility to care for one another, to be generous with one another. There is a lot of great material in this passage, obviously, and it’s culturally hard for us to catch because it does speak about bond servants and slave owners and that’s hard for us to understand today. Tomorrow we’re going to try to enlighten what this has to do with our modern working life. In the meantime, I want you to try to think about that. Your question for today, which I hope you’ll share with others, maybe start a little discussion group, is this, what might this say to employees today? Is there any way that we, today, can be owned by our work?

Well, I hope you have a great discussion. This one is certainly a topic that can get people going, so I really hope you do share this with somebody. Remember, we’re reading the Bible in sync as a community. If you’ve been following us for a little while, make sure you’re reading our daily Bible passage as well. It’s just another way that our community tries to stay in sync even though we’re not meeting together in person very often. We can continue learning to follow Jesus as one community in scattered mode so our gathered mode is all the more exciting when it happens. Have a great day. I will see you tomorrow.

Read the Bible in Sync Today

Ryan Sim - March 19, 2014

Wednesday - Change It - Reset Nature

Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I'm Ryan your host for the daily challenges. Today's Wednesday it's the day in our weekly rhythm where we see how the Bible's take on our topic has challenged and transformed our thinking. Yesterday, we read a passage from the Bible from Paul's letter to the Romans. We saw how connected God's creation, the natural world around us, is with God's plan for human beings. We saw that it's pretty impossible to separate out soul from body and spirit. Because God has one plan for all of humanity, for all of creation that involves both the physical things he created, as well as spiritual beings like human beings. We've spoken about how God created us to be in perfect harmony with other human beings, with God, with the natural world around us. It sounds beautiful, the Garden of Eden right? Humans and God walking together in a natural environment where everything is provided for us. But you probably recognize it's not the world we live in today. Since we live in a world that isn't exactly what God created it to be, something’s broken about it. We can see a variety of responses in our world to how to fix that. A lot of people in our world even if they don't call themselves followers of Jesus recognize something isn't quite right with our natural world. There are a range of responses. But we'll talk about two of the extremes. One extreme would be what we call pantheism. It would be the extreme view that says nature is to be worshiped. In this view nature essentially becomes one's God, to be worshiped above all other things. Unfortunately, what that does to humans is it tells us that we are essentially a parasite. We're a part of the natural world that has gone terribly wrong. We are the problem, we need to go. There are certainly some who act that way, even if they wouldn't verbalize that belief. They certainly act as if we are a virus or a parasite in the world. We don't belong here, and we're destroying it by our mere presence. It's challenging, in that kind of view you either have to love nature or love people, you can't love both. Human rights become very questionable, in that kind of view. You have to decide what takes precedence, the natural ecological world or human lives. We've built up the civilizations that we have based on an idea of human rights. That would be very much in question, if we were to elevate the rights of nature far above the rights of human beings. You can see some of the conundrums that come up when you start to think about these issues. But pantheism is one extreme view. That basically says, that the natural world is God to be worshiped. Maybe even God is the natural world to be worshiped, and we, since we eat things in this natural world by destroying them. Since we want to burn fuels to stay warm, to get places, are a virus and we need to go. Another extreme view would say that essentially human beings are some day going to be sent to a disembodied heaven. We might picture it in the sky or in the clouds or something like that. But we'll have the sense that heaven is somewhere else, and our goal as human beings is to somehow get to heaven, and leave all this behind. This natural world is just to be thrown away, it's disposable. This view, of course, has its problems too. Because this view says, that the natural world that God created and said was good, is actually no good at all ... it's garbage. Since God said we were very good, we have to wonder how much better than the natural world we are. Are we going to be thrown away and disposed of too? Wouldn't be consistent for God to say that something was good and very good, and then to destroy it all just in a fit of rage. If he wanted to do that he probably would have done that a long time ago anyway. No, God seems to have some kind of a plan for the natural world and for us. That's where the Christian story comes in. The Christian story does not say that we're all going to fly off to some disembodied heaven someday, and that none of this matters. There was a Christian pastor who, just about a year ago, said something to this affect that caused quite an uproar. His name was Pastor Mark Driscoll, and he said, "I know who made the environment, and he's coming back and going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV." After he said that he had to backtrack and apologize. He claimed it was just a joke. But, you know what it represents the view of some Christians out there. That this world's just going to be burnt up, and doesn't matter. I think a true experience with Christian faith looks more like a middle road. First of all, Christians worship the God who created nature, rather than worshiping nature itself. You know, I love the God moments I've had in nature. I told you about one of them Monday. Another one was when I was sleeping on a beach one night. I woke up to feel this sudden cold front coming, and watched this wall of cloud come in over Georgian Bay, roll over the beach over top of me. It was just this moment of awe and wonder at the power of majesty of creation. Which only points to the power and majesty of God. For a Christian, nature isn't to be worshiped in and of itself. But it can certainly point us to the one who is to be worshiped, God. This means nature should be treated with respect. It's a creation, it's God's work of art, it's his masterpiece. So it's not to be disrespected, not to be destroyed for no good reason, it's meant to be treated with respect. Secondly, the Christian story says that human beings are part of that creation. We are part of nature, we are animals, we're mammals, yes that's all true. However, it says we have a special role. We've been asked to take care of God's creation, as what the Bible calls stewards. Or, in the very first story in the Bible about God creating the world he said, "We were to have dominion over the earth." In the big picture this seems to look like human beings having a special role of care for creation. We're invited to take care of it. Not as if it's our own ... that it's something we've been given to play with, or destroy, or keep, or do whatever we want with. But rather that it's God's, and he's offered it to us for a time, to take care of for him. Think of how an investment advisor is supposed to look after somebody's money. They're not supposed to take it as if it's their own money, and use it for whatever they want to use it for, and buy things, and invest in their own companies. No, instead they're supposed to take that money, and care for it in the same way that the owner would have cared for it. They're supposed to invest it in ways consistent with the owner's risk tolerance, the owner's ethics. Things go very wrong when the steward, the investment advisor, takes that money and treats it like their own. Uses it consistent with their own beliefs and ethics rather than the owners. The natural world around us can be seen in a similar kind of way. It's been given to human beings to steward and take care of. In a way that's consistent with God's values, God's ethics. It's not just ours to keep, destroy, spend however we want to. Rather this is God's, and God has a purpose and a plan for it, and we're supposed to care for it in a way consistent with that plan. Now we humans unfortunately, didn't do that at the very beginning. We rebelled against God. Decided to use nature for our own purposes. We can see evidence all over our world of how broken this world is as a result. How broken our lives are as a result. But amazingly, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has given us a second chance. The first Adam messed up. The second Adam, the second man is here to make it right, and he's given us human beings a second chance to start living, and practicing God's kingdom now in all that entails. Yes, moral living. Yes, in terms of following Jesus in everything we do and decide, and that includes how we use the resources we've been given. The natural world around us, is not ours, it's God's. He's invited us, he's given us the amazing privilege of looking after it for a time. But we have to do it in ways that are consistent with what he would want especially because this is our second chance. So I've got a question for you to think about today. I hope you'll discuss it with somebody else you know from the train or bus, from work, or from the neighborhood. Just watch the videos on the same days, and then whenever you are together discuss what you've been learning. Question: How else do you think following Jesus might be connected to taking care of the natural world around us? For example, one thing I can think of is how could we possibly say we're loving our neighbors if we pollute the water that they need to drink? So, Jesus saying we should love our neighbors is actually very much connected with how we use the earth. How else do you see connections between what Jesus said, and how we use the earth? Have a great discussion. Don't forget we're reading the Bible in sync together as a community. Check our website or app to see what today's reading is. Have a great one, bye for now.

Related Topics: Ecology, Environment, Nature, Reset | More Messages from Ryan Sim | Download Audio

From Series: "Reset"

When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again? The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate. What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives: Reset: Goals Reset: Time Reset: Money Reset: Work Reset: Body & Food Reset: Sex & Marriage Reset: Family Reset: Compassion Reset: Nature Reset: Society Reset: Death Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.

Discuss

More From "Reset"

Powered by Series Engine