Autumn’s Eve Pigfest

Autumn’s Eve Pigfest

 

Sunday night, the day before Autumn, I hosted my second ever pigfest.  We held a potluck autumnal feast that looked fantastic laid out on the table.  And by the end of the night we had discovered that it tasted fantastic as well. 

 

Our discussion went like this (remember devil’s advocacy may be adopted at any time): 

 

Proposition 1: Slavery is biblically acceptable. 

What is slavery?  What is the slavery in the Bible?  Does the Bible accept slavery, or merely regulate it; is there a difference?  Is there slavery today?  How does debt come in?  Are there advantages to slavery (especially indentured servitude) to an economy, a society, or an individual slave?  What makes slavery unacceptable?  What role should the church play in a society that utilizes slavery?  In history, has the church been successful in enforcing the Bible’s limits to slavery? 

 

Proposition 2: Unmarried adults should be allowed to adopt children. 

How is this worse than unmarried people working in orphanages?  Isn’t it better for a child to have one loving parent than none at all?  What are the legal implications when this is allowed?  Is this a selfish decision?  Does a one-parent household enable the parent to spend time with children, or are they raised essentially in an orphanage anyway, by being left to daycare?  If true religion is caring for widows and orphans, should single people be excluded?  How does having children as a single person affect other responsibilities or callings?  Is an unmarried woman less likely to get married if she has a child through adoption?  What about an unmarried father? 

 

Proposition 3: Cohabitation before marriage is the prudent thing to do. 

If everybody does it, how can it be bad?  Shouldn’t you test out a marriage before you make a lifetime commitment?  Are those advocating cohabitation in successful relationships or marriages?  Are they good people?  What is a Christian’s witness if he/she lives with their partner before marriage?  Many people applaud those who wait until engagement for cohabitation; is there any validity to that?  How long a cohabitation is advocated?  Does cohabitation actually sabotage the relationship, whereas starting with commitment (marriage) would enable the relationship to thrive and function?  Is marriage too big a hassle to interrupt a romance?  How should a pastor react to a couple who has been cohabiting?  Should he marry them ASAP or encourage them to repent?  Ought he to refuse to marry a couple living in sin?  Are they still living in sin after a wedding if they have not repented?  What role does a pastor have in a marriage?  Is it endorsement, witness, mere formality?  What about the law?  What makes a marriage? 

 

Proposition 4: We (the US government) should kick out illegal immigrants. 

Where would we kick them?  What would prevent them from coming right back?  Who will pay for deportation?  (It was suggested that the immigrants themselves should be forced to pay, if they can.)  Would this be good for the US economy?  Would it be tolerable for the US economy?  Has the population of illegal immigrants already hurt our economy (for example in the housing crisis)?  How does the lack of border enforcement reflect on our laws?  Are illegal immigrants typically otherwise law-abiding citizens?  What about language issues?  Isn’t America a melting pot?  Shouldn’t new immigrants be expected to assimilate just like immigrants from decades and centuries past?  Could we allow illegal immigrants to remain in the US if they followed a procedure for attaining legal status and citizenship?  Is there a risk to national security?  Since the waiting list for legally entering the US is so long, couldn’t we change that to make it easier to legally immigrate?  Why do we have limits on immigration?  Do other countries limit immigration?  Do they deport illegals?  Is it illegal to be in our country or illegal to get into our country?  Wouldn’t annexing Mexico solve our problem?  Would Mexico welcome that? 

 

Proposition 5: There are some situations in which extreme violence is justified. 

Who decides?  Is self defense the only situation?  What about defending others?  Defending innocents?  What about violent interference with the murder of unborn children?  Does defense only cover defense from murder, or can it be defense from torture or rape?  What about capital punishment?  Is it ever right to take a life?  Is it right to do nothing when lives are at risk – do I have the right to refuse to take a life or use violence if myself or other “innocent” bystanders are at risk of death?  Can I take an innocent life in order to save other lives?  Suppose a two year old is intentionally aiming a gun and pulling a trigger; should extreme violence be used against him?  Why is the Mosaic law so confusing: day or night, inside the threshold or outside, defending life, defending property…?  Does extreme violence refer only to violence leading to death, or to torture, etc.? 

 

Proposition 6: Reading books written in other languages and other eras should be done to encourage independent thought. 

Is independent thought desired?  Can translated works count?  How is that different from traveling to other parts of the world?  Does reading sufficiently immerse you in the culture to widen your perspective?  (It was pointed out that language is often imbedded in culture.  Language is formed to express a certain way of looking at the world, like the difference in description when emphasis is on texture rather than color.)  In what ways does your thought become independent?  Is this practicable?  What about those who don’t read?  Do movies count?  Foreign films with English subtitles? 

 

Proposition 7 (which was interrupted before actually beginning by the coming of 9 PM and the need to go home): Idealism ought to be valued over pragmatism. 

What on earth is idealism and pragmatism?  Do they always contradict?  Is it ultimately possible for them to contradict?  Which ideal? 

 

Some of my favorite things:  People were willing to play devil’s advocate.  The time before the debate enabled a lot of people to meet each other (and one family’s tire to be changed).  There was a lot of participation.  Pigfest format keeps a debate from wearing out the disinterested.  Everyone fit in my house.  One of my friends brought her two infant daughters.  It rained just as the party started, with the sun still shining.  Cleaning up wasn’t too hard.  People had a good time.  I’m able to remember the discussion half a week later. 

 

Things I’ll do differently next time (Nov. 1):  Have more chairs.  Don’t aim for a main meal, but do lots of snacks instead.  Pray by myself ahead of time about my attitude and perspective.  Think more about proposition ideas I might offer and how to present them in the most discuss-able way possible.  Review the rules before we start. 

 

Considerations:  Maybe prescreen propositions.  Increase time from 15 to 20 minutes.  Enlist a new (louder, more aggressive) moderator. 

 

To God be all glory,

Lisa of Longbourn

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“Follow Me”

I’ve been thinking a lot about simplicity coupled with radical faith.  Priests sometimes take a vow of poverty, renouncing worldly goods as Jesus suggested to the rich young man, “Sell all your goods and give the money to the poor.”  Since the last day of camp I’ve been thinking of the usual pattern of getting back into the routine of life, or adjusting to the real world.  I think that God doesn’t want me to get back into my life.  He wants my life to adjust to me and the changes He’s made.  This week at church was Vacation Bible School, and before each night our pastor gave a devotional to the volunteers.  The one I managed to make was about being doers of the word, not hearers only.  So Jesus says not to worry about what we will eat or wear, to take up our cross and follow Him.  He says blessed are those who suffer for His sake.  What if I was an actual doer of those words?  How seriously do I take the words, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend”? 

 

So God has called me, at last, to change.  My life has been essentially the same for six years.  Now I’m going to do something different – a lot of things different.  I’m a different person; I even eat spaghetti and drink tea.  But I don’t know exactly what He wants me to do yet.  I’m looking, trying to accept that faith is a moment by moment dependence on Him, not a leap into a well-understood long term plan.  What I do know is that I need to spend diligent time seeking Him about it: praying and reading the Bible and asking friends to counsel and pray for me. 

 

I think a lot about Abraham.  He’s the man who packed up and left Ur, where he’d lived about seventy years with all his family.  He left everything and didn’t even know where he was going, except that God would show him the place.  Well, he brought his flocks and herds, his wife and slaves, and even his extended family. 

 

If I literally followed Abraham’s example, though, America is not very receptive.  Abraham could travel through the land, pitch his tents where no one else’s were, feed his sheep on the grass there, and probably do a bit of hunting for his household as well.  In America there are things like licenses, fences, and laws.  I don’t have to worry too much about being attacked by a band of thieves or a local city-state’s hyper-vigilant army, but then I must submit to laws. 

 

We actually have some very strange laws.  If you are too poor to own or even rent a house, there is no public land on which you are really allowed to camp, not public land on which you can trap or hunt your dinner.  In fact if you are too poor to have a house, you can be arrested.  GK Chesterton says in his commentary on Matthew 8:20, “For our law has in it a turn of humour or touch of fancy which Nero and Herod never happened to think of, that of actually punishing homeless people for not sleeping at home.” 

 

But Psalm 84:5 says, “Blessed is the man… whose heart is set on pilgrimage.” What does that look like in my life?  How can I obey that today? 

 

At least I can shun things that are part of my normal life but not “of faith.”  I can pursue the things God describes: righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.  Jars of Clay’s Oh My God describes one side of this calling, the side that sorrows for the world and sees all the need and brokenness.  In their account of how the song came to be, Jars of Clay says, “It takes a long time to kill 5,000 people in a church. Think about being in there with your family as these murders get closer and closer, and to hear the screams.  I’m sure those people weren’t praying, “God, please help me have a better car, or please increase my land.” It was, “God, please stop the hand of our aggressor,” and it didn’t happen. That prayer wasn’t answered for anybody in that church. And this wasn’t the military doing this violence; it was their neighbors.”   

One of the verses everyone memorized at camp was Romans 8:38-39 (and we talked about verse 35 as well).  There are 17 things listed in those verses that cannot separate us from the love of God, things like famine and plague and persecution, death, demons, etc.  And it hit me that I was doubting God’s love not for any of those massive earth-shattering things like 5,000 people murdered in a church in Rwanda.  My doubt of God’s love for me was when He didn’t give me what I wanted.  When my focus is on God’s amazing love, love that even death and things to come cannot quench, the way I pray and the way I live is different. 

My brother went to Mexico this month.  He was gone for two weeks.  In Mexico people live simply.  Where he went kids raise themselves, and there is trouble and need – so I’m not saying it’s ideal.  But when there is so much need in the world, physical or spiritual, how can we come home and play video games or go shopping at the mall?  Another friend spent over a month this summer volunteering at an orphanage in Haiti.  Her love for God grew so much there as she was stripped of distractions and dependent on Him for the strength to love and serve others.  Her kids needed what even she could not give them. 

Some fellow counselors from camp talked about getting back into the real world by buying a new Guitar Hero game.  How can we leave camp so unaffected?  Do we really have to move to Haiti to live sold out to God? 

We’re willing to work.  At camp, in Mexico and Haiti, we didn’t just sit around and think spiritual thoughts.  And we don’t want to be cloistered away from all non-Christians; that isn’t the point, either.  Just we don’t want our ministry to be a section of our lives.  We want to sell everything else and make sure that our whole lives are about glorifying God.  I don’t just want to have my ministries, of VBS or Awana or Sunday school or youth group.  I believe God wants me to invest my life in a lot of people, and not necessarily be a one-note person (at least not at the moment), but there shouldn’t be ministry intermissions.  Everything I do should be about my relationship with God, whether it is taking time (as we did at camp) to refresh and refocus our spirits by prayer and Bible reading, or worship, or intentional fellowship for edification. 

I guess I’m saying that having a job isn’t wrong.  My job isn’t even bad.  In the job I have I could do the things I said, and continue a ministry focus without interruption.  Those of us in the world with normal jobs can be what another friend calls laborers, people who don’t see ministry as a vocation, but as an approach to life as they go, building the kingdom whether they’re paid or not.  But for me God is calling me to a different sort of job right now.  I’m looking for one.  Requirements are that it be something in which I can move, not just sit at a desk, one where I’m working in community with others, preferably Christians, and where our business or ministry is reaching out to the needs of the world.  Any suggestions? 

To God be all glory,

Lisa of Longbourn

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