Pastor John Van Sloten

Last night, after Prime Minister Stephen Harper won the Canadian election, as my wife and I were praying our evening prayers, I was kind of surprised by what I prayed, I said, “And God, I hope this is good for Canada… and good for your church.”  Not that I don’t regularly pray for our country, or for the church, but the juxtaposition of the two is what struck me. 

How exactly are the two tied together?  Does who is in government impact the efficacy of the church?  If God holds all of history, then surely what’s happening now is happening for some kind of providential reason.  What does that reason mean for God’s kingdom work here in Canada? 

A couple of years ago a friend invited me to her back yard BBQ.  Her friend Stephen Harper would be there.  It was a fun experience, RCMP everywhere, politicos and the press all hobnobbing, but the best part for me was the short conversation I had with the Prime Minister.  After telling him about about my job, and asking him a few questions, his handler let him know that he had to move on.  As we shook hands we both said the exact same words to each other, over top of each other, “God bless you in your work.”  It made me smile; both of us ministers in different fields.

This Sunday Calgary’s Mayor is going to be one of the sermon texts I’ll be speaking on.  What do he and his policies tell us about the nature of God?  After the message we’re going to have a 15-20 minute dialogue about what it might look like to be better citizens.  The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:7, TNIV  The Apostle Paul wrote, “The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation.”  So we’re called to be ‘for’ our city.  What does this mean?

Here’s the question we’re going to be discussing Sunday,

“Given what you’ve just heard about God’s heart for government leaders and our city, how do you see the church (& yourself) contributing to the building of a better Calgary?”   (You can either comment here, text a response on Sunday, or step up to the mic and talk then)

Last night, a CBC news report showed a week-old youtube clip of a Focus on the Family dude talking about how great it would be were God to send a storm to rain out last week’s Democratic National Convention. (Obama’s speech was held in an open air stadium.) How ironic that the Republicans are now in their current dilemma; having to totally reign in their convention because of hurricane Gustav. An act of God?…

Sure, I guess. It’s hard to attribute the weather to anyone else (even though we should know better than to build cities below sea level). Hurricanes do have the power to remind us of things that are bigger than us. But perhaps this “act of God” has something more to say.

This morning’s Globe and Mail noted that, because of this impending natural disaster, both political parties have decided to pull all partisan political ads off the air for the next few days. You don’t want to be playing politics when the greater concerns of the American people are pressing in on you.

This move is, of course, good politics.

But it also begs the question. Shouldn’t both political parties always be acting this way? Avoiding partrisan BS for the greater good of the people? Why should it take a storm to cause everyone to behave?

It seems to me that, long before Gustav made the scene, there were already a lot of dark clouds in American skies. The sub-prime mess, social problems, recessionary (or worse) pressures, etc… The threat of these surging issues should have been more than enough to evoke non-partisan politeness.

But that didn’t seem to be the case. It took an ‘act of God’ to get everyone to play nice, to be fair, to work for the greater good of all Americans.

Perhaps this storm is an answer to someone’s prayers; for a more selfless and strong country.

(And I pray that everyone in the Gulf States stays safe today)

The US sub-prime mortgage mess is now saddling us with hundreds of billions of dollars of global losses, global markets are trembling, banks are scrambling to find their balance, our personal retirement funds are taking a hit, and now we’re second guessing the wisdom of that recently acquired line of credit.

We feel victimized by what’s happening, but should we? Aren’t we the ones who let this happen? Why shouldn’t we pay for what we’ve done?…

Putting the blame on the recklessness or naiveté of some blue collar, hourly wage worker in Cleveland is no excuse. Sure, he was the one who didn’t read the contract, got caught by a deceptively low interest rate hook, ended up losing his job, missing his mortgage payments, and then falling into foreclosure; he and a few million others.

But we can’t put this all on him. Nor can we lay it all at the feet of manipulatively greedy lending institutions. Sure they baited and switched their high risk clients. Yes, they failed to do their due diligence. And no doubt, they covered their high risk tracks by deceptively repackaging and spreading out their bad debt, selling it to us.

But hey, who can blame them. They saw a market and met it.

And this is where our personal culpability comes in.

Ultimately we’re the ones who allowed for a manipulative lending system to even exist. We’re the ones that insisted on ever higher returns from our mutual fund managers. We’re the ones who averted our eyes, and didn’t ask the tough questions, who signed up for those returns that were too good to be true.

Face it we created the market for all of this greed and loss. And now we’re paying the price.

The same kind of math played out with the toxic Chinese toy disaster; we insisted that our big box retailers continually lower their everyday low prices, and were then horrified to discover that our kids had been poisoned.

We went to the mall expecting to pick up that “label” outfit for a song and were then appalled by the eleven o’clock news images of a ragged 11 year old Bangladeshi girl sewing glitter onto the same haute couture top we just bought.

We’re the ones who by, swiping ourselves into oblivion, and never once considering concepts like self limitation or delayed gratification, are now stressing over unprecedented personal debt levels.

We insist on cheap energy, oversized homes, big cars and expectations, and now have to listen to the planet scream back at us, “Enough!”

What’s it going to take for us to listen; total financial, ecological and sociological breakdown?

Let’s face it. We’re not innocent victims at all. These are the just desserts of a hyper-consumer driven culture operating without an appropriate conscience (or speed limit!).

Maybe we should take this time to pause and read the signs.

Instead of spending all of our energies freaking out about how to stop the bleeding and get on with life as we know it, why not pause for a second, take an honest look around. Are we headed in the right direction? Is this the best way for humanity to flourish? Is the bigger, better deal always the best for us?

Perhaps we’re not made for unlimited growth.

When is enough, enough? What’s wrong with receding once in a while? Is it really a sin to stop and be satisfied?

If you stand back and look at our world – at your own life – you have to wonder, “Given our current modus operandi, are we ever going to get to a point where we feel satiated?”

It seems to me that so much of what now ails us is the direct result of our inability to understand the concept of sufficiency.

A few months ago I attended a lecture, where Dr. Bob Goudzwaard (former Dutch parliamentarian, Apartheid dismantler, World Bank advisor, and all round global mover and shaker) introduced a very simple image of the sufficient life. In addressing the monstrous global maladies of economic injustice and environmental degradation, he spoke of a tree. A tree, he said, is a wonderful teacher of the “richness of sufficiency.”

It knows when to stop growing. It understands that any attempt to extend beyond its natural limits will result in less, not more; death, not life.

They say that mature trees clean the air, breathe in CO2, and breathe out life giving oxygen. They also take nutrients from the soil, and then replenish that same soil. They know to give back, stay in balance, and when to stop.

Perhaps we should do the same.