the days i wrote about hitler, retards, hating christianity and gay people…

one of my facebook friends [Catherine Rogers] posted a status about the overabundance of brett FISH anderson articles/blogs/videos on her newsfeed and the struggle to pick which to give her time to [not complaining that there was so much but that there was too much choice] and so somehow five minutes later i found myself looking back through some early pre-Simple Way blog posts i made two or more years ago and finding a bunch i thort would be good to share… but then i was hit by the dilemma of not wanting to make Catherine’s newsfeed explode and so i had the cunning plan of sticking them all in one blog post, which altho it won’t help with the choice factor, will certainly be a lot better than posting each one separately… i think there is some good stuff here and i hope you find something useful…

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO: shortest blog post in the history of brett fish blogposting but hectically profound: https://brettfish.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go

BLESSED ARE THE RETARDS: this must have been posted before anyone was reading my blog cos i didn’t get a single hate mail for the title – or else maybe people got it – maybe this should be a taboo topic of dealing with or just being around people who are hectically different than you in some way cos they don’t have lessons on how to do that at school – https://brettfish.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/blessed-are-the-retards

REASONS TO HATE CHRISTIANITY: in the meantime this one DID get me into trouble, with one of the leaders of my denomination [never mind local congregation, i aim high!] because he lambasted me for writing this having read the title but never read what i was saying which was kinda not the title [but possibly giving a reason to be somewhat annoyed with christians] – https://brettfish.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/reasons-to-hate-christianity-part-i

THE WAGES OF GOD, ARE YOU: another short to the point one focused on the economy of heaven, and if it’s the economy God is interested in, the surely we should be as well – https://brettfish.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/the-wages-of-god-are-you

ALL MEN SHALL KNOW YOU FOR YOUR HATRED OF THE GAY – another worrying one if you stop at the title but this one is SO much completely close to my heart that it is definitely worth a repost – https://brettfish.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/all-men-shall-know-you-for-your-hatred-of-the-gay/

HITLER’S MOM – wow, again this must have been the days before people figured out i had a blog – just a short but important glimpse into the way we see people and the influence we may have in their lives and the need for intentionality and always holding on to hope – https://brettfish.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/hitlers-mom/

killing me softly, with this love… [aka an apology and personal slap in the face]

the other day i saw this cartoon that someone had posted on facebook that was pretty funny but involved hitler in a way that i knew would be offensive to a lot of jewish people. so i immediately wrote the girl who had posted it an email [more a friend of a friend than a direct friend] and just before i hit the send key i stopped for a moment, reread what i had written and changed it before sending it…

instead of ‘hey friend, you posted a cartoon that is going to hurt people’ or something like that, i started with some relationship [‘hey friend, long time no chat, how are you doing? what you been up to?’] and then i identified with the cartoon and why she had posted it [i find the cartoon really funny but at the same time i think it may be offensive to some people] and then finished off with more relationship and encouragement [‘continue to rock on – you often send along good twitter fun vibes… much love’]

she responded with:

[“Hey

You’re 100% right. Sometimes I don’t think… There’s a fine line between dark humour and plain darkness. I actually had a funny feeling after logging off and needed to come back on FB to delete it. Then I saw your message. Thanks for the mail, thanks for calling me out and gently pointing it out, I really appreciate it.

You rock on too.”]

and i realised i got that one right… and as a bonus victory, later in the week i decided to keep a certain description [of a friend who wrote for my marriage blog series] out of my intro [that she was someone who had always said she’d never be married] because i thought hey, maybe she wouldn’t want me to share that about her publically [she wrote back saying i totally didn’t need to edit it out, but i still think making sure was the right move when there was any kind of doubt]

so yay for double victories… but boo for the knowledge that there have been many [and probably many, many, i am quite old] times when i have not gotten it right.

and ‘but i meant well’ is not good enough for people i hurt by not being as gentle in my calling out as i was with this person…

Truth is important, but Truth-in-Love should be non-negotiable, as a Jesus follower at the very least. And i think that looking back, there have been times where I have shared Truth and possibly even meant Love but not conveyed it well at all. I have hurt people by being too quick to rush to Truth [or my version of it] and too slow to honour Relationship and for this i am deeply sorry. i don’t even know if i can pull a Zacchaeus and go back and find all the people i have wronged and make things right [and i imagine most of them will not be reading what i write here] just because i don’t have a comprehensive list of who they are. what i can do is learn from the two victories of this week and ensure that i follow a more Truth-in-Love stance as my go-to response as the norm.

however, having said all that, let me finish by saying these two things which make it incredibly more complicated and complex:

[1] there is not enough Truth-in-Love in the church! there is something we mistake as love which is usually born out of a fear of confrontation in any form and so we would rather let our close friends sink in their sin than call them on it, gently in love, and help them become better, stronger people… [Proverbs 27.6 ‘Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.’] Close friends are the ones more likely to be listened to and often i have felt forced to intervene because none of the people who should have been Truthing-in-Love were being good friends… we need to step up more into this.

and [2] there are times [and these must be so carefully discerned] where the person receiving the correction will not feel loved and that doesn’t mean Love has not happened – and there are times when the rebuke must be strong and times when it must be public… the trick is just figuring out the difference and i imagine the Holy Spirit is key in that – but Jesus publically takes down the pharisees and other leaders on occasion, and paul publically rebukes peter at one time [i believe that public sin often requires public dealing with it – very different to the matthew 18 ‘if your brother sins against you’ way of dealing with things, because the sin has affected so many more people and for their growth they need to be aware of how it was dealt with and that it was dealt with]… i was recently unfriended on facebook for doing this to someone and looking back i still think i did the right thing, but i am not completely convinced i did it in the most loving way, the jury is still out on that one although i did spend a lot of time trying to mend the relationship after that.

so we need to be being good friends to those around us and when someone who calls themselves a Jesus follower displays some behaviour or posts something on a social network that is strongly against the message of following Jesus, we need to have the guts to confront them. but we need to speak Truth-in-Love and always make sure that we have an abundance of Love. we need to [and by ‘we’ i mean ‘i’ and i imagine my wife is going to hurt herself nodding to this one] take longer to respond and be very sure of the Love and manner of response before we send it. we need to make sure we are as vocal and more public in applauding when people get it right…

hopefully that is one mistake i can choose to never make again.

go to hell ha ha ha

just watching the rob bell furore that has swept up has once again brought something to the fore which i think needs comment and some thort by people who claim to be Jesus-followers…

one of the accusations that has been made against rob bell is that he is a universalist which as i understand it is someone who believes that everyone is going to end up in heaven, and by definition no one ends up in hell.

i don’t know if rob bell is a universalist. people have seemed to infer that from the questions he asks in the promo video for his latest book: ‘Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.’ But according to the one article i read, it says, “after all, on page 72 he actually states, “Do I believe in a literal hell? Of course.” [really good article response to the rob bell stuff here]

but that is not my concern. if he believes that then i definitely would take a stand against the belief because i think the Bible is largely clear on that matter and a lot of Jesus’ teaching and parables seem to deal with who will make it and who won’t.

what concerns me is how amped so many christians seem to be to point people towards hell. my friend Ant Martin mentioned to me how many people have responded to the Rob Bell video by making statements like “reality check, Ghandi’s in hell..” i mean, firstly spell his name right, it’s Gandhi… the question Rob Bell asks in his video is, “Gandhi’s in hell? Really? You know that for sure?” and people divebombed him…

as far as i understand it, it is through faith in Jesus Christ that we receive forgiveness of our sins and are made righteous to be able to live eternally with God (which does begin now) – the thief on the cross next to Jesus receives salvation even though he has done nothing in his life to deserve it, but he acknowledges who Jesus is and Jesus welcomes him to paradise. i don’t know if Gandhi turned to Jesus for forgiveness. But i don’t know that he didn’t. What i do know is that Gandhi loved Jesus and wasn’t so fond of His followers who didn’t seem to display the same kind of life that Jesus spoke about and lived. But i don’t know the state of Gandhi’s heart at the time of his death and whether or not he was in relationship with God and so for people to say he is definitely in hell seems like a foolish, immature, arrogant and presumptuous statement to make [unless you have some evidence i don’t]

and as i said it concerns me greatly that people claiming to be Christ followers are almost excited to point out that someone is going to hell – whether it’s Gandhi or homosexuals or abortion clinic owners or Saddam Hussein or Hitler, it doesn’t matter – hell is a place that was designed for the devil and his angels [Matthew 25.41] and it is always a complete tragedy when any person ends up there.

if it is true that Gandhi is headed towards hell, that should break us.

what is the greatest commandment? to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul and strength and to love your neighbour as yourself. Gandhi is my neighbour [Luke 10.25-37] and my attitude to him has to be one of love. and to anyone else, no matter who they are or what they have done.

maybe if we, as Jesus followers, had a better response to people heading towards hell, we would live differently while they are alive, and in our space, and living next door to us, and help direct them towards a Jesus-filled eternity which starts right now – a life that is symbolised by the fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control) and by loving God and loving people and looking after those in need.

and be absolutely shattered every single time someone dies without coming into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

[and spending less time involved in random online judgemental railings against what someone might be saying in some book we haven’t and probably aren’t going to read because of what we thort they might have said in their promotional video and book blurb]

hitler’s mom

so i read in the newspaper today before church (stocking up on caffeine and chocolate crouissant at the bp) that Jacob Zuma (our president) has fathered another child.

i never used to like Zuma. i heard a lot of bad things about him and saw him involved in some criminal cases with various accusations and he made some infamously bad statements about showering preventing AIDS (after being head of some AIDS council or something) and so i didn’t have a positive opinion

then i found out that my girlfriend (now wife, the beautiful Val) was friends with one of Zuma’s children and i met them and they were a really cool personage and so the one day i emailed them on Facebook and asked them to tell me one nice thing about their dad (cos i only had the bad stuff so what is one thing you really like about your dad that no-one else would know) – and they told me a thing – and it was a cool thing related to him being a family man and really vibing with the family

and it was cool to view someone i didn’t think much of  (an opinion mostly formed by what i’d read or seen in the media) from someone who loved them’s perspective

and it made me think yesterday that even Hitler must have had a mom – probably Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden have friends or family members who dig them and spent some good times with them – serial killer Charles Manson had a girl at college who had a crush on him, that kind of thing

something somewhere along the line went wrong i would imagine – and maybe it was early on – but no-one is born inherently completely irredeemably evil – horrible upbringing or traumatic boarding school experience or some kind of abuse or lack of parent or something and the wrong path is chosen

it makes me want to be a little more aware of the young people i am working with at church and through camps and just everyone i come into contact with – because i would imagine on the flipside that people like Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa and Gandhi and Bono and, i dunno, whoever the turned-out-pretty-well people of the world are, had an upbringing where something went right

maybe i can be that thing. maybe you can.