Guest Blogger: Cori

Cori, you live in South Africa, a country with many differences: socially, demographically, religiously.
Please comment: "Sometimes you must agree to disagree".

Someone once said to me that we always get excited when someone is the same as us (“Wow – we have the same favourite food/colour/etc!”) but that true richness comes from being different and learning to embrace that difference. I love the richness of my country, and rather than being threatened by that, try to gain from it and embrace it as much as I can. I also believe that in South Africa we have learnt a lot about how to handle diversity without conflict. A number of western countries have historically been homogenous and now have to deal with other cultural and religious groups and the conflict is intense (could we include the Netherlands and the UK here?). I don’t think it’s as much about agreeing and disagreeing about something as learning about, embracing and appreciating diversity.

The Good Shepherd went out to find the lost sheep, the sheep did nothing to be rescued. But the prodigal son came back home on his own initiative. Saul (before his name became Paul) wasn't looking to be saved by Jesus, on the contrary - he was actively persecuting Christians at that time. This is my question: what do you think, are we looking for God or is God looking for us?

Perhaps both is happening at the same time! I’m a little hesitant to speak of the cliché of the ‘God-shaped vacuum in all our hearts’ but on the other hand do believe that everyone is looking for meaning, beauty, truth, love, purpose, a more abundant life and all of these in a way are a searching for God. But more than that, I believe God is truly ’wooing’ every single person to him. Somewhere in Acts 17 it says that God is not far from any one of us.

In this post-modern time it is not acceptable to proclaim 'the truth'. But as Christians we are called to share the Gospel with all people from all backgrounds. How do you deal with this tension?

It depends what we mean by ‘truth’. If truth is a dogmatic statement of belief then I’m as happy to drop it as the postmoderns supposedly are. But if truth is relational and dynamic, and if truth is more about a person, and about love, then it is something I am sharing all the time, every time I interact with another human being meaningfully. If truth is limited to knowledge it is a very sorry thing. If it has more to do with experience, and with who we are and what we live out, it is very rich and deep.

You know more about the African continent than most people mentioned in my blog roll. Could you please tell us some things that we really need to know about Africa? (This is your chance to correct misconceptions and to enlighten us with your first hand knowledge and experience!)

It’s hard to talk about an entire continent. I know almost nothing about any country north of the DRC. But in general terms, Africa is an extremely resourceful continent. I love what a lot of celebrities are doing to bring attention to this continent. But it’s not a continent that needs handouts. It needs fair trade and it needs to be treated justly in its political and economic relations with the West. And it doesn’t need all the arms, and cheap medicine, and other dud stuff (like faulty condoms) the West is selling it to get rich at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. But this is an incredibly diverse, rich beautiful and resourceful continent. It is also a whole lot safer to travel here than people imagine. And very affordable. Anyone interested in visiting an African country? I’m part of several networks and can probably link you to a local in several places for a very authentic experience!

Feel free to ask yourself any question that needs to be answered here...

Hmmm…. How can we more effectively bridge the gap between people who have been churched all their lives and know little of life outside of their Christian church reality and those that are leaving the church (although not necessarily Christianity) and those that aren’t Christian at all? Because I have the most to do with the last two categories, I guess my question is mainly aimed at those in the first category – how can we open a dialogue between the very-churched and the not-so-churched?

Dear blog readers - feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments section of this post. Maybe you have an answer to Cori's question about the dialogue between the very-churched and the not-so-churched....

Cori, thanks for being such a good blog friend and for sharing your thoughts with all of us! Cori gave me the name of the next Guest Blogger from my blog roll that I will invite: P3T3RK3Y5 (just try to pronounce that! I will ask him soon!)