The Orange Institution’s Hypocrisy

The Orange Institution is a Christian organisation.

As Orangemen our trust is in God and our faith and dependence is in Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Lord of mankind. Our purpose is to maintain the Christian faith by word and deed; to propagate and defend that faith which we have received from the Church of the New Testament through the faithfulness of the Protestant Reformers. It is Christ-centred, Bible-based, Church-grounded. By it we are moulded in character and conduct.

The Orange Institution is set for the defence of Protestantism. This is true to the intention of Orangemen who are committed to the Christian faith with its Reformation emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as the Lord and Saviour of mankind. There are also the Protestant beliefs in freedom of conscience; the priesthood of all believers and the primary place and purpose of the Holy Bible in Christian faith and conduct.

We proclaim “Civil and religious liberty for all : special privileges for none”. We do not deny to others their civil and religious liberties; we expect the same tolerance from them. We shall be strong for truth, for peace, for the making of a good, fair and just society to which we shall contribute liberally as good citizens.

REV. CANON DR. S.E. LONG, M.TH., J.P.

That quote was taken from the official website of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland.

The protest parade today is only the start and we would encourage people to support that protest parade. Then, over the coming weeks and months, that campaign strategy will unfold.

It undoubtedly will include such things as an exploration of a legal challenge to what the parade’s commission has done.

But, in the end, we are determined to secure our basic right to parade there to the Whiterock hall as brethern have done for the past 48 years.

This quote is of DUP councillor Nelson McCausland and was published in a BBC news article.

The so-called Marching Season in Northern Ireland is a time of the year during which various branches of the Grand Lodge march up and down streets and roads in the province, playing music and flying flags. It is a time during which violence escalates, tempers flare and harsh words are spoken. It is a time of year that I truly despise.

But what really gets under my skin is that the Order claims to be founded on Christian principles. From the first quote: “[The Order] is Christ-centred, Bible-based, Church-grounded. By it we are moulded in character and conduct.”

Pray tell, how can one who is “moulded in character and conduct” by the Bible, whose “purpose is to maintain the Christian faith by word and deed” behave in such a way as the Order’s members (in general, there are exceptions)?

The very same Bible that the Order’s principles are allegedly based upon says: “[T]he wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no partiality and is always sincere” James 3:17b, New Living Translation, emphasis mine.

Willing to yield to others… that is not something that I would personally attribute to the institution that is the Order. Annually they fight and bicker about which roads they want to march down, and annually they refuse to yield to those who live along the roads they want to march down.

They celebrate William of Orange overthrowning a despot; but they themselves are not happy unless they get their own way.

I wish they would just stop. Stop fighting. Stop aggravating. Stop saying harsh words. Stop proclaiming Orangism above the Bible and then deny that they do.

Postscript

It has been brought to my attention that my views were very general in this entry. Let me clarify that it is only those who are dogmatic about their marching whom I believe are acting hypocritically and who are spitting on the ideal that Rev. Canon Dr. S.E. Long, M.Th., J.P. wrote about.

Apologies to any I have offended.

I love Paris in the springtime…

Woohoo! Paris today! Jenna is collecting me in less that two hours but I cannot wait that long. God-willing, by 7pm (BST) this evening we will be dumping our bags in our hotel and making our way to the picturesque district of Montmartre for dinner at sunset. (I wonder what the French is for “picturesque?”) The weather is meant to be warm and sunny. It will be the first time either of us will have been in Paris and I’m really looking forward to seeing it all. In particular, I want to go up the Eiffel Tower, visit Le Louvre, Notre Dame, the old town, and just experience a taste of life as a Parisienne.

I wonder if I’ll see the Pink Panther?

Wake Up

Preface

Let me preface this short essay by saying that I believe Paul’s words [1]: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast.” Salvation is a gift from God, given to us through God’s grace and made possible by the Son of God’s supreme sacrifice. There is nothing we can do to earn our salvation; it is ours if we would but ask. Any belief that departs from salvation through grace alone is heresy. Indeed, any believer who does not accept Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:8-9 is a heretic.

The “Christian” Title

The life of the young Northern Irish Christian in the 21st Century is a strange thing. Desperately trying to rid our language of sectarian slurs and minds of brutal memories, which are a result of recent history, we no longer identify ourselves as Protestant or (Roman) Catholic and instead adopt the catholic – that is, the universal – title of Christian. To call ourselves Christian is not a terribly difficult task in 21st Century Northern Ireland. (In schools for a short while it was verging on popular to be called a Christian!) There is currently no persecution in our country, thank God. There is currently no prohibition of the gospel in our country, thank God. In west- and mid-Ulster, most young Christians attend their local church with parents. In the east of the province most young Christians either attend church with their parents or attend a church where they like the music or, for students, where the majority of their university’s C.U. attends.

And that’s about it: church every Sunday morning and, if we’re a “strong Christian,” Sunday evening. If we attend university, we might choose to attend the university’s C.U.

The Church at Sardis

I once heard Jim Graham preach on Revelation 3:1-6, the letter to the church at Sardis. The church at Sardis had a big reputation but absolutely no reality. That is, Jesus, who gave John the words to write to Sardis, knew well of the church’s work in their community but He found great fault in that work. The church’s deeds didn’t agree with their spiritual state. In my own words, the church was working hard at doing what was right but the work was in vain, hollow and, perhaps, meaningless. The church was physically alive but almost completely spiritually dead.

The city of Sardis was on a cliff face about 1,500 feet above sea level and could only be approached from the east. For a long time it believed itself impregnable. It had a lot of natural resources in the immediate vicinity and the river that ran around the cliff face was thought to have gold dust in it. Possibly as a result of this, Sardis was the first to mint money for itself. Sardis was very self-confident and very self-indulgent. The church in Sardis did little to stop this indulgent course and, in time, it too followed the crowd.

The Church in Northern Ireland

Now, consider our position here in Northern Ireland. Our country is part of an island on the western edge of Europe. We have tremendous natural resources and we have readily available imported goods to meet our every need and our every whim. Without wanting to incite a sectarian response, I want to point out that we are a member state of the United Kingdom – one of the richest countries in the world. We have a very strong economy and our own currency, unlike the rest of Europe.

It is my belief that the citizens of Northern Ireland, due to our aforementioned situation, are quietly confident of our position in the world. We watch wars and tsunamis on television but are silently certain that they will not affect us. After all, we can simply switch channels and forget all about that which we don’t want to remember.

We are an indulgent culture, too. We catch on and follow the latest fads and culture. We can indulge almost any desire we might have, within the law. We have television and films to feed our fantasies; restaurants and takeaways to feed our bellies; newspapers, magazines and the Internet to feed our lust; mobile phones, email and instant messaging to help us gossip; we have games consoles, leather chairs and cheap travel costs to help us avoid work; we have catalogues and sleazy advertisements telling us what we need to buy; we have aggressive sports, violent films and dissident websites to feed our anger.

(I don’t want to be misunderstood: I am not saying that everything in the above list is wrong and should be avoided, nor do I want to criticise those who eat at McDonalds or enjoy going to the cinema. I do, however, want to point out that we are to be master of our own desires and our own bodies rather than have them master us. Too many people don’t realise this and the Evil One has them wrapped around his little finger.)

Now let me ask you: are young Christians in Northern Ireland any different from the young Christians in the church at Sardis? In my experience (my opinion is irrelevant and a non-issue), I would say no. As I look around the young Christians in my own church and those with whom I have contact outside of my own church, I would sadly confess that they are as similar to the recipients of this letter as my wooden desk is to a dead tree. Yes, as in Sardis, there are wonderful exceptions – those who have not “soiled their clothes” (NIV) and who will walk with Jesus – but the majority are self-confident and self-indulgent, or, as we say in Northern Ireland, they are skating on thin ice. No wonder church attendance is getting lower – the ice keeps giving way.

Is the church in Northern Ireland too interested in “Christianising” people in thought and action rather than transforming them, with the help of the Holy Spirit, from the inside out and having people “born again” in the faith? Jim Graham’s words are incredibly poignant: having ones name on a church membership roll is eternally different from having ones name in the Book of Life.

Laying A Good Foundation

Why is all this happening? Why are we, as young Northern Irish Christians, all too ready to adopt the title of Christian but fail to live out the duties that come with that title? It is one thing to be called a Christian but it is a very different thing to be a Christian. What does it mean to be a Christian in our various circumstances?

The first two questions, I believe, have the same answer. With regard to a Christian who merely adopts the title, if their faith can be thought of reverently as a building site then the foundation stones of that faith have not been firmly laid before further building commences (c.f. the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:1-23). Looking again at the letter to the church at Sardis we can learn what these foundation stones are. Verse 3a in the NIV says, “Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent.” There are four explicit actions mentioned here and two implicit: remember, hear, obey, repent, attend and think about, respectively. Jesus was imploring the church to listen to and remember what was being said at the meetings of the church, which they were obviously to attend (c.f. Hebrews 10:25). The church members were subsequently to obey it and repent of their old ways. In order to obey what they were hearing and understand which of their current ways were unacceptable they would need to think about what they were hearing – that is, meditate on what the message means for their life and how to apply it.

It is from verse 3a where the aforementioned foundation stones can be derived: church attendance, prayer and meditation, and obedience. I will also add Bible study to this list because, unlike the church at Sardis, Bibles are readily available and literacy is very high in Northern Ireland. But these foundation stones aren’t being laid by the young Christian. The reason probably stems from the sloth I’ve already mentioned: it’s too much like hard work.

Taking an abstract and high level view of the Christian’s life we can conclude that it involves work. Work requires discipline so that we don’t get distracted (and the Evil One is working hard to distract us from the work of God and the following of His will). Discipline is a bit of a taboo in our culture and spiritual discipline is a taboo in some church circles, but that should not be the case. After all, the word disciple is from the same root as discipline. The living out of the Christian life involves an act of the will – we must want to do it and we must be disciplined to do it. We must attend church to hear how we are to live and further study our own Bibles (individually and as a group) to aid our memory and understanding. We must then meditate and pray on what we hear and read to work out what we can learn from it and think through how it will affect our lives.

Too often, too many stop at this point: they attend church, read their Bible and have the head knowledge, they even think about what they learn, but they fail to take the next step – obedience to what we are learning, in other words, application. James 1:19-27 is useful here, in particular verse 22: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” Through applying what we learn to our own lives, we will leave our old ways (or, as Paul puts it, our “old self” [2]) behind and adopt new ways. This is repentance: an about-face from that which God abhors. Repentance is not confession, as is so often assumed.

The answer to the third question posed above is somewhat related to what has already been said. To be a Christian in our various circumstances is to act as Jesus would act in our various circumstances. It is what results from the application of what we read and learn from the Bible – plain and simple.

In conclusion, we can see that being called a Christian is different from actually being a Christian. Adopting the name “Christian” is an easy task; being a Christian is hard work and requires discipline, the laying of a good spiritual foundation and an act of the will.

[1] – Ephesians 2:8-9, NIV
[2] – Ephesians 4:22, NIV

What a week!

First post in ages!

This week was my first week with LIT and it was great! I am back on the Business Market team, which still has a lot of familiar faces from my placement year two years ago. My desk location is great: no one can see my screen! Of course, not that it matters because I’ve actually been working really hard. In at 8am; home at 6pm. Trying to create a good impression.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet worked out a routine for my work week and it means that I don’t have any time to myself. Currently, I’m up at 6:45am to get ready, leaving the house at 7:20am to be at my desk for 8am. After a full day working, I’m home between 6pm and 6:30pm. Changed and eaten dinner by about 7:15pm. That doesn’t leave me a lot of time in the evening because I have to get to bed for 10:30pm in order to get up the next morning. 3 hours and 15 minutes is my “own” time in the evening but it’s not enough. I want to spend time with Jenna, I want to read my books, I want to play sport and watch TV and surf the Net… but I can’t. Plus I’ve got to fit a Quiet Time into my day somewhere.

It’s Deeper tomorrow evening from 7pm – 11pm (BST). Although the time isn’t likely to be quiet I intend to use it to seek God. I am really looking forward to it! I’m not sure if many others will turn up and we haven’t met as a team to pray about tomorrow (due to exams, etc.)… so in that sense I’m a little worried. But I believe God will do what God wants to do… and who am I to argue with Him? hehe…

Right, time to relax…