Zambian by Elections and the book of Daniel

I have said this quite a lot over the years, ‘I have a fundamental problem with people being wrong.’ That is to say I find it difficult to walk away from a discussion where I think the other person has a view of life and living that is wrong because wrong is harmful. Because of this I engage in quite a bit of political conversation, granted the number of people who indulge me on this are few and far between. However for the past couple weeks, almost months, I have found a growing number of people on my side in regards to my view on the poor leadership in Zambia. And not just by the keyboard warriors such as myself. I have seen and heard the uproar in the streets of my home country and thought ‘these people really want to see change.’

The celebrations in full swing

That is why I was shocked to find out that the ruling party in Zambia won the three by-elections that were held this very week. One or two of these races were not even races which makes you wonder what is really going on on the ground. Maybe the people are actually happy? Maybe there is election rigging going on? Maybe the ruling party have one heck of a sales pitch? Either way I was not impressed in the least because for all our talk in Zambia, we seem to be fine with the general direction things are headed. But this line of thought has come just after I finished reading a fantastic book on Daniel by Stuart Olyott titled ‘Dare to Stand Alone.’

Now don’t get ahead of me here, this is not me talking about any political aspirations. Neither is it me talking about taking to the streets with banners and calling for a day of mourning for the country, neither of which would be horrible ideas might I add. Instead I will concentrate on the latter part of the book as it affects my view of life and living in regards to the situation in my home country and the world at large. But a bit of background on that last sentence. Unless you have been living under a rock and sometimes not even then you know that Supreme Court of the United States legalized gay marriage. Also things have not been looking good for people in general let alone Christians in places that are within the reach of the Islamic State.

In short right now being a Christian and or having Christian values is not a popular position to be in. Now having such a view would almost automatically put you in the category of intolerance and stupidity. The latter part of the book of Daniel speaks of times when things will not be going too well for the people of God. An interesting thing is that it does not say much about God’s presence or his work while the world is going through its stages of upheaval. It paints a picture that would be grim if you are not the kind of person to finish reading and this is why it is important to read till the end.

That's how the book looks for anyone interested

The book of Daniel in its final chapters speaks of a time that is centuries ahead, a time that Daniel would not be alive for, it speaks of how that even though it seems all around is going to pieces and God may seem silent he is not silent at all. He will never leave his cause unattended. God shows Daniel that he is sovereign over all and that though it seems all things are spiraling out of control he is the one who ordained it all and nothing is out of his control. This brought so much consolation to God’s people centuries after Daniel was gone. It showed them that even though things look bad God is in control and they were able to see through hindsight how that Daniels prophecy’s for the future came to be. How that leaders who they thought would be the end of them did not wipe them out because God was with them. They had the comfort of knowing the end while they were through the trial.

Bringing this home I need to knock out a couple of things you might think I mean. Firstly, I don’t mean that God is pushing for Zambia to have a better economy and rise from the ashes. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t but without a doubt he is the one who placed the leaders where they are and they dance to his tune. Secondly, I do not mean that poor leaders will automatically start making good decisions because God has the strings. It is possible but my point is that with all that seems to be going out of hand he is in control. There is a certain level of calm that is attached to knowing that someone who loves you is in control of a situation. And thirdly, I do not mean there will be a turn around to how things were because ‘we are children of God’, it’s possible but that’s not my point. My point is that the bible through multiple examples, literally in every book, shows that God saves his people IN the fire more than he does save them FROM the fire. It is in the fire that we feel his loving embrace, it is in the fire that we know that this world isn’t all there is and that he is more, no, he is ALL that we need.

We are saved in the fire more than we are saved from the fire

I have no idea where things are going for Zambia or worse still the world, well that’s not quite true. I know that my God is going to bring all things to an end someday but the finer details in between I have no clue about. But what I do know is what God painstakingly showed Daniel. That he is in control and that he, God, will be glorified in all. I will end by phrasing it this way. I love and appreciate my father and if I know that no matter what happens around me, my father is the one in charge of the outcome then I will be able to sleep soundly at night because my father will not put me through pain and suffering just to watch me squirm in agony. It is the pain and agony of medicine and I will be better off for it.

Note: This truth will only be relevant to us if we maintain a daily relationship with God through reading his word and prayer because we forget so easily.

Best Friends For Life: A Review

I was invited to Pastor Andrew and Daphne Swanson’s home recently for the day. It was good times with sweet fellowship and a lot of time in Pastor Andrew’s library. If there is anything that you should know about me by now it is that I love me a good library. I like old books, new books, books in tatters, books that are yet to be broken, books that have been broken, books with former owner’s notes in them… I think you get the picture. In this regard there are very few libraries like Pastor Swanson, in fact I am convinced the gravity of a library has just as much to do with the owner of it as it does with the quality and quantity of the books therein. As I was perusing through his collection of books my eyes strayed to this nice paperback titled ‘Best Friends For Life’. I picked it up and the journey begun.

It looked like a fairly new book but also seemed out of place because it was in the library of a couple who have been married for a very long time, they have a son who has been married for twenty years ergo they have been married a very long time. I figured the book must be a decent read for that reason alone and as I read the Introduction I was not disappointed. I will get into my review of the book soon but I first have to say that, I had a massive disinterest for all topics related to relationships. This is because I am tired of the preoccupation of my peers with it. Every conference and seminar needs to have something or other on it and I found that grating on the nerves but to say the least I have had a change of heart and this, as well as the proceeding blog post, should shed more light on this.

Down to the book. The thing that fascinated me the most about the book and led me to read more and more of it on that first day was that it focussed more on the friendship between the guy and the girl rather than the romance. This theory blew my mind. Isn’t a relationship about romance and attraction? With a lot of talk in this day and age about ‘The Friend Zone’, which is basically the guy or the girl treating the person on the other end as nothing more than a friend then doesn’t that and this amount to the same thing? What is a relationship between a male and a female without the romance?

The book tackles this by laying down a couple of assumptions. These are firstly that a relationship between a man and a woman should be started with marriage as the end product. Secondly that the friendship and knowledge are the proper basis of such a relationship. Thirdly that the excessive diluting of friendship and knowledge with Romance produces a skewed view of the other person in the relationship that after the mist of the romantic high fades leaves each person wondering what they signed up for. Fourthly that not all relationships that begin with romance as the basis fail but in terms of numbers a relationship based off friendship lasts longer and tends to be more stable.

A good father would want to know well the man to whom he gives his daughter

I will not lay down the whole book but I will lay down three sections or phases of the relationship process and these may seem extreme to begin with but are grounded in proper truth and make good sense if thought upon. The first being the courtship phase. During this phase the man who is interested in pursuing a woman approaches the father first about seeking a relationship with his daughter. It is at this point that the father will take time to get to know the young man, over a series of conversations, to ascertain as it were the calibre/character of the man. If the father is sufficiently impressed he allows the young man to begin courting his daughter.

This courting involves a non-romantic relation to the woman and her father. The father of the woman is heavily involved in the whole process and it is his job to get to know the man just as much if not more, initially, than the woman. There are strong elements of trust involved here as the woman trusts her father to look into the character of the man to see if he is of good character as he will see things through the experienced and realistic lenses. This stage involves the man relating to the woman in a group environment more than one on one as this shows more of the character of each individual in relation to others than a one on one would, it has less pretense.

The second phase, if the first is successful, would be the engagement. This is when the father feels the man is responsible and worthy and of his daughters hand and some level of premarital counselling as well as life counselling begins. This is all done as the man and his parents relate to the woman and her parents, I will explain the significance of this as they do in the next part. This part involves the man getting his life in order to take on the responsibility of a wife and this is helped along through the guidance of the father of the woman. The woman would also be receiving guidance from the parents of the man.

A lot of the process is requires a submission by the young man

I will immediately jump into phase three because there is an extent of overlap between stages two and three. Stage three involves apprenticeship. This is when the man spends a year, give or take ‘a few’ months, in the home of the parents of the woman and vice versa. During this time the man lives with them as well as works with or for the father. It is during this time that a lot of the discipleship happens as the man gets to see another example of a functioning marriage in action as well as being observed by the parents of the wife to be.

One can pretend to be something he is not over frequent meetings but in such close quarters over a good period of time the real nature of the man and woman is brought to light. Things like temperament, laziness levels, relation to others etc. are easily visible and can be worked or exposed before they become a bigger problem. It also gives the man and the woman a chance to view the parents of the other in close proximity. We echo similarities with our parents and even though we do not turn into carbon copies of them there are things that can be seen. Traits that will help the man or woman understand the person they hope to hitched to till death.

At this point I must say that the full point of the book cannot be gotten by a review and I do encourage all who can to read it as it is a very good book. There are a couple issues that arise and I will mention two that impress me about all this as hope to press upon you the interest in the book.

What happens when the lovey-dovey-ness is low and there is no
friendship foundation

The first, is that I see a lot of relationships these days are based on either the glossy eyed affection or the fun new toy kind of affection. The first one leaves you without a proper understanding of who the person next to you really is and results in you doubting the relationship when the persons true character starts to show and the second is all about what other people think of the person next to you and not the actual person. It is very important after everyone is gone and no one is looking to be able to talk to the person next to you, I think that is great! If a relationship is based off of mutual appreciation of the individual as well as the romance then physical trauma will not diminish love but grow it.

Secondly, as radical and impractical as these ideas may sound a proper reading of the book in full will give a proper understanding of the idea in private thought and meditation as you work through what has been read you will be able to try to put things in place with the paradigm in which you are placed. If at all love is for the benefit of the other person then wouldn’t you want the other person to know the real you so they don’t get shocked in future. Wouldn’t you want the person to have as much a knowledge of you as possible? Would you not be willing to submit to the authority of another for a period of time to show some seriousness as well as grow under their guidance?

This book is nice if not just for the discussion that it brings about. There are dozens of reason why this book should be read but I’m yet to think of one reason why it shouldn’t

CS, The Magician’s Nephew and I

Being true to form I chose this day, it being Chrimbo and all, to talk about something else. I’m sure you will find lots of proper Christmas posts on the true meaning of Christmas and do read those, a lot of them are great but I’m here to talk about something else after all this, my one reader, is my Journey in Cyprus. So Haway we go, not a typo.

The cover that I saw. I hope to remember that feeling for years to come

C S Lewis is my favourite author, almost of all time, I think the man is brilliant. An unparalleled genius. His books have a way of painting images that take you to a time and place, his ability to paint metaphors in both broad and delicate strokes is borderline brilliant. To say the least I am a fan. I discovered C S Lewis in January of 2008. We were on a vacation in Cape Town as a family and on one of the days my Dad decided to mix business with pleasure, he went to a bookshop to get books for his studies, he recently got his PHD so I think such missions are behind him. So we reach the bookshop and for the life of me I can’t figure out why at that time it was just me and him. No idea where everyone else was.

As he was speaking to the guy at the counter, it could have been a female but lets work with the generic word ‘guy’, I begun to snoop around the shop. The shop was a dream for any bookworm, and I am quite the book worm. Imagine one of them shops that has shelves stacked and tables intermingled with a sofa or two, a couple tables and some wooden chairs. The shelves had books, the tables had books and the wooden chairs had books and there was one book that just caught my eye. It was a thick black paperback with a Lion on the cover. Just the face of a Lion, mane and all. I remember thinking how good the cover was because the Lion was just magnificent, little did I know the Lion was Aslan, we’ll get to him soon enough.

I read the cover and it said ‘The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis’. I had heard of the book but never read it so I asked my Dad if he could buy it for me. The book was cheap if memory serves me right, it was a real bargain. The moment he bought it I tore into that bad boy and I’ve never looked back. Before I get to the actual review of ‘The Magician’s Nephew’, which is the reason you my one reader are here, one more little memory. Before we set off for the trip Dad had come from one of his preaching trips and came back with MP3 players from one of the families at a church he preached at. We all got one and I remember putting Michael Card’s Joy in the Journey Album, which is an absolute gem. As I read the book I kept playing two songs over and over and over. They were ‘God’s Own Fool’ and ‘The Final Word’. To date those songs always take me back to that trip, when I would have the book in my lap, my brother and sister next to me in the car and my parents in front of the car driving around Cape Town.

Down to the book. The Magician’s Nephew is the first book in the series called ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’. It is the beginning of Narnia for all intents and Purposes. I will not break down the story because only C S can really do that but I will give you the parts that got me good. The book has an element of Creation and the Fall of man in it. The character that sprung this whole little piece is a boy called Digory. And Digory is me. The decisions that he makes the things he says, it reminds me so much of me. The book brought me to the painful realisation that if I were in the place of Adam on the fateful day that sin entered the world I too might have acted in the same way.

If you were to buy the book on it's own this would be the cover or something like it

Before I get to a couple quotes and standouts there is one more thing about Digory that makes me feel so much attachment to the character and this is Digory’s need to atone for his sin through his own actions. I get that so much because I try to do it over and over and over in my own life. I try to add to my redemption because of some vain sense of duty where I want to help out God because I know I have let him down so much. Aslan, who is the God character in the book also the Lion, clears that up with Digory in a way that is so clear and amazing I wont even try to bring it out myself, Just find the book and read it, it is an absolute gem!

Down to the quotes. I will do two and break them down slightly. The first happens when Uncle Andrew shows up in Narnia and hears the animals speak. He could not comprehend how or why the animals were capable of speech and kept denying it to himself. Here is the quote

“When the great moment came and the Beasts spoke, he missed the whole point; for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to

think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion ("only a lion," as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn't singing and never had been singing—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. "Of course it can't really have been singing," he thought, "I must have imagined it. I've been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever The Chronicles of Narnia 1 - The Magicians Nephew heard of a lion singing?" And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan's song. Soon he couldn't have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, "Narnia awake," he didn't hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings. And when they laughed— well, you can imagine. That was worse for Uncle Andrew than anything that had happened yet. Such a horrid, bloodthirsty din of hungry and angry brutes he had never heard in his life. Then, to his utter rage and horror, he saw the other three humans actually walking out into the open to meet the animals.”

The idea that one can go so far in convincing himself of what he doesn’t believe that he soon forgets the process of convincing himself and just moves to full fledge disbelief. We see that so much in this day and age it’s RIDICULOUS. C S shows all of this in his little way. It’s great

The last quote comes towards the end of the book. This is a conversation between Aslan and the two main characters Polly and Digory. Without further ado

"Oh I see," said Polly. "And I suppose because she took it in the wrong way it won't work for her. I mean it won't make her always young and all that?" "Alas," said Aslan, shaking his head. "It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it." "I—I nearly ate one myself, Aslan," said Digory. "Would I—" "You would, child," said Aslan. "For the fruit always works—it must work—but it does not work happily for any who pluck it at their own will. If any Narnian, unbidden, had stolen an apple and planted it here to protect Narnia, it would have protected Narnia. But it would have done so by making Narnia into another strong and cruel empire like Charn, not the kindly land I mean it to be.

Seriously! Wow!! A lot of people will try to tell you that the promises this world and the devil give will happen. Uh.. They might. Problem is even if they do the end product is not what you want it to be. It will never be the peace, joy and fulfilment that you so long have sought. I won’t waste anymore of your time my one reader, JUST GO READ THE BOOK!

Could Have Been A Birthday Post

I read the book instead of moving

I was really tempted to do a birthday post, really tempted. Tempted to write about my thoughts and feelings over the turn of the year for me but I’ll pass on that. I have decided to pass on that because of a more pending issue. An issue that I figure has greater importance than my turn of the year. A week or so ago a friend of mine dropped a book on my table and asked me to read it. I blatantly denied the suggestion like I always would to anything he would suggest unless it involved food or coke, I love food and coke by the way. I really love coca cola. Anyway, I figure he expected the reaction so he left the book and went about his business. For the next couple of days he would ask me almost every day like clockwork if I had read the book yet. I felt like lying but I was decent enough to tell him the truth and say no. He was like the woman who wanted justice and I was the unjust judge, except I was more reasonable, I think…

Yesterday I figured I should start reading the book so I could get him off my back. So carried the book with me to church, not to read it in church, my days of doing that are long over. The bus ride to church is forty minutes to and twenty minutes back. So I carried it, somehow or other my roommate and I were almost late to catch the bus. So what started off as a light jog turned into a race and I got my Usain Bolt on and won. I arrived in the bus and started reading. The book blew me away. Easy to follow and rich with biblical truths that cut right to the heart. The name of the book is “Your Own Jesus” by Mark Hall of Casting Crowns. I started it and as we reached the church stop I was already twenty pages into the book and I didn’t feel it. Somehow, by God’s grace I managed to concentrate in church. On the bus back from church I opened it again and thirty pages passed by between then and the time I sat down for lunch. Now yes I am a fast reader but I give the book the vast majority of the credit. It is baby simple but rich. Basically I tore through the book, except for the evening service and dinner I was right in there and by 11pm I was done.

I actually didn't read the cover till now

The book left me in a place of awe over my relationship with God. Over where it was, where it could be and where it should be. I was ready to kneel in awe and worship of the God I serve. By now you want to know what the book was about I can imagine so I will do my level best to say enough but not too much so you can try to track it down yourself and dig in. it is a devotional book, relying a lot on personal reflection as you go through it. It starts by explaining the slow fade, and yes he regularly uses tittles of his songs. It actually makes you understand the heart behind the pen and the message of them. It speaks of how the gradual change in one direction, that is one straying from God, naturally should mean there is a slow and hard return. It is not something that happens in the blink of an eye and requires diligence. He also speaks over how it is that God frees us of our sin as far as the east is from the west. This does not mean that we have no remaining sin but how that once he forgives us it is once and for all. We tend to reflect our human understanding and logic on God, in that we expect God to get fed up of forgiving because even the most loving parent would get tired at some point. God is not like this, human logic does not apply to him. He throws your sin away as far as the east is from the west. He says, one of the reasons God does not use north and south is because if you went north on earth at some point you will find yourself in the south but you can never go so far east that you end up in the west, it just keeps on going and personally I find that great.

The last lesson I leave you with is how that a lot of people expect a prayer to fix all your problems and you will return to the relationship you had with God before your one or many sins that took you away from him. It takes a lot of work and prayer. Personal effort. We would never grow in grace if God simply pulled us out of our problems. Our experiences make us who we are and make us better instruments for his use so we should work hard to return to our relationship with God but accept that all that happens to us is with his power and plan and is for our good.

 Expect to sweat and fall, the road is hard

All in all I highly recommend the book, not that I’m a guru on which books to read, but if the book falls on your head on a cloudy day. Don’t panic, pick it up and read it. Also, that nagging guy who you know just might bring you a diamond once every blue moon