Road toll
Rest homes for old people and car parks for churches are similarly abominable.
UPDATE: I don’t say cars are similarly abominable. I say of all places/times, surely a church service should be a small picture of ‘how things ought to be’, God’s will done on earth according to the pattern of heaven. Presumably the gathering of God’s people on Sundays is the symbolic high point of the week – we have a chance to slow down, plan it ahead of time, think about how this time will direct coordinate focus the rest of our lives.
Thank you all very much for your contributions to this post and all the others too, I appreciate you all, and I’m not just having a laugh.
54 responses to “Road toll”
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I looked at that and first thought, Oh dear, Old people have the best homes of all.
Ah true that. Some editing, I think.
Aaron, help. What does he mean?
All old people should be killed at birth
With only old people and a nurse or two for company, no animals no children no family few plants interminable boredom loneliness and people dying every other day.
I understand the old people bit….
so don’t you want me to come to church matty? cause I can only get there by car and then I’ll need a park… and you just said that was from the devil. woe is me.
I don’t understand the car park bit, but what about this. Replace the car parks with a church run retirement home. The covenant community looking after its own? while I personally think that it is better to look after your aging parents by building a granny flat on the back of your property like many people do. Sometimes health issues require constant supervision. Unless you are rich like Aaron, you can’t afford that, so a church run “maturity village” is the next best thing.
Hans: becuase carparks encourage people to drive to church.
means church is somewhere to go to, not something to be
means church can’t be city on a hill/light to its community – the church building is of no benefit to those within walking distance of it, and the people who are in driving distance are of no benefit to those within walking distance either.
Oh and cars are Separators with a capital S. Separating from weather, road, other cars, other people, air, near places, feet, exertion, control. And
Computers are Seperators to a greater degree. Please wax lyrical about how you hate those.
Ha – yeah I was thinking that as I was writing. It’s kind of a common feature of lots of modern technology – on the surface it brings people together, but just below that it’s separationstations. Like friends on the bus staring into their cellphones.
I don’t know if compies are worse or better when it comes to separation. I know I’ve been sitting here by myself staring at a glowing box since 6.30 and am working on fixing that. I can see the problem. I think most drivers don’t see a problem/downsides at all.
I expect all kinds of technology can be used in a redeemed/ing way. For me, for instance, it seems good to limit txt’ing to logistics, to write a letter rather than email if it’s important/personal etc.
(1) talk to rebecca about old people. she works in a rest home. i hear some really grotty stories from her… but what about their wisdom?
(2) Matt, are you saying that by having no carparks, therefore condemning the use of cars, i am not welcome at chruch because of the distance i have to cover by using a car? eh? you’re just jealous of all the car people, like myself.
My best friend is from Taiwan, and she cannot understand why Western people don’t live with and look after their aged/sick family themselves. I feel obliged to try to defend my culture, but I can’t really in this respect.
I visited a drive in church in California once.
matt, I’m sorry to say but i feel very attacked by some of the statements you make. While I would agree in part with you about old peoples homes, I think you say it in a dangerous way. You say rest homes are abominable. My grandfather needed a rest home in the later days of his life because as John made reference to, he needed specific professional care that we as a family could no longer provide, after having cared for him and having him live in a ‘granny flat’ type situation for many years. So for you to say what you did without expounding attacked what we did as a family when I believe what we did as a family was good and right.
And then the car side of things. I drive a car. I drive my car a great deal in fact. And you call it abominable. That’s a word used in the bible to describe the things that God hates. ‘Serious’ things. I’m going to use my car tonight to travel to a bible study. Otherwise, I could not attend. I use my car to go and spend time with my family and friends, otherwise, I could not see them.
May I ask of you to maybe rephrase what you have said and to explain more what you mean, and to encourage others to greater things rather than to condemn.
Matt, no carpark would just be yet another excuse for not attending church. I have heard you defend your absence from church once because it would’ve taken an hour to walk.
Re 10: What on earth do you mean by “the people within driving distance are of no benefit to those within walking distance”?! And why is the church building of no benefit to those within walking distance? It gives them a sheltered place to meet together. Didn’t the Israelites build a temple or two back in the day?
Re 11: Firstly, cars don’t separate you from control. When driving a car you are in control, hopefully. Secondly, what’s wrong with being separated from the weather when it is pouring with rain? Thirdly, without cars there are certain members of our congregation who would never be able to get to church. I’m sure they appreciate the automobile. Finally, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. He was separated from the road, from exertion, from feet, and to some degree possibly other people. Abominable?
I understand what you are saying Matt.
I long for our churches to be hubs of community – a place for people to ‘be’, rather than to ‘visit’. I’ve suddenly remembered that our family often used to walk to and from church on Sunday mornings.
This concept is so far from today’s culture, where people travel by car to the corner dairy, and think nothing of driving
(contd…) >40km/1hr to work each day.
Ha!
Kate: This post came from visiting an old people’s home a couple of times in the last week or so. First time I’ve been in one for years and years. I am happy that you drive all that way to church, and yes I’m envious of car people when it is cold and wet. Walking down O’Pde in the sun at 5pm I pity them though.
David: I said the two were as abominable, I didn’t put any particular level of abomination on either thing. I respect without reservation your family’s decision to use the rest home to care for Pop.
Tim: ‘attending church’ is a phrase that is at the heart of the problem I aim to rectify.
And, I mean the building at 34 Harrison Street is of no use to the physical neighbours. If people are in trouble, they can’t run there, it’s locked most of the week. What have we in Oriental Bay, Newlands, Petone etc got to do with the people who live in Brooklyn? Zip.
And, in the New Covenant, *we* are the temple. When people want to find God, they’re sposed to be able to look to the body, the community of His people. Faces sposed to glow like the temple used to (Exodus 34 † 2 Cor 3).
And, w.r.t. ‘cars don’t separate you from control’ – cars give you the freedom to drive on roads between painted lines obedient to glowing lights and in fear of cops and speed cameras, freedom to move at slower than walking pace at exactly the time of day when you’re in a hurry, freedom to pay to have them repaired, pay to park, pay to be rego’ed/wof’d, etc. Point is, the freedom a car gives is to a large extent illusory, like the freedom condoms give.
And, the rain I think probably has something to tell us about God as much as the sun.
And, I see cheap transport as a (possibly temporary and artificial, if you believe people like James H Kunstler) subsidy on the real cost of getting things from A to B. Means our food can come from thousands of k’s away where we have no control over it/care for it, means we can live tens of k’s away from the people we love the best and think it’s normal.
And, donkeys move at a human-like speed. See Jan Gehl on 5km/h architecture, and again.
I was thinking along the same lines as Matthew just a night or two ago when discussing with my flatmate why the church is in decline in the western world. For a part I believe its because we are no longer part of the community. We are our own separate communities that meet together about once a week at church. We do church and maybe a bible study and then depart our ways for the rest of the week. On a whole we have nothing to do with the community to which our church belongs. For example I travel about 15 minutes to church each sunday. That is the only time I spend in St Clair the whole week. How can the church be a light in the community if it only shine twice on one day? IF churches had no car parks and we walked to the local church down the road to worship as a community, I believe we would be much more of a light others in the community. The community churches could work in their communities to be the light and provide healing for those who need it. It would take a lot of hard work at first to learn how to worship together while still holding to different theological leanings, but we would be the better for it.
old people are awesome. for all the standard reasons, and probly more. but it’s not much good for the rest of society if they all live in little villages, where they see and talk to only each other, and on the odd occasion, their kids and grandkids, and the window cleaners. oh yes. i clean lots of such windows. it’s very depressing. I keep thinking how happy and fun this old person would be if she a) had more people to talk to than other old people, many going on senile, and often *very* patronizing nurses. honestly, they’re treated like three-year-olds. ok, sure, they often need to be helped to wash themselves etc, but old people are mature adults too. oh yes, and b) if she had more to do than watch tv or play bingo, and if the libraries in such homes contained more than cheap mystery-romances. i’m sure they’re capable of more than that, aren’t they? (or maybe all old people just have this peculiar aquired taste for mystery-romances that only a very few of us young’uns have yet)
for some reason, these old people are very often irritable or miserable, and i’m pretty sure it’s not because of the sort of people they are naturally, going by the sorts of cards and photos and newsclippings about their lives which generally cover their walls and furniture
You’re right Matt, condom’s aren’t too good for getting around in either.
I love being Matt’s sibling. Gives you a 90% greater chance of understanding him.
Look at all this contemplation you’ve induced.
We could apply this principles in Wainui you know, without much trouble. I long for us to be involved in the incredibly needy Wainui community, but where to start? How to the bridge the gap?
I say rip up the carparks, put fruit trees in their place.
Ok, so let’s say we get rid of all the car parks. It still doesn’t solve the problem of people who live far away getting to church does it? Reality is, it’s just not practical. But good idea, Matt.
Also, just because the rain “has telling to tell us about God” doesn’t mean I’m gonna get wet. Correct me if I’m wrong, but before the Fall wasn’t there a nice mist that covered the earth rather than ‘rain’ as such?
Oh, and when you go changing your post it makes our comments look unreasonable/dumb.
Cool convo. Well done matt for starting and for #23. You write well when you write longer.
Tim: church should not be a place you have to go far away ‘to’. It should be something in your locality. Cars have have helped us forget that and so reinvent the meaning of ‘church’.
They contribute to the illusion that a non-local urban ‘churches’ are workable, meaningful things.
Re: 23 and Gehl.
To prove myself as the complete geek, I ask ‘how do you think Gehl would consider the Segway?’
Okay, please tell me how you think our church should work then…with no cars.
consider the isolated israelite family farming the foothills of dan, having to make the various annual journeys all the way to jerusalem. do you think that cars would have worsened their plight? in the backblocks of rural israel where resources were scarce and thinly spread, memebers of ‘communities’ would have dwelt far further away from each other than they do today. add to that the fact that the physical focal point for their public worship was a city that was ages away.
the resource dispositions of many places make for thin population distributions; which situation would be exacerbated by a lack of modern transport. i’m not sure that urban centres and cars mightn’t facilitate the sense of a church community.
dan, re 31: I’m going to get a Segway as soon as I can afford it. First in Wellington, hopefully.
tim, re 32: church would be local and denominations would be a distant nightmare. Consider that (1) there are heaps of local churches already, it’s just that we won’t associate with/be with them, and (2) we would be forced to face the commands to unity and what that means in a much more authentic/practical/real way (ie, not just agreement with each other on the ideas and common participation in a weekly ritual).
richface re 33: excellent points. Consider though that –
(1) people were neighbourly enough to require many laws that regulated contact & relations, so they weren’t isolated as such;
(2) Israel as a whole was meant to be one people and then 12 tribes (ie, communities with their own lacality);
(3) it was a burden of the old covenant that worship was oriented to one single place (far away for some), and part of the glory of the new covenent is that we worship everywhere (ie, locally) – therefore the new, rather than the old, situation is normative for us;
(4) in recognition of this much apostolic writing is devoted to the issues of love and unity among very different peoples with very different sensibilities (not least Jews and gentiles) – whomever is found in [insert city name] responding to Christ and thus called to form the new body, God’s new model polis.
Insofar as cars help to take us back to models more reminiscent of the old covenant situation (special worship at a place far away), they are not helpful. We need to be developing our own alternative polis, right where we live, with whomever we find willing to follow Christ.
Richface: As I understand it, the local synagogue was the focus of public worship Sabbath by Sabbath, with occasional (thrice-yearly?) feasts in Jerusalem.
ok Matty, we see now that you are challenging our ideas of community and church location and how we are to represent heaven on earth here and now.
I’m sure I’m not the only one those who is at a loss as to what we can do. You have used some strong words (in my opinion) to challenge us, how’s about some words of encouragement and ideas and ways of how we can do things better. What changes can we begin to make in our lives to get to where we should be. That would be worthwhile for us all I’m sure.
Amen David
re 34: is there no place for discernment as to whom you might chose to worship with? For example I presume we would not worship under the leadership of false prophets?(see 2 Peter:2). Whilst I agree lack of unity is not good neither is a disregard for Biblical truth.
Tim (32): I have no idea
David (36): Most of the articles I link to here give pointers to and glimpses of ways of mending these things. Wendell Berry is particularly helpful (though also particularly depressing, as he sees the problems deeper than I), especially his book of essays What are people for? . Hundertwasser has really good ideas, especially in his book Hundertwasser Architecture: For a More Human Architecture in Harmony With Nature. Both books are in Welly library.
It’s seeking the kingdom.
Also, Ludwig Wittgenstein said
so you’ll be walking to church from now on? or attending a church in oriental bay?
I already walk to church most Sundays.
Haven’t seen many churches in O’Bay.
I’ll make sure not to offer you a ride if i get a car. There’s a big church up on the hill.
Ha. I think it’s a monastry or a convent or something.
Well, they probably have church services there then.
The reason why we attend a certain church should not be based on locality, although this is important, but on where you can serve God best. This has recently become an issue for me as the rest of my family has moved to a church 5 minutes down the road. I had to make a decision about whether or not I would save myself an hours worth of travel and attend this other church with my family, or stay at the reformed church. What made me decide to stay in Wellington was the fact that I feel that my place is there. It is where I can serve God best through my gifts and abilities. It is also the place where I feel I will get the teaching and spiritual nourishment I need. So in that respect, distance is not a factor. However, distance can hinder my ability to fully participate in the church and community. But by deciding to stay with the Reformed Church, and by doing my P.O.F., I am making the committment to do all I can to participate in the church, which means extra effort on my part to travel to Brooklyn. I will participate in the church as much as anyone who lives close by, if not more. That is my obligation and duty as a member of the church, and distance will not hinder me.
Nice.
Aaron – nice dream about a united chuch, but I struggle with being able to worship in spirit and in truth in a congregation where the theological views are so diverse that nothing is agreed on. So I try and get my son baptised and a big percentage of those I am worshipping with think that is wrong. How do you deal with that? Do we have one baptist minister and one paedo-baptist minister to cater to all? How about when my pentecostal friends start to speak in tongues during the service, do I sit by and smile? or when the homosexual minister/priest/bishop starts to promote homosexuality? What about when I think someone should be excommunicated for unrepentantly sleeping with my wife, and lots of the other members don’t believe in any form of church discipline. I struggle to see how your concept can work or how a believer could be built up in such a church.
John – w.r.t. the baptism debate, see Aaron’s big ol’ post about that for a possible way forward.
And I would (do sometimes) sit back and smile when my pentecostal friends have a wee shoudaboughtahonda next to me.
Some of the other things are a lot harder. I think they still need to be tackled though, at the coalface, not from an enclave.
Dennis (38) and John (48): denominationalism is not the answer to dealing with falsity, and even contributes to the lack of truth-bearing by the church. She isn’t a picture of renewed humanity in one man, sent by God (as she should be): she is a plurality of table-and-fellowship-divided ‘preference’ clubs. In that sense she tells a lie.
In my view it is impossible that God set things up so that His church could not fulfil the commands to love & unity of the apostles. So, whilst we tend to think of denominationalism as an intractible problem, I don’t think it is. I think it exists because we, the protestant west, refuse to submit to God’s ways of doing things. In other words, because of our sin. And the answers to undo denomnationalism are therefore in scripture – in the apostolic responses to problems in the early church.
So, we need to reject as wrong, or at least very deficient, the things that lead us, again and again, to affirm denominationalism as the regretable answer. We need to re-learn what unity in the truth means. And so we need to be open to the possiblity that we don’t know what it means, currently.
Only when we do that will we be in a position to deal with your scenarios, John. And of course you are right to point to them, because part of the problem with having divided ‘preference clubs’ is that pretty soon, every preference has its own club, and each does what is right in its own eyes. There are no demands of covenent faithfulness, loyalty, or truth-bearing.
Kate (46): I think what you’ve done is fantastic, and I applaud your decision. My point is not to say you’ve done wrong, personally, but to say that the big structures within which all our actions occur need to change. In other words, we need to do church in such a way as to make it really obvious that serving God can best occur in one’s own local community. The fact that it currently does not work that way is an charge against ‘the system’, not you. I hope that makes sense.