A musician's journey

Reading the Bible Again - Again!

2011-12-12T12:17:00.006Z

A response to Czech theologian Dan Drapel's article, 'Odpověď Johnu de Jongovi' (Reply to John de Jong)

At the beginning of this year I wrote a short article called Reading the Bible Again which looked very briefly at some of the issues surrounding truth and the bible. Czech theologian Dan Drapel responded by posting a lengthy article on his website (in Czech) accusing me of treating the whole bible as a mythical work. This was not my intention, nor is it my belief. I therefore took the time to respond to Dan's article, and this is reproduced below for those who are interested in such things! (I am sorry I cannot post Dan Drapel's article here, but you will get a feel for the issues from my response.)

Reading the Bible Again - Again!

First of all, I would like to thank Dan for taking the time to respond to my article ‘Reading the Bible Again’. It is very healthy to have such discussions and debates, and I am glad that Dan and I are substantially agreed. As this response from Dan has been posted on his website, I would like to take a few moments to correct some misconceptions about my position and to make a few further comments.

A few preliminary words about motivation. The article I wrote – ‘Reading the Bible Again’ – was intended to encourage people to read the bible, and was designed to provoke those who make truth claims about its literality, inerrancy or infallibility without proper reflection. Or those who use the term ‘The Word of God’ as if the book was a deity. If such views become foundational to faith there is a danger – and this is something I observe in the Czech Republic – that Christianity becomes more about believing the ‘right’ things than following Jesus.

Dan’s main objection to my article, on which I hope to put his mind at rest, is that I ‘see only mythical truth in the bible’ and therefore consider, for example, the death and resurrection of Jesus as mythical. This is not my position. I was trying (perhaps unsuccessfully) to argue that not all truth is literal fact. I love the way Dan phrased this about the account of Jesus and I fully concur: ‘Christ’s cross is one of the points where the history and the myth intersect. Christ’s story is true in both of these senses.’ Dan has pointed out the different genres of writing in the bible – poetry, legal documents, historical accounts, fictive or mythical narrative, and so on: to read all these in the same way, or to treat all these as simply ‘fact’ is unwise. In his words:

I do not see a reason to insist on the historicity of Jonas, for example. Jonas’s story can really be considered a novel through which God is telling us something. The truthfulness and significance of what this book says does not depend on the fact, whether Jonas historically existed or not.

This is also my main contention.

A few final words about factual verity. Dan makes the claim:

‘The excitement of liberals and atheists over the “factual mistakes” culminated around the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th century. Since that time, archaeological and other findings mostly confirmed the factual correctness of the Biblical data and the critics had to start retreating…’

My own view is that this claim is unsupportable. The debate, if anything, has become more heated since the beginning of the 20^th century. I cite as an example the Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox (The Unauthorized Version : Truth and Fiction in the Bible. Viking, 1991). And one ongoing criticism from academics is that Christians (particularly those of the fundamentalist type that Dan mentions) have a propensity to fit archeological evidence to subjective and preconceived notions.

Concerning factual correctness. In Dan’s words:

De Jong is undoubtedly right saying that we can recognise two messages about creation in the Scripture. I myself have spoken about it many times and explained this fact in a certain way. But does it prove the factual unreliability of the Scripture? I do not think so.

I do not think so either because – in my opinion – these passages are less about literal fact and more about poetry and myth. No doubt there are ways (by engaging in intellectual somersaults, and talk of ‘apparent age’ and so on) that these accounts could be considered factual, but it seems to me that such discussions miss the point. It is akin to focusing on the surface of an artwork and missing the picture. It is to misinterpret the genre and miss the message.

Dan rightly points out that I stated that the bible is full of factual error (and I gave two particular examples – the size of Israel’s armies being routinely exaggerated[1] and the two contradictory accounts of the same battle in 1 Kings 15 with 2 Chron.13). The extent of the perceived error (‘full’, I agree, may be too strong a word) depends, of course, on how much fictive or mythical narrative is ‘forced’ to be literal. As already noted, this statement was not meant imply that there is no factual truth in the bible – clearly there is a huge amount, not least concerning the salvation event. Rather it was meant to highlight the naivety of simply claiming inerrancy. Just as one cannot be ‘almost’ a virgin, so the bible cannot be ‘almost’ inerrant.

But our discussion is not, in a sense, about factual correctness, but how we interpret those passages which are clearly not fact, such as – as Dan mentions – the book of Job. In what sense can we call the words of Satan in Job ‘The Word of God’? I am not saying it is impossible (one could suggest that God, through the Holy Spirit, was reporting Satan’s words) but further intellectual somersaults are needed. Here subjectivity clearly plays a part: Dan has listed some passages he considers myth and some he considers factual; my list might be different. How do we discern the truth? Or, to phrase it another way: How do we discern the word of God to us, his people? How do we get beyond the anarchic subjectivity of postmodernism?

Here I would like to go beyond my original article to suggest five safeguards, five checks that God has given us to correctly interpret our scriptures:

Firstly, Jesus promised to send us the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of Truth’ (John 14:17) who would ‘lead us into all truth’ (John 16:3).
Secondly, we have each other. I am grateful to Dan for highlighting the shortcomings in my article, and for pointing out how certain statements might be misunderstood. Being part of the Christian community, and having honest and open discussion is a valuable safeguard against heresy.
Thirdly we have our tradition, our history. This is, if you like, the inclusion of our ancestors in the discussion and we do well to heed their voice. (I am not, of course, advocating the blind acceptance of historical dogma without recognition of its historical contingency. If we go this route we would have to, with Paul, accept slavery as an acceptable social practice.)
Fourthly, we have common sense. This is not to be confused with ruthless, logical rationalism, but wisdom which comes from intuitive contextual understanding of the ‘big picture’.
Which leads me to my last ‘safeguard’ – context. As readers, as theologians, we must take note of the context of the words that we read: by whom and to whom they were spoken, when and why they were spoken, taking note of historical and sociological context, and so on.

With these five principles in place, the risk of interpretational error is minimised.

I conclude by thanking Dan once again for engaging in this discussion and for his helpful response. I am encouraged by the fact that we are broadly in agreement. My main disagreement with him is that he concludes: ‘[John’s] thesis is that the Bible is factually not credible.’ This is not my thesis. I am simply warning against the naïve interpretation of all passages as ‘fact’. My prayer is that we will all read the bible more and discern, through its sacramental pages, the Author.

[1] The 1 Kings 15 battle account is typical. Here we have described a battle with opposing armies amounting to 1.2 million fighting men, and this in a small agrarian nation the size of Wales.

Healing Society

2011-08-15T13:28:00.001+01:00

The recent rioting and looting on the streets of England have triggered an avalanche of comment from politicians of all colours, peppered with phrases such as ‘social deprivation’, ‘the breakdown of family values’, ‘no stake in society’, and so on. Deep conversations try to fathom why, within certain localities, there is an inbuilt desire for self-destruction — the social equivalent of a disturbed teenager slashing her wrists with a kitchen knife. Some have even tried to paint a Dickensian picture of social stratification, equating today’s looters with those that, until not so long ago, were hung for stealing a loaf of bread. The solution — according to this analysis — is simply to pump more money into deprived housing estates, presumably so the kids can go out and buy their own designer clothes without the trouble of stealing them.
Looting of values
It is curious that few have the courage (or conviction?) to speak about the true nature of the society that we have created in the last 50 or so years. Values which used to underpin most developed cultures have been systematically eroded and rejected — even legislated against — so it seems somewhat hollow for learned commentators to lament the ‘breakdown of family life’ for example, having presided over the dismantling of many social institutions that supported that life or — in the case of a good number of MP’s — blame ‘delinquents’ for looting, having themselves used generous expense accounts to milk the system effectively stealing from those of us with lesser means.

Whatever your religious convictions, it cannot be denied that mainstream faith groups of all creeds and colours have, as core values, the honouring of parents and a commitment to family life and — more fundamentally — treating others as one would wish to be treated oneself. So those in power that bleat about the erosion of core values (politicians and journalists in particular) have arguably contributed more to the erosion of those values than any other group in society by routinely deriding and ridiculing ‘religion’ and undermining any sense of moral norms (and, as we shall see later, promoting the core value of ‘desire’ in a post-materialistic society). It was notable this week that the most powerful call for moderation came from a Muslim father who had lost sons in the violence: his dignity and poise in the midst of bereavement gave me hope once more.

Desire
From my side of Lessing’s Ditch a few things seem painfully obvious that no-one seems to want to talk about. For example, the issue of desire. Boz Scaggs, one of my favourite artists, has a song called Desire (from the album Dig) which in my view hits the nail right on the head:

So much desire in the world today

So much of everything you can't give it away 

You could be happy but you're feeling so bad 

About what you never have 

Because you can't look at nothing without wanting it 

And you know that's the truth

There's always some scene you think you got to break into

Or a new sensation to intoxicate you 

Ain't it a drag 

Staring through the glass at something doesn't touch you really 

Or bring you laughter or roses or stroke your hair so tenderly

Desire 

Stealing you away from me

Desire 

You're living in a dream 

Desire

Is getting the best of you

Or, in the words of David Bentley Hart:

Contrary to the frequent but unreflective characterization of the ethos of the market as simple ‘materialism,’ modern consumer culture subsists most essentially upon the etherialization of desire, a diversion from the concrete to the symbolic.

(Hart, David Bentley. The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. William B Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004, p436)

And it is this diversion from the concrete to the symbolic (that I need an Blackberry, not because of its functionality, but because its a cool Blackberry) that leads to a perverse kind of idealism that destroys the fabric of its own reality — that eats itself like a cancer. The kids on the street have not realised that the carpet warehouse burned down in Croydon contributes to the economy that provides them with (stolen) Blackberries. But this is no mere misunderstanding of economics, it is a deep deception flourishing in an ideology that has promoted the lie that desire can be satisfied by symbols, rather like telling the man dying of hunger to imagine a great meal. Unless there is genuine satisfaction for the innate human desire for meaning in this puzzling world, we are, sadly, destined for many more nights of unrest, and the unravelling of this fragile ‘economy’.

Post-Materialism?
It was not so long ago that objects or commodities were valued because of their intrinsic worth: flour had value because you could use it to make bread; a coat had value because it could keep you warm. A shift occurred as objects began to have a perceived value beyond their immediate worth: objects with specific beauty or uniqueness were collected, bartered or exchanged for what they represented in the way of value. The third and final shift in the ‘market’ was a move away from even the perceived exchange value of an object towards the ethos or ideal that that object represented. It is this final shift towards an ephemeral mirage that the market would have us embrace, for in doing so we embark on an insatiable lust for ‘things’ that are incapable of fulfilling the desire they create: our acquisition of ‘things’ becomes a daily sacrifice to the market-god, yet the more we sacrifice, the more we fuel his appetite and the less he is appeased. The looter who desecrates her own community is to be pitied, for she is trapped into making eternal sacrifice to an idol who is never satisfied, an idol that will eventually claim her life.

All this to say that we live in a society where positive values such as commitment to family and community have been traded for the worship of insatiable desire. Where, to put in bluntly, designer jeans are valued more than human life. Is it any wonder we are reaping the consequences? ‘Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.’

If you want to win your life...
So what will help us to move forward? In recent weeks I have been considering those paradoxical words of Jesus: ‘If you want to win your life, you must lose it.’ It is, sadly, a lesson that many of the misguided kids who looted shops last week will learn to their cost. A moment of ‘life-winning’ rabid self-centred opportunistic madness, fuelled by the heat of crowd passion, has landed many behind bars, and left many parents distraught and heartbroken. But how should we interpret these words of Jesus?
Often within Christian thought there is a strong emphasis on the denial of self, of ‘taking up one’s cross’, and for many years I thought that Jesus was primarily arguing for self-denial bordering on self-flagellation — a call to suppress ‘the flesh’ and its deadly appetites. And suppression of the ‘flesh’ can all too easily slip into a rejection of human society. But now I view these words more as a positive call to connection with others — to recognise, with Donne, that I am not an island psyche but that I am an integral and interconnected member of the wider human family. Again, in Christian though this connectedness has often emphasised the connection with the Christian family (‘discerning the body’) at the expense of connection with the wider human family, all of whom (at least according to my bible) are made in the image of God. And so this week I found myself connected in a profound way with my Muslim brother calling for peace on the streets of Birmingham.

So what can we do practically? For me, the key lies in yet more often-misunderstood words of Jesus: ‘Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’ (1 John 2:15) So often these words have resulted in a rejection of physical reality or human society, forgetting that ‘God so loved the world…’. Instead, we must understand these words as a call not to love the values or the ways of the world — particularly the promotion of self at the expense of others, and the embrace of ‘desire’. So I want to try not to sacrifice to the god of desire: not to automatically go for the next mobile phone upgrade, nor yearn for a foreign holiday. But, more positively, I want to be free to give what little I have to others, to serve the community in my village as best I can, to give to my family, and to live knowing that every human brother or sister that I meet is made in the image of God — to express love for all of the human family to which I am connected.

Perhaps if enough of us choose to reject desire and embrace others, our society will be healed.

The prism in the prison: a short tour of reality

2011-07-18T21:58:00.004+01:00

I feel like apologising for a rather long article, but on the basis that this blog is supposed to be documenting a spiritual journey, I thought I’d include it. Hope it's encouraging. So here goes...

The great divorce

The effect of the Fall — however one conceives that primordial divorce of humankind from the divine — was to close us off from eternity: we were exiled from the Garden of Eden. (6) At first sight it might seem as though we were sent out into an eternal night, a limitless expanse of time and space — exiled wanderers, banished for ever from the ‘island’ Garden, now guarded by angelic sentinels. (The picture that comes to mind is that of an impoverished local populace excluded from some a lavish health resort built by a foreign investor.) This picture though, in many senses, reverses reality, for is it not the Garden that is the threshold of eternity, and the ‘exterior’ that is bounded?
The ultimate boundary, the threshold, if you like, of the carceral realm in which we live, is death. Space and time may well stretch beyond the horizons of infinity, but for fallen mortals this is of little comfort if the end of our travels, the destination of the journey, is oblivion. The irony is that The Fall was an attempt to become god-like; a sudden dash for freedom — to flee from the ‘tyranny’ of subservience to God. Ironic because we exchanged an infinite divine horizon for a finite one, and found ourselves trapped in what philosophers optimistically call ‘totality’, an immanent sphere divorced from the transcendent. (SEE NOTE 1)

 Outside eternity?
So in this strange land in which we live, we find ourselves ‘outside’ eternity, in a ‘totality’ that is bounded. The ultimate boundary is death, and yet within this ultimate horizon are many concentric circles of binding power, thresholds guarded by lesser powers, each anxious to maintain rule in their small corner of totality. The individual’s desire to be free of subservience to God is a decision of antagonism — rebellion against the power of the Other — a demand for autonomy, for control. It is to become the sentinel of one’s own small ‘garden’, a defiant stance against those — human or divine — who would dare to challenge the right to self-rule. And from this single seed, empire grows: systems of control and coercion necessary to protect from the incursion of ‘others’ and to maintain power. Here we must agree with Nietzsche for whom the ‘will to power’ was the driving force behind reality. So rather than being exiled from a ‘garden’ within totality, humankind is cursed to wander in a totality that is itself cut off from transcendent reality — a quarantined, bounded reality from which there is no escape. It is no wonder that pessimists like Schopenhauer viewed reality as a ‘pimple floating on a sea of cosmic puss’.

 The arc of the incarnation and the circle of violence

Against this backdrop of bounded darkness — the prison of existence — there was a sudden, blinding flash of lightning, for such was the incarnation. (2) The incarnate Christ made his home within this totality, but refused to obey its rules — refused to bow to the tyranny of control. There are some who suggest that, as part of the rescue package, God invented the cross — a subversive plan by him to somehow placate his own just nature and break the circle of violence. But can violence ever be overcome by violence? To suggest that God planned the cross is to suggest that God is the source of evil. The cross must surely be viewed only as a tool of empire: an invention to subdue dissenters in the most horrific way. Thus it would be false to suggest that in some way the resurrection validated the cross, or that somehow it was the ‘consummation’ of the sacrifice. The resurrection did the opposite: it invalidated the cross and all that it stood for, and supremely validated the crucified. (3) Furthermore, the presence of the crucified standing peacefully on the other side of the ultimate ‘control circle’, death, illustrated the comprehensive shattering of what was until then the ultimate barrier, the ultimate horror.

 The empire cannot strike back

This lightning-strike of the eternal Son shattered the power of empire so completely that it will never recover. Thus Paul talks about Jesus having ‘disarmed the principalities and powers’ (Col.2:15). The disarming was really a decisive, irreversible puncturing of the boundary of totality, opening it up once again to commerce with the transcendent, the divine, and throwing the border controls into disarray. The power of the incarnation, and the efficacy of the passion of Christ, lies not. therefore, in the appeasement of an offended deity, but the offending, ridiculing and disarming of lesser controlling powers.

Laser love?
It is pertinent to note the substance, trajectory and scope of the lighting-strike. The substance — the stance, if you like — of the Logos was supremely self-effacing. Again and again scripture affirms the servant nature of the divine: a humble birth, a servant life, but most supremely the refusal to wield power for selfish ends, ‘even unto death — death on a cross’. It is a trajectory nevertheless of decisive intervention, a unilateral emancipatory act. It arced from heaven to the deepest hell (4) — no territory is now out of the jurisdiction of the Logos. As John succinctly put it: ‘the light has shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ An obvious statement, perhaps: does not light always overcome darkness? John makes this statement, I believe, not because of the dimness of the light — for surely it was the brightest arc of lightning ever to fall from heaven to earth — but to encourage people to look. Those who want to find the rupture — the doorway from death to life — will find it if they have eyes to see, if they choose to turn away from the guardianship of their own selfish empires.
Through this rift in totality, eternal light is pouring in, and it shines on the prism of the incarnation. This is no single-wavelength, mono-chromatic laser that will only touch a point on the margins; this is a fierce whiteness which is prismated into a rainbow of shards that pierce the darkness in every sphere, every direction. It is the light of affirmation: the Father speaks to the Son and says, “this is my Son in whom I am well pleased”. Totality is no longer subject to the boundaries of darkness.

An open door

To become a Christian — a follower of Christ — has therefore very little to do with believing the right things, or saying the right creeds. It is a choice to walk through the door of death towards life, and this is the ultimate paradox of faith — that it is in laying down one’s life and choosing to follow the way of the cross (which means renouncing the ways of empire) that life is won.

Walking out of prison

I finish this meditation by considering the story of Peter’s escape from prison in Acts chapter 12. We read that prior to this incident the church was praying for Peter’s release, and inasmuch as the church today is praying for release (in whatever sense that is understood), Peter may be seen as a picture of a bound church, chained between Roman soldiers (agents of empire), and incarcerated in an inner cell, far from the light of day. Yet God answers: in a dramatic re-enactment of the arc of incarnation, light coruscates in the cell, and Peter - in a trance-like state — is led by a divine messenger towards the city. Here he wakes, knowing in his heart that God has truly freed him from the tyranny of empire and certain death. Yet soon he finds himself knocking on a small wooden door at the threshold of a praying church: ‘You must be mad’, is the response of the fervent intercessors to the servant girl who would open the door, ‘it must be his angel.’ This little wooden door is primarily kept closed, therefore, by unbelief. (5)

I close with a quotation from Revelation (3:8): ‘See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength…’. 

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that — like George MacDonald (see my last blog) — we are facing an ‘Apollyon of unbelief’ in these dark days. There is an avalanche of criticism from an ‘enlightened’ world which is, of course, to be expected, but more worryingly there is strange species of unbelief growing amongst believers. I will save comments on this subject for another day, but in the meantime I would like to remind you there truly is an open door before you that no man can shut. The transcendent realm is not illusory, however much the fallen powers in the ‘totality’ would have us believe the contrary. It is because these powers are being shaken that the pressure is on. 

‘So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.’ (Heb.10:35)

NOTES

(1) To speak of ‘totality’ as if was a bounded physical space would, of course, be naive. The concept of ‘divorce’ is perhaps more helpful in that what we are considering here is primarily a moral rift between two parties.
(2) The symbolism of light is a recurring theme. John describes the fundamental mission of Christ to be one of revealing the God ‘in whom there is no darkness’ (1 John 1), and the incarnation is seen as Christ revealing that light in a dark world: ‘the people living in darkness have seen a great light.’ (Matt.4:16) We also, if we claim to follow Jesus, are called to shine in a dark world. (Matt.5:14)
(3) Obviously there are many scriptures where ‘the cross’ is referred to in very positive terms as being used by God as part of his plan of salvation. I am not disputing for one moment God’s ability to use even such a horrific means of torture for his own ends, but we must be careful on three counts: firstly, to suggest that the cross was ‘invented’ by God is to make God the author of evil. Secondly, we need to note that the NT term ‘the cross’ is often used as a shorthand for the whole ‘package’ — the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Thirdly, for example when Jesus challenged us to ‘take up our cross’, the term is clearly being used to denote a life of submission and servanthood. The idea that the cross is a human invention which God ultimately rejects in favour of the crucified is perhaps best illustrated by Acts 5:30,31 — ‘The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Saviour, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.
(4) On the universal scope of Christ’s territorial claims, see Ephesians 4:8-10 and 1 Peter 3:18-20. This is echoed in the Apostle’s Creed which talks of Jesus having ‘descended into hell’ or ‘descended to the dead.’
(5) See Pierre Cranga, Quelqu’un a-t-il soif?, Editions J.F. Oberlin, Mâcon, 1996.
(6) To force the myth of the Fall into literality is, is my view, to do it damage and to rob a rich metaphor of much truth. Whilst ‘Adam’ may be used to refer to an individual (the father of Seth), the Hebrew ’adam speaks of humanity in the collective sense, and Adam and Eve are ‘types’ which speak of the relationality of humankind rather than any individual couple, or indeed as speaking of the ideal state of marriage. (See G. O’Collins, Salvation For All, Oxford University Press, 2008 and H. Seebass in Colin Brown (Ed.), Dictionary of New Testament Theology, (Vol.I, p84), Zondervan, 1986.) It is through relationship in its widest sense that we find identity. (See for example A.I. McFayden, The Call to Personhood, Cambridge University Press 1990.)

Hard Times

2011-07-07T12:07:00.000+01:00

It’s a pretty tough time in the UK at the moment. People are feeling the financial pressures, businesses are squeezed. I often feel discouraged — as I’m sure you do — when you have to watch every penny and tighten your belt. This morning I started to write a song called ‘Summertime’, the first verse goes like this:

   Summertime and the living ain’t easy
   Fish aren’t jumping, and the cotton is dry
   Africa is burning and thirsty
   And her fever is running high

It’s at times like these that we face difficult choices: do we bow to pressure, bury our dreams for another day, and go into survival mode, or do we hold our course — pursue those things that we feel called to do?

It’s a difficult question. I’m a firm believer in common sense. Too many Christians, so it seems to me, make the most strange (some might even say foolish) decisions based on whims and fancies without taking into account any practical factors. Surely God expects us to be sensible? There is a fine line between faith and presumption: blaming God for patently poor decisions seems a bit rich.
On the other hand, are we not called to a walk of faith? The danger is that we become so fixated upon immediate practicalities that we fail to see the bigger picture, fail to hear the prompting of God (which, to borrow a phrase from Boris Pasternak, is often no louder than a heartbeat), and become merely reactive to circumstances.

This week I read a piece of advice given by George MacDonald in a letter to his son in 1879. The MacDonald family had just suffered the loss of two of their beloved children, and George was asking himself whether his own failures or presumptions had contributed to their deaths. He confessed to facing ‘an Apollyon of unbelief', yet he gave this advice to his son:

Take care, my boy, lest you should ever lend ear to the advice of any with whom 'prudence', so-called, is the first thing.

Yes, we must be wise and make practical decisions, but sometimes — at least if we claim to be followers of Jesus — we have to walk into the unknown, trusting that he really is leading us. Would slavery have been abolished if Wilberforce had listened to the voice of prudence? Would England have experienced spiritual renewal if Wesley had listened to the voice of prudence?

In a few months I am starting PhD studies at King’s College in London. Prudence tells me to give up — that finances are insufficient, that London is too far away, that I’m too old, and so on. My heart tells me that this is a call on my life I must follow. Two things encourage me to go on. Firstly, I’m a firm believer that true hearts will be led into truth — if you or I are genuinely attempting to follow Jesus, I sure he’s capable of leading us in the right direction. Secondly, as has been pointed out, people on their deathbed do not moan with regret about not having spent more time at the office: most regret not having taking enough risks. So, with a mixture of excitement and fear, I am taking a big risk.

I hope that in these hard times God will be with you on your journey as you trust your decisions to him.

God's truth police

2011-05-06T08:19:00.001+01:00

Rob Bell’s book Love Wins has provoked a predictable (and somewhat tiresome) debate among Christians, with accusations of universalism, heresy, and the erosion of truth taking centre stage. (The idea that God might be nice seems to be a shock for many.) As I read the vitriolic comments it appears to me that a central issue remains unaddressed, and it concerns the heart of Christianity — truth.

Joni Mitchell, in a rare moment of optimism back in 1969, sang: ‘We are stardust, we are golden,’ adding the disclaimer (which must have sounded somewhat hollow in the light of Vietnam) — ‘but we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.’ The problem is that there is no father with whom to walk in the cool of the day in the garden of nihilism, instead we find pessimists like Schopenhauer who pat you on the head and say: ‘There, there. Life is but a pimple on a sea of cosmic puss.’ Hardly the stuff that dreams are made of. But I’m not here to critique nihilism: of more concern to me is the presence of an impostor walking in the Christian garden, claiming to be God. (He is not alone: it seems to me that philosophical pessimists and divine impostors seem, with perverse delight, to enjoy each other’s company and are walking with temerity in the garden with most believers seemingly unaware of the irony.)

Who left the door of the garden open?

This question — simple though it sounds — strikes at the core of the problem: it assumes a walled garden, or (speaking plainly) it assumes truth is bounded, settled, verifiable — a law that has passed onto the statute book. It is the naive act of encircling a very finite portion of the infinite and calling it ‘truth’ — ‘forgetting (as George MacDonald reminded us) that the more perfect a theory about the infinite, the surer it is to be wrong.’ In the act of reducing truth to mere dogma, I fear that we have excluded God from his own garden, and opened the door to impostors.

How is this possible? Two brief comments: first, concerning the myth that Christianity concerns what you believe as if — on entry to heaven — angels are standing there with clipboards to verify orthodoxy. (‘Did you believe in (a) infant baptism, or (b) adult baptism, or (c) the irrelevancy of baptism?’ Tick.) Is not the question more likely to be ‘are you a friend of Jesus?’ The response ‘I never knew you’ seems likely for many with a contractual approach to faith, who demand their ‘rights’ as Christians and constantly remind God of his promises and, yes, who feel it their duty to be God’s truth police forgetting that humility and servanthood are evidence of a true heart, not doctrinal purity.

Which brings me to my second point. It seems we live in an age when Christians have forgotten that ‘Christian’ means following Jesus (not believing in him — even demons do that), and just as Jesus is never static, so Christianity is a movement not a monument (after all, the first Christians were known as those who followed The Way). Have we forgotten that he is also the Truth? The problem is this: as soon as orthodoxy is defined in terms of circumscribed reductions of truth (however plausible), those who subscribe to this emasculated fragment of infinity feel it their duty to defend it. And W.H. Auden rightly observed: ‘those who believe it can be a duty to die for the truth can come all too easily to believe that it is also a duty to kill for it.’ Thus our peaceful faith is filled with those whose ‘teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords’ (Psalm 57).

Such ‘truth’, instead of being a prism for infinite beauty, becomes a prison, a bounded assertion, a walled garden where only thorns and briars grow, guarded not by edenic angels, but by god’s self-appointed truth police. The problem is, this god has a small ‘g’ and the police have forgotten there is back door.

Reading the Bible again

2011-01-05T12:32:00.000Z

Nick Clegg, according to the Daily Mail, is a devious politician who has thrown away his principles in favour of power and personal aggrandisement. Is this true? Thousands of Daily Mail readers no doubt view this as as indisputable fact, but surely there must be more to this than meets the eye? As someone who, for better or for worse, chose to take his party into a coalition with previous political enemies, there must be deeper issues here; Clegg is no doubt having to walk a very difficult tightrope, balancing principles against the fact that he is the leader of a minority within this fragile coalition. I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt — that deep down he has the interests of the nation at heart. This simple example shows us how we are so easily swayed by words that are in print — accepting them as truth simply because someone has decided they are worth printing. Even though we know that media barons print stories simply to sell papers, and journalists are not the most truthful of people, still we are deeply affected by what we see in print.
So what is truth? This simple question has had philosophers puzzled for centuries. Take the simple statement ‘water is wet’. No-one would dispute the truth of this statement, until perhaps we note that ‘wetness’ is defined as ‘soaked, covered or dampened with water’. The circularity of the statement reduces it to triviality. Linguistics and semantics play with truth like light on water — shimmering and reflecting. Yes, we can see the flow of the river, but defining the surface is always hard.
There are clearly different levels of truth. There is mere verifiable fact, but there is also allegorical truth and myth, both the latter revealing truth using facts that are demonstrably false. If I said ‘I am dying of thirst’, you would probably buy me a drink, not rush me to hospital. We intuitively make these semantic judgements without thinking about them — in fact I would argue that our perception of reality is predominantly based on intuiting unverifiable truth. A sweeping statement, I know, but when we think of how much we consider as ‘true’ simply because someone else has told us it is true (second-hand truth) or because the facts seem to point in that direction, the foundation of truth is perhaps more flimsy that we realise. It is not merely religious people who live by faith.
I heard a phrase recently which, in my view, has a lot of truth in it — it concerns the nature of myth: ‘Myth never speaks of how things were; it speaks of how things will always be.’ Fairy stories are a prime example: I’m pretty sure there never was a girl called Cinderella who went to a ball, but I am sure that princesses invariably fall in love with princes. And when you watch a film like The Lord of the Rings, you know that it is not true, but it certainly reveals truth: selfish avarice does lead to self-destruction; when people set aside their tribal differences and fight together for justice, they will win, and so on.
It bothers me, therefore, when I hear people say that the Bible is ‘infallible’ or ‘inerrant’, or that it is ‘the Word of God’ (normally with capital letters). The implication being that it is ‘the truth’ in a very literal sense. Without going into detail here, this is a position accepted by many — a received second-hand truth — which has very shaky foundations. The book itself has many contradictions (there are two conflicting creation accounts in Genesis, for example), and we have to face the fact that we are reading in translation a text that is based on often conflicting or composite sources, written by people who (more often than not) wanted to make particular political points. The Nick Cleggs of antiquity. In fact the issue of biblical inerrancy didn’t really become an issue until the 1600’s when rationalism began to assert itself, and the phrase ‘the inerrant Word of God’ was not common currency until the 19th century — a reaction (as was the concept of papal infallibility, 1870) to the undermining influences of rationalism.
Does this diminish the authenticity or position of the Bible? This is a question that has been troubling me recently: how should I approach this strange library of books? I would like to give just two viewpoints here — things to think about rather than an exhaustive answer. The first concerns poetry.
As a poet myself — a lyricist and author — I am a wordsmith. I use words creatively to evoke feelings, to speak of ineffable things (things that cannot be expressed in words) — a concept which is itself an oxymoron. This is something that has been understood for years, and was particularly articulated by Augustine who suggested all our words about God are at best allegorical. Words can only point towards truth, towards perceived reality, rather that express it directly. Let me give one example. I am in the middle of writing an historical novel, and the arch villain is Herod the Great. In one particular, purely fictive, scene, Herod drowns one of his nephews, a potential political rival, by staging a swimming pool ‘accident’. Some months after writing this scene I was doing further research, and discovered that Herod had a particular liking for water which included the construction of bathing pools. Add to this the fact that he murdered nine of his close relatives, and my fictitious scene appeared much closer to reality that I had realised. It is not factually true, but speaks of truth. It seems to me that much of the Bible is written in a similar vein. Forcing the Bible to be ‘inerrant’ in the sense of conformity to factual truth is to diminish its power to speak to us.
The point of this article is to give you a few things to think about — a few pointers which might lead to further reading and by no means an exhaustive review — but let’s consider some issues being discussed by biblical critics. How might these affect our appreciation of, or our approach to, the book? Most scholars agree that Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible; that many of the historical books are compilations based on previous sources, edited by people hundreds of years after the events described, people with political bias; that some historical accounts are contradictory (compare, for example, 1 Kings 15 with 2 Chron.13); that many of the words of Jesus are retrospectively woven into the narrative to make a particular point; that the book of Daniel was written after the events it claims to predict; that Isaiah was written by two authors; that the ‘suffering servant’ passage in second Isaiah (Is.53) does not refer to Jesus but to a contemporary of the author, and possibly refers to the nation of Israel; that Jesus was born on or before 10BC (the year that Herod the Great died); that authorial bias and prejudice regularly surfaces (consider for example Paul’s writing about women); that cultural issues can completely mask underlying truth (for example Jesus’ reference to seeing Philip under the fig tree), and so on.
These are serious issues for anyone who respects and values the Bible, so how do we approach it? For me, three issues stand out. The first is that despite its chequered history and flawed authors, and its cavalier approach to history, it is remarkably coherent. It is extraordinary that a library of sixty-six books, written by culturally diverse authors over a period of thousands of years, can cross-reference with so much detailed accuracy. How else could we explain the crucifixion Psalm (22), than by understanding it to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit? Or indeed the ‘suffering servant’ passage? There seems to be much more than mere poetic expression going on here.
Secondly, although the Bible is full of factual error (for example the size of Israel’s armies is routinely exaggerated), it is remarkably true to life — to the human condition — speaking with ruthless candour about sex, money and power with an authoritative voice that makes us sit up and take notice, even here in the 21st century. If it speaks so accurately about the human condition, should we not take seriously its assertions about spiritual reality?
Finally, with the understanding that the creation story, and many others, are myths, I find myself free to discern the truth that the author — in my view undoubtably inspired by God — wanted me to know. The truth that this little green planet is not a one-in-a-million chance of fortune, but an environment willed into being by God. That we live our lives in exile, East of Eden, longing for home. That even as the world began, plans were in place to deal with the root of human depravity, that as sure as the sun rises, one day a redeemer would come to lead us back home.
To conclude: I am no expert in biblical criticism, but nevertheless these issues touch me. Anyone with even half a brain must realise that there are questions to be asked concerning the Bible, and issues to be faced. Pat answers, or simply asserting biblical inerrancy, will not make the problems go away. Furthermore, if we who believe that the Bible is special are naive in the way we approach it, and are fearful of facing up to perfectly legitimate questions, we will inadvertently repel those who are seeking truth and life in Christianity. Perhaps its time to begin reading the Bible again?

The measurement principle

2010-11-03T12:28:00.002Z

One of the first things I learned as a physicist was the Measurement Principle. Roughly speaking (and it will have to be rough because I was never much of a physicist), it states that you can’t measure anything accurately because the measuring process will inevitably affect the thing you are measuring. If you measure a small child with a ruler, for example, the heat of your hands will expand the ruler, and holding the ruler against the small child will make it jump, and so on. Even if you replace the small child with, say, a piece of wood, the process of measurement will have an effect. Now I agree the effect is minimal and probably would not affect your shelf-building project or the purchase of new shoes, but in the case of sub-atomic particles the effect is more drastic. Instead of using rulers you have to use underground particle accelerators and such things which explode apart the thing you want to measure and (if I’ve understood correctly) you then measure the resulting debris with rulers. Thankfully it is a technique we do not have to use on small children.

This principle also applies to social interaction: whenever you and I interact we are both changed, for better or for worse. As John Donne said, no man is an island — we affect, and are affected by, the lives of others: as they ‘measure’ us, and we them; interpersonal forces connect us and we are changed. The most powerful force in the universe is love. Its nemesis, hate, is also strong, but even hate cannot survive the presence of love, for love is the ultimate victor, the conqueror of all. So I pray daily for the force of love to permeate me, to intoxicate me with her perfume.

As created human ‘particles’, made in the image of God, we have been given a trajectory of life that will end in collision. We have been spun into being by the vortex of love, and are now being drawn inexorably back towards the creator’s heart — a heart which burns with such bright nuclear love that ours in comparison is but a small candle. Yet human lay intelligence dares to hold out a ruler to try and measure God; it is the folly of a mad physicist, shining a weak torch into space at noon, and saying ‘I can’t see the stars’.

The true picture is this: God is holding out his hand to measure us as the trajectory of life brings us daily closer to him. The standard he holds is Love, and it burns with unquenched passion and power. And here the Measurement Principle also applies. As God’s love approaches us, we are changed, we are affected, we are transformed. Here on this earth it seems that God’s love is seen in the penumbra of reality; the glow of the moon, the silver reflection of unseen gold. One day we will see him face to face. For those who have already chosen the embrace of love, the ultimate Embrace will confirm like nature; it will be the embrace of passionate consummation. For those who have chosen darkness, selfishness and hatred, the fire of God’s love will still burn, but for them it will be a dangerous embrace of destruction, at least for the temporary shelters they have called home, leaving them naked and newborn on the shore of eternity.

I pray that God will begin to measure me now, that I might be changed and prepared for the ultimate collision with reality. And in the meantime, that this musician’s journey will, like the moon, reflect the light of the sun of love.

Magic mushrooms

2010-10-13T09:26:00.003+01:00

Yelly has just completed a two-day mushroom-hunting and identification course as a result of which I found myself (with some hesitation) eating various dubious-looking funghi. ‘It’s quite OK,' she told me, with what sounded like confidence (after all, she had done a two-day course), ‘only about twelve species of English mushrooms can kill you.’ One of these, apparently, you can munch on quite happily saying things like: ‘Mmmm — what a lovely delicate flavour!’ and such, and then two days later you die abruptly of kidney failure.

‘Mmmm — what a lovely delicate flavour!’ I found myself saying, as we both explored the taste of the latest offering, much as one would ponder on the delights of a fine wine. It crossed my mind that in the interest of business success perhaps we should have tasted at two-day intervals.

‘Here — try this,’ she said, offering me a fried Puff Ball, a fungus that is so-named because (a) it is round and (b) puffs spores into the air. As I was reluctantly chewing this she said: ‘They’re only poisonous when the flesh begins to turn brown inside — this one looked fine!’ It might be an overstatement to say that my life flashed before me as she spoke those words, but a few pertinent thoughts did cross my mind. Firstly, it did look rather brown inside: this, I was assured, was because it had been fried. The second thought was this: how can you tell when a mushroom is beginning to turn brown? I mean, how can you tell what it’s thinking? And how far into this process does the poison become fatal? And lastly, I wondered for a few terrible seconds whether I had married the Hannibal Lecter of the culinary world and what view the insurance company might take on the matter.

It’s been a few days now. I’m still on the planet as far as I can tell.

As you might guess, this has got me thinking, particular in the light of recent blogs about religious diet. You see, I feel that during the course of my Christian experience I’ve been eating too many tasteless shrink-wrapped supermarket mushrooms. (Didn’t they taste better when they were grown in horse manure, or did I imagine that?) It’s just that I didn’t want to live too dangerously and accidentally believe some appalling heresy, but perhaps more insidiously — I lived near a spiritual supermarket that only sold one variety of mushroom. Christianity had become a convenience store.

To get to the point, it is my considered opinion that health and safety regulations (which are the subject of a rather provocative blog which as yet I have not had the courage to post) have so conditioned us to avoid danger that we are missing out on much of what God has to offer. Yes, there are twelve deadly mushrooms in the UK, but that leaves about three thousand nine hundred and eighty eight that are edible. OK, they might taste revolting, and even make you ill, but they can’t kill you.

We might stay alive eating the bland supermarket mushrooms, but we’ll miss out on some wonderful tastes if we restrict ourselves to these offerings that are so safe. Theologically speaking, I’ve even come across some wonderful magic mushrooms in the last few months which, contrary to popular opinion, do not distort reality, but rather enhance vision.

The edge of darkness

2010-10-11T21:09:00.000+01:00

As a physicist (though I confess a poor one) I conceive of God’s creative act as that of an explosive sun. God exploded us into existence, gave birth to us, and we orbit around him like the rings of Saturn, cosmic dust. But in his desire for children rather than angels, the centrifugal forces of his love spun us outwards to the edges of his gravitational influence, to the cusp of oblivion. Here, at the fragile discontinuity between light and darkness, a small force from our own weak will can take us beyond escape velocity into outer darkness, or on a trajectory back towards his heart. The choice is ours. The centrifugal force of God's dangerous creativity is balanced, on a knife edge, with the centripetal force of his inexorable gravitational love.
It is a choice between the darkness of independence, a slide towards the frozen inertness of absolute zero, or to be consumed in the embrace of nuclear love. I have made my choice.

Green Bell

2010-10-06T08:39:00.003+01:00

I grew up in the south of England and went to my parents’ Baptist Church. You could say I was a southern Baptist. I grew up, therefore, thinking that I was a miserable sinner destined for hell; that God was pretty angry with me, but thankfully Jesus had stepped in between me and God to sort things out. Don’t get me wrong here: the church was full of wonderful people who knew deep down that God was love, and I have a deep respect for my old friends and for the heritage from those years. I suppose the problem for me was that what I saw in the love and dedication of my early friends didn't seem to correspond with the theology that was being preached.

In my childhood, therefore, I was anxious to please God — perhaps even to placate him. I often asked myself the question: ‘Can I do that?’ — a question which meant both am I able to do that, and do I have permission to do that. I always questioned my ability to do anything. After all, I was a miserable sinner incapable of doing anything right. And as for permission: clearly God had the veto on most decisions, and because British Standard Evangelicalism was pretty clear about behavioural norms, in most cases the answer was a firm ‘no’. In my early years I therefore developed a pretty negative view of life, and was inadvertently (to use a phrase coined by Francis Schaeffer’s son Frankie) ‘addicted to mediocrity’. I gave up on most big projects before I’d even started, was convinced I was fairly stupid, and avoided big challenges, assured as I was of certain failure.

I live now in an entirely different place — Ravenstonedale in the beautiful Upper Eden Valley near England’s Lake District. We are surrounded by fells, dales and becks (as we call the hills, valleys and streams in this part of the world). The nearest fell behind our house is called Green Bell: it rises to 605 metres (that’s just under 2,000 feet for you old fashioned people and Americans). In the five years we’ve lived in the area I’ve never climbed it. Until Monday, that is.

On Monday I started work in my study as usual. For the last two weeks I’ve been writing a lot, pretty much non stop, so when I sat down on Monday morning my bum said to me (if you’ll excuse the image of a talking bum): ‘You’re not sitting on me again for another day! — you need to get out more!’ And as it was a nice day, the thought came into my head — why not walk up Green Bell?
So I asked myself the familiar question: Can I do that? Am I able? Do I have permission? In my childhood, the immediate answer to both latter questions might well have been ‘no’, but not now. Yes, it’s a steep climb and a long walk (I ended up walking eight miles or so), but I can do it — I’m not dead yet! In fact I’m reasonably fit. And yes, it is Monday and I’ve got work to do, but why not?

That walk up Green Bell on Monday, giving me exhilarating views of the Howgill Fells and a perspective on my village I had never before seen (a lesson in itself) was a strong metaphor for my changed attitude to life. I no longer ask ‘Can I do that?’. Now my question is: ‘Why should’t I do that?’

Intellectualism

2010-10-05T14:04:00.001+01:00

Following on from my last post about 'isms', let's have a closer look at intellectualism.

Recently I was at a meeting where the gifted speaker mentioned in passing that in the West we are far too intellectual. The eastern mind, he suggested, was more open and appropriate to ‘real’ Christianity; intuitive, imaginative appropriation by the heart was of higher value than mere intellectual assent.
There are two issues which need uncovering here.

Firstly the erroneous idea that we can divorce our imaginative faculties from the intellectual. Just as the Greeks tried, and failed, to compartmentalise human experience — most notably by the Platonic divorce of body and soul — so we divorce imagination from reason at our peril. This was Kant’s project in the 18th century which resulted in ‘sensible’ things being treated as subordinate to the exercise of ‘pure reason’, religion being consigned to the former category. The subsequent view of religion as mere fantasy grew from these roots, as did the idea that irrationality was at the heart of it, leading to a conviction among many that religion was a bedfellow of the fairies at the bottom of the garden.

I strongly believe in the need to rediscover imaginative, experiential faith in an age where formulaic religious rote has supplanted vibrant life, but we must not throw out the baby with the bath water. The gift of reason is God’s gift to us, as is the gift of imagination, and both are needed if we are to function as whole people — people of integrity. The truth is, they are not only both needed, but are inseparable. If we become over-cerebral, true, we become dry theoreticians; but if we become over-imaginative there is the danger of developing a theology based on consciousness or personal experience, divorced from reality. It is through this error, for example, that many — in the face of the apparent triumph of evil over good — have wrongly deduced that God is a monster with no moral qualms about the destruction of innocents.

So the second issue is the implicit assertion that a theology derived from experiential consciousness is more real that anything that has been thought through. If this was true, then the east would be full of those who have discovered the truth about God and his ways. As it is, people argue like the proverbial blind men feeling elephants. It is probably ‘consciousness theology’ that Timothy had in mind when he predicted that people would ‘gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want[ed] to hear,’ and that they would ‘turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths’. Myths not based on biblical teaching or the church’s historical interpretation of the walk of faith, or even on the consensus of the believing community, but on nebulous experiential phenomena and dominant controlling teachers. The former are at the heart of so-called ‘post-modernism’ where any interpretation of psychological experience is valid in the eyes of the practitioner; the latter are those who assume that, just because they have had a particular revelation or encounter with God, all other believers should feel and behave likewise.

I agree wholeheartedly that we must be experiential and imaginative Christians, after all, Christianity is all about relationships — both with Jesus and with each other. Only boring relationships are ‘platonic’: real, vibrant, passionate relationships are sustained through imaginative encounters. So it is with faith — we definitely need imagination and passion, but we also need wisdom and rational thought. Unfortunately the tendency to dismiss the intellectual without distinguishing this from intellectualism has resulted in a generation of passionate believers who are in mortal danger of repeating the errors of their forebears and worshipping an imaginative god who bears no relation to the real one. In any other language this would be called idolatry.

The sweat shirt

2010-10-01T08:22:00.003+01:00

This piece was inspired by a discarded sweatshirt I found, glowing like an isotope on a Cumbrian fell (as we call the hills around here) in an otherwise pristine environment.

The yarn was spun from chemicals in remote China,
a factory with yellow breath - a translucent toxic spider’s thread.
In belching trucks, throbbing with voracious engines
and greasy ships
it was transported to a mean factory-owner in India
who paid few rupees, very few of which
fed the children in China.

An aging machine with lustful cacophony
spun the yarn into dull cloth that flopped and sweated
in the deft hands of a seven year old
who turned it into a curious garment
a sweat-shirt shaped, supposedly, for a western child.
At the dye-house, urinating a strange luminous stream
into the local river,
it received a lurid design, a chemical glow
almost phosphorescing in the Asian sunset.
After travels by van, train, plane
and then again, by plane, train, van
it was unpacked by a dull teenager
in the back room of a shop on a dull high street
in a dull town in Essex, releasing a faint smell of paint.
An overweight girl, sucking on sweets and chips,
aimlessly fingered garment after garment,
rail after rail, in the sale section marked ‘up to 70% off’.
Eventually drawn to its gaudy design
she paid the dull teenager a pound
without a smile, leaving a stain on the floor.
After a week, on a hot walk to the brown canal,
she threw it in the brown grass and the brown dust
where it glowed for a day
before a bent street-sweeper picked it up with hesitant fingers
and threw it into his festering hand-cart.
Two days later, among other detritus,
it lay in land-fill,
stubbornly refusing to decompose.

Where's home?

2010-09-29T15:11:00.000+01:00

The art world, like the Christian world, is full of ‘isms’. There is impressionism, realism, surrealism and so on, most of which are recognised as ‘art’. Occasionally, of course, someone like Damien Hirst or Marcel Duchamp come along — the latter exhibiting an upside-down urinal in a Paris art exhibition — who challenge our understanding of what art is. Christianity’s ‘isms’ are similarly sets of rules, beliefs, creeds, philosophies and so on that consider themselves sub-sets of the genre ‘Christianity’, and, as in the art world, some of the more orthodox ‘isms’ are considered Christian, others of the fringe are considered — like Duchamp’s urinal — somewhat suspect, or perhaps even a joke. Most ‘isms’ develop when a group of people coalesce around shared values, often with a charismatic personality at the centre and, as in the world of art, often result when someone surfaces who challenges the status quo.

Whilst some people take their art very seriously, it is generally not considered a life-and-death issue. Religion (or the lack of it), however, strikes at the core of our understanding of reality and determines how we live our lives, and therefore we like to think that we are right — that we believe the right things. The danger is that we then consider those who do not share our core beliefs wrong.

Now does this mean that you or I cannot say that — in our opinion — a certain belief is wrong? Are there such things as right and wrong beliefs? Some of you are thinking, ‘Well, of course there are. The bible makes this very clear.’ But the problem we then face is the multiplicity of conflicting ways that the bible is interpreted. In my work I have adopted the familiar slogan of the Moravian Brothers, often attributed to Augustine (but apparently not by him), which goes: ‘In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, tolerance; over all things, love,’ but this begs the question: What is essential?

So, following on from my last blog, I would like to ask: Where is your home? Where do you — as they say — hang up your hat? Where do you put your feet up and relax? Indeed, are you able to relax there, or do you feel a bit on edge at times? Who do you share your house with? What ‘ism’ are you part of?
I’ve felt on edge at times; a bit like those rabbits in Watership Down who, on their pilgrimage to find new pastures, come across a colony that has wonderful food and great burrows to live in, and yet something doesn’t feel quite right — it’s all a bit too good to be true: even food — carrots! — magically arrive on the doorstep. It turns out that the local farmer kills one of them every so often for Sunday dinner, but it’s an area they don’t want to talk about; the pretence of normality is better than facing up to the dark secret of random death. There is a lesson here which I will save for another time.
Where we live determines how we live. And now I will be a little provocative — forgive me for being blunt, but I refuse to live like a deluded rabbit. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not. Rather, we subscribe to a set of beliefs that we think make us a Christian; beliefs about God and Jesus; beliefs considered essential by some ancient hero of the faith such as Calvin, or those of a modern hero such as John Wimber; beliefs drilled into us at weekly services (which make Christianity sometimes feel like a moral exam that we never pass); beliefs about how we should live. Even if we believe the right things, does that make us a Christian? To use the analogy from my last blog: are you (or I) living in Calvinshire, Evangelicaland or Charismaville?

Now some of you are thinking: ‘Well of course I am! — you have to live somewhere don’t you? And my beliefs matter to me. I’m hungry for the truth, and I really want to live by it.’

Now, as I’ve said, where you live determines how you live. So if you live in the first of the three places mentioned (and I could have chosen a hundred more — there are 20,000 Christian denominations in North America and Canada alone) you will no doubt consider evangelism as a primary activity, and will spend a lot of time trying to convert people, preaching, or listening to preaching. If from the latter, you will no doubt consider it your duty to pray for healing and be prophetic. Don’t get me wrong, these are good things — but are we supposed to live in these places?

There is a chilling verse in Matthew (7:22) where Jesus says that many people who called him ‘Lord’ on earth — and even cast out demons (fairly high on the ‘I’m a good Christian’ scale) — are unrecognisable to him. They present their visiting cards to him after death, and he says: ‘Who are you? I don’t think we’ve met?’ The phase he uses is ‘I never knew you’. The point is this: we are not supposed to live in any ‘ism’ — Anglicanism, Catholicism, Evangelicalism, Calvinism… — but in Christ. We are not supposed to do Christianity but to be Christians. He is our rock, our refuge, our home. You may even believe in the saving grace of Jesus as evidenced in the Cross; but even this is not enough: there is a big difference between believing in the words or works of Jesus, and believing in him. Christianity is not a monument, its a movement. It’s not a fixed set of beliefs, it’s a relationship with Jesus. It’s not about following theories, however ‘biblical’ or ‘spiritual’, it’s about following Jesus, living in him, and doing what he says.

No set of beliefs, however orthodox according to your tradition or the traditions of the ‘elders’ of the Christian world, can substitute for the person who said ‘I am the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ Paul says that in him we live and move and breathe and have our being. (Acts 17:25,28) So I renounce Evangelicalism, Catholicism, Anglicanism, Calvinism, Charismatism (is that a word?), or any other ‘ism’ you care to mention, because I choose to be a Christian, to follow my Master to the best of my ability, to obey him and give my life for those around me, as he did. On the basis that his sheep know his voice, I am trusting that if I am in error he will lead me to the truth, but to be in error is not a sin.
So does this mean that I will keep silent and not speak about what I see as error? On the contrary — like Job, listening to his friends talking nonsense — there are times when someone must speak out. Let me illustrate this: I have a son that I love deeply. I do not care if you get the facts wrong about what work he is doing at the moment, or what university he went to, or what he had for breakfast. But if you said that he was evil and was doing all sorts of unspeakable things, I would speak out passionately on his behalf. Why? Because he is not like that — he is good and I love him deeply. So — for example — if your theology suggests that God only chooses some people for salvation and the rest are tossed into an everlasting torture-chamber, I will speak out against it because you are maligning the character of God. We will talk more about this in a later article (too long for a blog).

There is no life in theories and philosophies or ‘isms’ except insofar as they lead us towards the source of life: if you make your home in these places you will live with death and, therefore, smell of death. Life is only found in the author of life who said: ‘Because I live, you also will live.’ (John 14:19)
John de Jong, 28 September 2010.

Orthodoxy and Heresy

2010-09-22T14:55:00.000+01:00

To borrow an analogy from G.K. Chesterton (from Orthodoxy), I feel like the yachtsman who bravely set sail to discover new lands, but, due to navigation errors, finds himself off the coast of southern England some months later. Unaware of his mistake he bravely rows to the shore to plant the English flag and claim the new territory for the Crown. Surprisingly the natives speak English, and — to cut a long story short — he is soon enjoying some well-earned fish and chips, albeit with slight embarrassment.

And so here I am — surveying my new territory with a sense of wonder, but the realisation is dawning that it’s probably the place I left a few months ago — well, to be fair, probably many years ago. But, even if it doesn’t look so different, it certainly feels that way. Nothing seems the same as it was before, or is it me that’s changed? Maybe it’s a bit of both. Certainly I have changed — my travels in new theological lands have brought me back to this one with a new sense of perspective: things are familiar but somehow not the same — the fish and chips don’t taste quite the same as they used to. But I’m sure, equally, that I haven’t landed in the same place: the accents are different; I can’t quite put my finger on it at the moment, but there’s something that isn’t quite right — or rather, something is more right than it was before.
One thing I am sure of: I used to think that I lived in the only Christian land in the world. I knew it was a land with different counties with politically diverse town councils — most, it has to be said — at odds with each other. One county I used to hate visiting was that presided over by Calvin who was of the firm opinion (as evidenced by the parish magazine and what the local population believed) that his was the only truly Christian county, and that the rest of the population was destined to burn forever, courtesy of his loving god. It was a place that smelled of decay and premature burial. I soon left that place and travelled to places where it was easier to breathe and — quite frankly — easier enjoy a good glass of wine without being frowned on. Life — as they say, and I wholeheartedly agree — is truly too short for bad wine.
So having left these shores it was quite a shock to discover other lands most definitely Christian, but where people dressed in a peculiarly odd fashion — some wearing hardly any clothes at all. Most disconcerting. It was fun, though, to try the local equivalent of fish and chips. Can’t say that I loved the curry dumplings that we had for breakfast in Malaysia, but I would not have missed the experience for the world.
Anyway, I digress. So here I am, back on English shores beginning to rediscover where I was born. Having been away for so long, so many things look different and yet strangely familiar. The thought of going back to those stuffy churches that smelled more like the school biology lab sends a shiver down my spine, so that’s not on the agenda. If there’s one thing I’ve learned on my travels it’s that human beings were meant to breathe — and breathe deeply of God’s good, fresh air. I’ve also learned that live puppies are much more fun to play with than dead mice preserved in formaldehyde.
So as I walk around this fair isle, it’s amazing how green the grass looks, and how the air tastes like a good pint of ale after a long walk in the hills. I even gaze down with wonder at my old, ageing body (although let’s not go into details here). The point is this: things are the same, but they’re not. I look with different eyes; with the perspective of travel and the wisdom (well, I like to think so) of age.
I’m not blaming those who live in Calvinshire or Evangelicaland or — dare I say it? — Charismaville (a curious place on the edge of normality). Having lived in some of these places for a while myself I admire those who are able to survive with such tenacity on such meagre rations, and — I humbly suggest — are simply believing what they’ve been told to believe. I certainly did — in fact I was told that to question was the mark of the Antichrist, although in passing I would just like to point out that Jesus asked more questions than most. Truth (as Milton reminded us), even if it really is true, is heresy for those who have just received it as a piece of second-hand dogma without turning it over in their hands a few times before putting it in their pocket. Sadly my pockets have been filled with a lot of — how can I put this without offending those of you with a delicate nature? — that substance which Paul euphemistically called ‘rubbish’.
Returning briefly to Calvin. I’m sure he was a good man (I know that sounds a bit patronising), but I think he should have got out more, theologically speaking, for had he not insisted on such a separation between Father and Son he would have perhaps realised that both were, in essence, love, and love doesn’t torture people for ever. It’s easy to blame him — but he was only reacting to the nonsense he saw going on around him in the name of Christianity, and he has my admiration for speaking out.
But the question for us is this: are we willing to get out more? I’m aware that I can only live in today’s light, and on the daily bread that my Father gives me. Yesterday’s manna doesn’t keep, and soon begins to stink if it’s stored for too long. I suppose I’m mixing analogies here — sorry. What I mean to say is this: travelling does you a power of good, even if you end up back at home one day.