A MISHEARD TRUTH

Do you ever mishear something and think it made more sense than what was actually said? Well this happened to me when I was listening to the radio in the car and they were talking about the undergraduate students at Jesus College Oxford paying £3.90 a term to enable a young woman from Gaza to attend their college. (full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22019545)

My initial reaction was that it was good to have a story about Oxbridge (collective for Oxford and Cambridge for those outside the UK) students which wasn't about drunkenness and bad behaviour.  As both my children went to Cambridge I know they play hard but that is only one side of the story - they work exceedingly hard at the same time.

The words that caught my attention were said by the young lady from Jesus College who had set up this scheme and I thought I heard her say "We all know He is Risen" which I thought was sensible given the name of the college.  It took me a moment to realise that she said "We all know fees have risen"  which made more sense in the conversation about students giving money to help someone who wouldn't otherwise be able to join them.

However as I thought about it my initial mishearing started to make sense as well.  Jesus, when announced his ministry quoted Isaiah when he said "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor." and what is this but an example of good news to the poor?  So, in a way probably not recognised by most of the students involved, I think it is quite right to say "We all know He is Risen." for this is indeed the work of His Kingdom.

Does the Church Need Defending?

This morning this headline caught my attention and made me stop and think:

Los Angeles archdiocese pays $10m to settle abuse cases 

(Read more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21765850)

A church rightly ends up paying $10m to victims of abuse when so much good could have been done with that money?   I have no reason to doubt that  Cardinal Roger Mahony is a reasonable God fearing man who has acted out of the best of intentions so what had gone wrong?

It appears that in this case, and others, the Roman Catholic Church has put the defence of itself and its institutions before the needs of the abused and downtrodden.  At that point it would be easy to write this off as a problem with that church, to tut, and to carry on but I think there is a lesson here for all Christians.

The Church has, over the centuries, developed many organisations forms to help administer and direct its work.  Whether this is right or not is irrelevant because that is where we all are be we Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican or even Baptist.  The problem arises when we react to defend the institution over the individual and in doing so we lose sight of our original objective to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.  We do this by discouraging troublemakers and try to maintain unity at all costs in order to protect 'the church.'  An example of this is the efforts made in the Anglican church to keep everyone in the fold over the issue of women bishops; the church has got so caught up in trying not to upset some people that it is prepared to disadvantage women over a matter of justice.

Churches are, generally, good places full of people trying to do God's work but we need to be careful that it remains the way to God's Kingdom and not the Kingdom itself.

How Prayer Works

A Thought Prompted by the Book of Tobit

Fairly recently someone asked me if I read the Bible and to my answer of 'Yes' they replied 'Including the Apocrypha?'  Now they were teasing me but it did make me think about why I hadn't read it.  For those of you who don't know the Apocrypha is the bit of the Bible written between the Jewish exile and birth of Jesus which isn't in the Jewish scriptures and was removed from the Bible by the protestant reformers because it appeared have been written in Greek and not Hebrew - although they may have just disagreed with its theology.  I had owned a copy of the Bible with the Apocrypha since the early 1960's when my grandparents bought us all a copy of the brand new translation - The New English Bible - although I suspect this has had something to do with my not reading the Apocrypha as I find the NEB even harder to read than the KJV.

Having armed myself with a more readable translation and an introduction to the Apocrypha I started reading it with no clue to what I would make of it.  So far I have read Tobit and for a story about a devout man blinded by sleeping under a nest of sparrows, a woman who is haunted by a devil that has killed 7 men who married her as soon as they got into the wedding bedroom and the angel Raphael I found at least one thing that made it worth reading.  Raphael has been acting in disguise and towards the end of the story he reveals who is and says:

So now when you (Tobit) and Sarah prayed, it was I who brought and read the record of your prayer before the glory of the Lord, ... God sent me to heal you and Sarah your daughter-in-law. I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord.

(I've left part out or I'd have to include most of the preceding 11 Chapters)

What I want you to notice is that when Raphael brings their prayers before God the only thing God does is to tell Raphael to go and sort it out.  This made me wonder about how often we pray to God about situations when what we should be doing is sorting it out.  I know this isn't always the case, e.g. when praying for a sick friend, but I suspect it is true more than we would like to admit.

So there you have it, a lesson from the Apocrypha.

The Dancing Gorilla

When you go to a service in a church with a very different background to your own do you see the dancing gorilla?  Yes I know that sounds mad but let me explain.  In an experiment radiologists were asked to look for cancer cells in lung scans that had the added bonus of a picture of a dancing gorilla but 80% of radiologists and 100% of unskilled observers failed to see it. (see here for more details http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21466529)

This got me thinking how often do we only see things the way we expect them to be and how often when faced with something strange do we look at it through the lens of our experience and fail to see what is really there?  If, like me, you were brought up in a church that had plain walls you may find a church that is highly decorated with statues rather discordant and possibly idolatrous.  However to someone used to that church it helps them see God's Glory and they would wonder what type of God you worshipped if they came to your plain church. Similarly someone used to a worship band style of worship may find a liturgical service over organised and stifling whilst the person who is used to a liturgical service may find a modern service chaotic.  In both these cases instead of not liking it why not ask the people who go there why things are done that way.  The liturgical service may help remind people of God's constancy whilst the freer style of service may give room for the Holy Spirit to work. No matter what the service you may just find your preconceptions being stripped away until you see the dancing gorilla that you missed at first sight.  Of course the answer may be "I don't know, we've always done it like that." which could be the spark that church needs to start looking at itself.

So next time you go to a strange place of worship just stop and ask yourself "Where is the dancing gorilla?" you may be surprised at what is right in front of you.

New Lamps For Old

Today I saw this headline "Pope Benedict XVI posts first tweet in Latin" and it caught my attention rather more than I expected.  In one way it doesn't concern me at all as 1) I'm not a Roman Catholic and 2) I don't speak Latin but it caught my attention because I had recently been involved in a couple of on-line discussions which centred around old v new in Christianity.  Now this, unfortunately, has been going on in the Church at least as long ago as the Council of Jerusalem (50AD?) and it remains so to this day; what new thing should we be doing and what old things have passed their sell by date?

As I pondered this a verse sprang to mind:

"In the last days, God says,

    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,

    your young men will see visions,

    your old men will dream dreams."

In particular the bit about young men having visions and old men dreaming dreams seemed to be relevant. Why that way round?  Why not young men dreaming and old men of visions?  Of course young men (and women) are renowned for being full of ideas and plans as they set out on life so it is easy to see why they are people of 'vision' but where do the old men's dreams come into it?

To look at this I want to go back to the Pope Tweeting in Latin.  As I have already said this, to me, is irrelevant as I don't follow the Pope and my knowledge of Latin is limited to bits used in English and the words used in church music; not that I often know what I'm singing about.  So my first reaction was that this  is just an old man hanging onto an outdated tradition (Latin - not Tweeting) for the sake of it.  However I think I can see some reasons why preserving Latin in the Roman Catholic Church may be useful; it gives a worldwide church a common language, it encourages it's priests and bishops to wrestle with ancient texts written in Latin and, at times, it is just so much more beautiful than English.  This old man's dream of holding onto Latin may, in fact, be sensible so it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand and run over by 'progress.'

There are a lot of great things that have been handed down to today's church from our forefathers that we need to value and preserve so that they are still there to delight and enlighten future generations.  Liturgies, sacraments and music spring to mind.  There is also a lot of cultural baggage that we hang onto even though it    is no longer anything to do with the Church's mission to the world; if it ever was in the first place.  From my own experience the protestant church in the UK does, at times, appear to think that Victoria is still on the throne and not Elizabeth II.

As with so many things it is all about a question of balance and for this we need the Holy Spirit to lead us with Her wisdom.  The impetuousness of youth does, at times, need tempering by the steady voice of experience but equally the old man dreaming dreams needs to be reminded that sitting back in a comfy chair just because it's comfortable doesn't get much done either.

New lamps for old?  Sometimes.  If you have an old lamp that no longer works properly you need to replace it to shed new light on your situation.  However the story of Aladdin should warn us that sometimes an old lamp is something extremely valuable that should not be thrown away.

A Pet Hate

There are many things that I like and love about communal church worship but there is one thing that drives me mad - it's the amount of rubbish words that are spoken.  I'm not talking about the preaching but about the singing and congregational responses.  As St Paul said "So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and enquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?"

It seems to be a particular problem with modern worship songs where the lack of punctuation often results in people putting the breaks wherever they want and so making no sense of the words.

However my main gripe is with the way the Lord's Prayer is said:

Our Father who art in heaven.

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done.

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

and forgive us our sins.

as we forgive those who sin against us.

and lead us not into temptation.

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

and the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever.

Amen.

For some reason everyone speeds up at the end and makes sense of it but what on earth do we mean by "on earth as it is in heaven." or, even worse, "as we forgive those who sin against us."

Please, the church has some wonderful hymns, songs and liturgies so let's try to at least use the words properly so that they make sense to a stranger ... and us.

GOD THE FATHER

Do you ever cringe at a word or phrase in church? I know I do; I cringe at the start of the Lord’s Prayer when we say “Our Father.”

I seriously wish Jesus had said something like “our eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent Godhead” because that removes God from a messy family relationship.  Not all Christians have an easy relationship with their earthly fathers and within the church universal there are Christians who have been abused by their fathers, abandoned by their fathers or rejected by their fathers.  How do those, my brothers and sisters in Christ, feel about saying “Our Father.”? What picture does it bring up for them?

If we want to understand what Jesus meant we must understand what being a father meant in first centaury Palestine; in particular what they thought the biological relationship between a father and child.  While they would have expected a father to provide and care for his children (although, as I pointed out above, this doesn’t always happen) they would also have regarded the children as a continuation of the father.  They believed the father placed the seed in his wife and the child grew from that with no biological input from the mother!  Now this seems crazy to us today with our understanding of biology and genetics but it is part of the picture of fatherhood that would have been in the minds of Jesus’ listeners (and probably Jesus himself.)

When we look at it this way we find “Our Father” not only confirming a God who cares and provides for us but also a God who loves us so much He made us in His image!  Made us to be creative as He is creative and to be loving as He is Love.

So next time you say the Lord’s Prayer take a quick moment to reflect on the God who loves you so much He made you in His image.

Suffering 2

For a while I have been completely without an idea to write a poem (prayer/mediation may be more accurate) so when an idea popped into my head at the weekend I was pleased until I realised that I had already written that poem and even blogged it! (http://brainatthedoor.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/suffering.html)

However after a while I realised I had moved on and although the initial idea was the same there was more to say.  In this I have started with my complaint to God but moved on to the things I have learnt over the last year - I'm not saying God "spoke these words" to me but this is what I now understand; next year it could be different again.

PAIN 2

Why does it still hurt?

Over a year has past,

Life has gone on,

Things have got better.

So why does it still hurt?

Time has taken the edge,

Dulled the blow

That Breaks the heart.

So why does it still hurt?

Why, below the ebb and flow of life

Does pain still lurk?

Waiting to catch you off guard?

A photo

A person

A memory

That opens the depths

And lets the pain flood out.

With the Psalmist I cry

“How Long.”

How long must I carry this pain?

How often must I fight my anger?

How long will I wait to find peace?

“My child, You will carry this pain

Until the world finds peace.

Not an absence of war

But a peace between all people.

My Peace

That passes understanding.

Until that great and glorious day

You will carry that pain.

And it will give you wisdom.

Wisdom not to hurt others.

Wisdom to protect others from pain.

Wisdom to stand with the hurt and downtrodden.

Do not despair

For you are not on your own.

I have already carried your pain

And hung it on a cross

So that I can be with you

Each painful step of the way.”

FALLEN HEROES

I have been very lucky as the one time I have met and talked to one of my sporting heroes I found a charming modest man; Gareth Edwards.  The Welsh and British Lions scrum-half was probably the greatest rugby player of all time but he told me he was lucky to get in the Welsh team as he was only called up for Wales when his predecessor was injured.

Today some fairly damming evidence has been made public that Lance Armstrong, the 7 times Tour de France winner, was using illegal drugs to enhance not only his performance but also that of his team mates.  He is likely to be stripped of his titles and the inspiring story of the man who came back from cancer to be the greatest ever Tour de France cyclist becomes one of a common cheat.   However life isn’t that simple because this is the same Lance Armstrong who founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation which has raised more than $470 million to support, inspire and empower people affected by cancer.  On the one hand he is a man so driven to win that he will risk his and others’ health to achieve his goals and on the other we have a man who is responsible for raising hundreds of millions of dollars to help other cancer suffers.

As I write this the story all over the media here in the UK is about the late Sir Jimmy Savile being a serial sex predator; an article on the BBC News site ends: “It said the alleged victims were mainly girls who were aged between 13 and 16 at the time, and the allegations spanned four decades.”  What the truth of this may never fully be known as he isn’t alive to defend himself (unlike Lance Armstrong who has decided to not defend himself) and so only one side of the story is being told.  However, this is the same Jimmy Savile who was knighted "for charitable services" – the small matter of raising some £40 million for charity and giving his time to work as a volunteer hospital porter.

Should this surprise us that men and women who are capable of so much good are also capable of falling for temptation in such a big way?  It doesn’t surprise me because, as a Christian, I believe we are all this jumble of good and bad.  On the one hand we are made in the image of God and capable of much good but on the other we are fallen people living in a fallen world who can easily fall into temptation.  It is said the higher you climb, the harder you fall so perhaps those who push themselves to the top face greater temptation than those of us who don’t.

For me the Christian response is to say “there but for the grace of God go I” and to not join in the public demonisation of those who don’t live up to our expectations.  That in no way means I am condoning the alleged actions of Lance Armstrong and Jimmy Savile but I would like to balance that with the great works which they have done.

SWIMMING

Today I went for a swim at the gym and struggled up and down the pool for 15 minutes.

The last time I went for a swim I swam for a mile and then kept going for the fun of it.

The problem is that was 9 years ago and in the intervening period I had lost a lot of fitness and got older so what was easy then is hard work now.

The other odd thing about my swimming now is that I mainly do a lazy breaststroke and I struggled down a length of backstroke before I wore myself out trying a length of front crawl – not helped by messing up my breathing and trying to take a breathe in with my face under water!!!  The odd thing is breaststroke was the last stroke I mastered having started by managing a width of ‘crawl’ (doggy paddle?) aged 10 and mastering backstroke a year later.  As far as I remember (and this is a long time ago) I had actually swum a width butterfly before I could manage breaststroke but now it seems to be the only way I can swim.

This strange turn of events got me thinking (always dangerous) about the way things change as we go through life; what was once easy becomes hard and what was hard becomes second nature.  That is the way life is and it would be very odd if we were the same at 50 (OK – nearer 60) as at 20.

The really odd thing is how many Christians try to remain in a teenage faith as they get older and how the church does very little to encourage Christians to grow and develop their faith.  Having spent most of my life in an evangelical church I have often wondered about the number of young Christians who drift away from the Church as they move into their late teens and early 20s and now I think I know why – the church doesn’t show them how to grow up in their faith so they leave it behind as something they have outgrown.

To prevent this happening Churches have to enable young Christians to grow into a mature faith that doesn’t rely on feelings and music but enables them to deal with doubt and disappointment.

CONFIRMATION

Last Sunday (8^th July 2012) I did something I’d never thought I’d do in the first 56 years of my life – I was confirmed in an Anglican church.  Traditionally confirmation is a service where people who have been baptised as children confirm that they have grown up and accepted that faith as their own but for me it was slightly different so I thought I’d explain why I, having been baptised in a Baptist church in my teens, thought it was right for me.

Firstly I did want to confirm my faith.  A year ago my wife and I moved church from the Baptist church I was carried into as a baby and where I met and married my wife.  You will understand that it was not an easy decision to make but a series of events had made it clear that we could not remain in communion with some of the people there.  The last few years have not been very easy for me in both physical and mental health and being forced out from my birth church had a negative impact on me.  All through this time my faith, although battered, survived and the confirmation service gave me an opportunity to affirm this in public.

Secondly my confirmation was a sign that I had committed myself to that particular part of God’s church; in this case St George The Martyr, Shirley.  This was not the first church we had attended after leaving our home church but, when attempts at reconciliation failed, both my wife and I suddenly felt this was where we were meant to be.  I cannot tell you if we will be there for a short or long time but it is the right place for us for the foreseeable future.

Finally it was also a Thank You to St Georges for making us so welcome and accepting us into membership; more people talk to me after each service than at my old church despite only having a lot less members.  Although we have not joined the choir we have sung with them at special services and they have even been brave enough to let me play guitar in the few services that have a small music group playing.

Eli, Eli, lamasabachthani?

For me living with depression is something I have had to get used to; it will always be with me.  Medication is definitely helping but the level of medication needed to eradicate the depression would also kill me as a person - I'd exist in a dulled world.  Of late I have got better at noticing the warning signs and consciously adjusting my  behaviour to prevent a crash.  However there are times when external factors jump up on me giving me no time to adjust and this happened to me the other night.  I am currently fighting off a chest infection with the aid of antibiotics and oral steroids and this and the enforced inactivity won't have helped.  However I was still surprised when I plunged into despair while trying to get to sleep and what I experienced led to the following poem.

Eli, Eli, lamasabachthani?

My God, My God, why have You deserted Me?

I cried in the dark of the night

My God, My God, why have You deserted Me?

As the thick veil of depression enshrouded me

My God, My God, why have You deserted Me?

As hope faded to nothing

And then I was silent

And in the silence a voice spoke

“I thought you’d deserted me.

In your pain and suffering I was always there

Even when the fog descended

But you let go of my hand when you lost sight of me.”

My God, My God, why have I deserted You?

Do Not Be Afraid

I was reading another blog ( http://sallysjourney.typepad.com/sallys_journey/ - well worth a visit) and the words "Do not be Afraid" jumped out at me and almost immediately gave me the form for this poem.  However it wasn't complete as I couldn't work out where the poem was going and how to get it to a conclusion.  Slowly the words sank in and I knew it was taking me to areas I'd rather avoid.

DO NOT BE AFRAID

“Do not be afraid” said the Lord

To the traveller with no land

“Do not be afraid” said the Lord

To the young mother

Cast out for having her owner's son

“Do not be afraid” said the Lord

To the young man

Threshing wheat in a winepress

So the enemies wouldn’t see him

“Do not be afraid” said the Lord

To the prophet invited to meet the despot

“Do not be afraid” said the angel in all her glory

To the startled young woman

“Do not be afraid” said the angel

In the dream of the young man

Puzzling over his beloved’s betrayal

“Do not be afraid” said the angel

To the startled shepherds on the hillside

“Do not be afraid, little flock,” said Jesus,

“for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom”

“Do not be afraid” said the angel

To the women whose love drove them to the tomb of their Lord

“Do not be afraid” said Jesus

To the women puzzled by the angel’s news

“Do not be afraid” said the Lamb in all His glory

To the disciple exiled for his faith

“Do not be afraid”

But I am

Afraid to let go

The things of this world

Afraid to let go

And trust only you

Afraid

Because my faith is weak

Lord, I believe;

Help thou mine unbelief.

The Parable of the Tree

Back in May this year I was walking through a local park when a voice told me to "Turn aside and look at that tree."  I stopped in my tracks and turned round and this is what I saw:

All the trees were in full leaf except this one.  I walked over to it to get a closer look and I noticed that there were green leaves and life in a small part of the tree:

However most of the tree showed no sign of life:

 

Since then I have looked at this tree every time I've gone that way and there has been no sign of life spreading to the bare branches.  Then, this week, I noticed it had been cut down so I went over to look at where it had been when the man watering some nearby flowerbeds said "They had to cut it down as the core was rotten."

Now I am sure this is a warning from God about the church but what in particular.  The church I was attending, any church which is rotten to the core or all the western church?  I don't know but I suspect it is more a warning to be careful about which church you attend.

The Need For Equality

This post could well be titled Greenbelt 2011 Part 2 as it is about a talk I went to at Greenbelt and the book I have just read as a result.  It was a talk I attended by accident but one that I found most worthwhile.  The accident was that I read the surname of the speaker and assumed that it was the same person I had heard the day before - but being stupid can have its advantages.

I want to start with a quotation that is in book from someone who had read an earlier edition and at the end I will tell you who it is!

"that among the richest countries, it's the more equal ones that do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator ... per capita GDP is much less significant for a country's life expectancy, crime levels, literacy and health than the size of the gap between the richest and the poorest in the population ... We all know, in our hearts, that as long as there is deep poverty living systematically side by side with great riches, we all remain the poorer for it."

The book is The Spirit Level, subtitle Why Equality is Better for Everyone, and it was written by Richard Wilkinson, who I heard speak, and Kate Pickett.  This, I have to admit, is my kind of book, a book full of graphs and the inferences that can be drawn from them; I didn't do Applied Statistics all those years ago because I didn't like it!  The main theme of the book is that once a country or state reaches a certain level of affluence it doesn't social problems such as teen pregnancy, drug addiction, crime, violence, bad health etc are not related to the level of affluence but to the distribution of the affluence within that country or state.

Reading the book 2 things kept going through my mind.  The first was how obvious the conclusions were when you saw the data and the second was that Christians shouldn't behave in the ways described for the most unequal countries.  I say shouldn't because two of the most unequal countries are the UK and USA, both of which claim, to some extent, to be Christian countries.

Have you worked out who was been quoted in the book? It was David Cameron.

This week I read 2 stories and I immediately saw that they were linked.  Not that the authors had any intention of collaborating it's just that they both wrote, in very different ways, about what happens if you take the Bible at face value.

The first story is a brief article about a woman whole lived for a year following the Bibles instruction to / about woman at face value.  You can read the article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2011/oct/06/woman-year-living-biblically


The second article was entitled "How can it be fair to say I can't be saved by God if I'm gay?" and it is written by someone with a personal experience of God in their life who just happens to be gay.  It includes this sentence "Every Sunday I walk into church to pray and receive disgusted looks from brothers and sisters." which, every time I read it makes something inside me hurt.  I hurt because it just doesn't fit with Jesus' words to us "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."  How much love is being shown to the author of the article?   She then poses the following question "Are the 12 mentions of homosexuality in the holy book due to cultural and historical mistranslations and misinterpretations?" which, for me, gets to the heart of the matter.  Which is more important following Jesus' command or insisting that the Bible has to be read literally.  You can read the whole article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/05/god-gay-christian-bible

For me, the Bible is very important but it has to be read remembering that we don't have a single original text and that we need to know the social context in which each part was written.

A Miracle?

Do you ever look back at something and think "Gosh, that was convenient" when something suddenly goes right? That happened to me this week when my knee suddenly got better for just one day.

That's jumping in at the end of the story so I'll go back and start at the beginning.  A little trouble with my back left me in a lot of pain by trapping the sciatic nerve and making it difficult for me to walk properly.  A few exercises sorted my back out but not walking properly seems to have damaged my knee making it painful to walk; this started on Tuesday and was worse on Wednesday.  On Thursday my daughter, who had a lot of pain in side for a couple of days, had to be taken to hospital to make sure it wasn't appendicitis (it wasn't thankfully) and as her husband was at work I had to drive her there, pick her husband up from the station and drive him back when it was decided she was staying in over night.  Anyone who knows Farnborough Hospital - I mean the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRU) - knows that parking in the hospital car park is a nightmare and as a result I had to park a little way away from the hospital.

The odd thing is that my knee was fine all day so I was able to walk freely back and forward to the car and it only started hurting again when I got home in the evening.  Yesterday, Friday, my knee was hurting again.

Now I know that there may well be some medical explanation for what happened but it happened at exactly the right time so was it a miracle?  A minister friend of mine refers to things like this as "Godincidences"; when the coincidence seems too good to be true.

Was it a miracle? I don't know but I thank God that it happened.

A New Ecumenical Approach?

Many years ago when I was at school (I left in 1972) I heard talk of something called the ecumenical movement whose aim was to bring all the churches together.  For many reasons that hasn't happened not least because it seemed to be a top down attempt to force people into unity.

A few years ago I was the Churches Together in Beckenham treasurer and while we did manage to work together this was done by agreeing on a small set of common beliefs (the Apostles Creed) and ignoring our differences.  We used to joke that it was easier to get the Baptist, Roman Catholic, Methodist and United Reformed churches to work together than it was to get all the different Anglican churches to stay in the same room. Progress was made in that we found we could work together and the idea that you were in a denomination for life was weakened, even if it is still with us.

The problem I see now is that we have formed cross denominational groups which share a common theology and getting these groups to work together, or even accept each other, is possibly harder than working across the denominational divides.  At it's simplest this means liberal and evangelical groupings (but I suspect it could be broken down a lot further) and some of these groupings don't accept that the others are really Christians and others look down on the rest as intellectually inferior.

The ecumenical challenge we face is the task of accepting each other exactly as we are instead of looking for a small set of common beliefs.  For example this means biblical literalists have to accept that Christians who do not share their belief are not 'bad Christians' and those Christians in turn must accept that the biblical literalists aren't intellectual idiots. I am under no illusion that this will be easy but I do know where to start, I have to start with me.  If all Christians start to treat each other with love and respect just think what a difference that would make.

The Baptism of Jesus

Last night at house group we were looking at the baptism of Jesus; a subject I have struggled with for years.  You see as a Baptist I view baptism as a sacrament that symbolises the believers new life in Christ; they symbolically die to their sin as they are immersed in the water and rise into their new Christian life.  That is fine for the here and now but why did the sinless Jesus have to be baptised?

I suspect the answer is that we view faith as an individual issue but in first century Palestine the community (corporate?) was important as well.  As far as we can know from the Gospels Jesus lived a very ordinary life between the ages of 12 and 30 in a society which, like all the rest of its members, would have been sinful.  As Jesus sets out on His ministry he leaves the life of a carpenter behind and separates Himself from the sinful society in which He had lived.  His baptism is therefore symbolic of Him moving out from His former life in society to take on fully His role as the perfect Son of God.

Any other ideas?

Universalism

Rob Bell’s book Love Wins seems to have kicked up a lot of interest/discussion/name calling/heresy hunting about Universalism so I thought I’d have a go of putting my views in a blog.  I am no theologian just an average Christian battling with his faith to make sense of it in the world in which we live so I won’t, hopefully, be using theological terms but ones that my brain can understand.

According to Theopedia “Universalism is the theological view arguing that all persons will ultimately be "saved". Some also teach that there is no such thing as a literal hell or eternal punishment.” and so that is the definition I’ll use.  The problem, as I see it, starts with our perception of the nature of God.  A Just God has to condemn sinners to eternal punishment (unless in their mortal life they ‘accept the Lord Jesus as their personal saviour’) but a Loving God has to draw all of His creation to Him. However God is both Loving and Just so neither answer can be correct.

For some years, influenced I think by C S Lewis’s ‘The Last Battle’, I have believed that non-Christians can enter God’s Kingdom but that they do so only because of the work of Jesus, an equal part of the triune God, on the cross.  I couldn’t imagine a heaven that wouldn’t include people like former UN Secretary General U Thant or that great lover of peace and justice Gandhi.  However, until recently that was as far as my thinking went, I still believed in eternal punishment in hell.

It was only when I started to think about God as not only the creator of everything but also the sustainer of everything that my view started to develop further.  Could a loving God sustain someone in eternal torment?  Was that even just? It doesn’t seem so to me so I had to develop a different view of hell.

In Revelation there are references to the second death and this to me is the key.  Hell is not eternal torment but a second death were evil is permanently destroyed.  What happens after death remains a mystery but I believe that those who, even then, reject God will cease to exist so that God can bring His creation to perfect fruition.

So are my view universalist? To me the answer is both yes and no. I believe that in the end God will draw all things to himself but in doing so evil will cease to exist.