Author Archives: nlunn

keno charis: ruptured for you (a liturgy for Burning Fences)

(Burning Fences is a small community based in York which is exploring how to sing a new song in the rubble of an old world. I led this as an evening exploring the Trinity for my
fellow ‘sparrows’.)

People enter a small upper room above the city. there is a low table and cushions surrounding it.

On the low table are three bowls each with a question by it and there’s a chalice and plate set up. People are invited to write on scraps of paper responses to the following questions and put them into one of three bowls:

What is your ultimate question?

What is your biggest doubt?

What is missing?

When all are settled drinks for the evening are ordered. This often individualistic action is challenged with the following, seemingly restrictive commands: Everyone is to be responsible for one drink order, it cannot be their own. They, therefore, must take responsibility for another’s order. That other person cannot be the one who is responsible for their own order; the two must find a third who then links to another group…

The evening begins when the drinks order is sent downstairs.

Three people begin by reading the following,

Person 1: In an upper room, not unlike this one, the Lord stood amongst friends and shared.

Person 2: In another upper room, not unlike this one, the Lord stood amongst friends and breathed.

Person 3: In a third upper room, not unlike this one, the Lord stood amongst friends and transformed.

Narrator: Tonight we’re going to explore a mystery through three stories of upper rooms. Three and yet one. It’s one story but three points. It’s three ideas that make up one narrative. Three parts to this one mystery…

Story 1. In a tight, cramped, claustrophobic space, in a darkened corner above the city, the prophet rabbi Jesus sat amongst friends. They would meet regularly and share stories, questions, songs. There was no pattern, no formula, no entry requirement, just a desire. It was not a shared ideology or philosophy that bound them together but a shared desire… to know what it was about this rabbi who had chosen to be with them.

Despite their doubts, despairs, disillusionment, they desired, above all, to discover. To discover a way to be free. Self help, private thoughts, individualism had led to self imprisonment and they were tired of being alone. They were like sparrows desiring a hedge to call home.

Liturgy of the Sparrows

We are the sparrows who are claiming back the hedges.

Response: We are the sparrows that will not be satisfied with twigs.

We are the sparrows that are crying out for our hedges.

Response: We are the sparrows that are weary from singing lonely songs.

In our hedge, where we feel safe again,

Response: we seek our social life back, and the sooner the better.

In our hedge, where we talk things over,

Response: we make decisions, laugh if we want to and sing.

This is our story, this is our song,

and we’ll live it till it’s our reality.

A song about home is shared.

Narrator: Story 1. In a tight, cramped, claustrophobic space, in a darkened corner above the city, the prophet rabbi Jesus showed them how to be a holy community…

The narrator gets a bowl and pours warm water into it. He invites someone to have their hands washed. The act of hand washing is a more culturally applicable version of foot washing in the near east culture of Jesus. There’s an element of cleansing and preparation for food as well as retaining the intimacy of foot washing. As the narrator washes the other’s hands he says,

You have to let me wash your hands in order for me to show you love. If you refused I would not be able to show you my care for you. Allowing me to bless you with this gift is a gift to me. You have allowed me to have a relationship with you. Thank you.

The narrator passes out bowls of water and invites others to sit and receive from one another. 

During all of this music is played.

When all have been washed one has left and returned with food and the drinks. Each member should pay more attention for another’s drinks than their own. All are invited to eat.

Who’d like to tell a story of a time when have you felt closest to someone else?

A time of storytelling.

Story 2. In a tight, cramped, claustrophobic space, in a darkened corner of the city, the friends sat. Huddled together in fear. Bereft. Present in body only. Absent in other respect. They had lost. Lost their nerve. Lost the fight. Lost the will. Lost Him. The prophet. Their rabbi.

He had said to them, when he was in the upper room, that he would give everything he had; he would give his life for them. He would not withdraw from the consequences of his love for them. He would be taken and drained of life. He would allow it to happen. He chose to allow it to happen. He chose to allow all people to do what they desired most because he loved.

And now he’s gone. They had lost. The thing that had brought them all together; the person who had called them to each other had left. They had hoped it was forever but he had disappointed. A vacuum now existed in their midst like empty plates where once was food. An absence where once was presence.

A song about loss is shared.

Story 2. In a tight, cramped, claustrophobic space, in a darkened corner of the city, the friends sat and embraced the abyss with all their questions:

One of the bowls that contains the responses to the question ‘What is your ultimate question?’ is passed round and the answers are read out.

The friends sat and embraced the abyss with all their doubts.

The other bowl with the responses to the question ‘What is your biggest doubt?’ is passed round and the answers read out.

The friends sat and embraced the abyss with all their emptiness and lack.

People are invited to read out the responses to the question ‘What is missing?’ from the third bowl.

Story 2. In a tight, cramped, claustrophobic space, in a darkened corner above the city, the prophet rabbi Jesus appeared to his friends. That which was lost had been returned but now a paradox… the friends still felt an absence but it felt like a presence beyond all presences; richer more fuller presence. It was like the last time he was with them but there was a deeper reality to him, to them.

He had been emptied; given all of himself. He who had said that he was God. God had given all things to him and he freely gave it all away to show them how much he loved them. His generosity knew no bounds. He had given everything, even his very self. Now he was back amongst them and showed that He was, in some way, unknowable to them, mysteriously, he was God, eternal, abundant source of all things, of life itself.

“Now do you see?” he said “All that I have I give to you… and I have a lot. I want to be emptied, again and again of all I have so that you have. All that you’re missing I give to you but the real trick is to discover that life is found when you empty of ‘having’ and satisfy the other’s need.”

“God gave to me,” he said “I give to you, but I can’t stay with you in bodily form, it’s too limited. I will return to my home and send to you the key to the Divine store cupboard. He will come and grant you access to the gifts but do not hold onto them for they, like manna in the wilderness will rot if kept in your grasp. Give, give away, give until you have nothing left and your hand will be refilled.”

“This is the secret to community. Each giving until they have nothing but, of course, this dynamic generosity creates from nothing. This is how the universe was built; generous, abundant, emptying love; love that seeks to have nothing so the other will have everything. God the Father showed His love for me by giving me the whole cosmos and more besides he continues to give until there is nothing left to give, when space and time has run out and beyond that. I showed my love to him by giving all I could and I still give… And now I give to you and call you to live with us, participate.”

“You’re all interested in what makes good human community? Humans are made in the image of God and when you live as if that were true, your actions and lives sing of eternity. You’ve dreamt of a place, a way of living that feels like the home you’ve always desired? I have considered your niche needs, disjointed designs and contradictory commands of communal contentment and this is what I offer; an urban landscape sprawling out to scenes of symbiotic existence; spaces of intimacy seeming epic. Small spaces stretch out into space unimaginable.”

“In the centre of this city is a stream sourced from a singular washing space where you can willingly wash away the weeping water from your eyes; wash away all the lies which twist distort and chastise; wash away the pain of missed goodbyes, the long held hurt when a loved one dies, all that contributes to our cries, from the inexpressible silent sighs to the African skin crawling with flies, the countless millions caught in disguise to those imaginations that devise instruments of torture that lead to our demise.

This washing water has supplies for all generations to surmise, from the one who accepts to the one who denies, yes, all are asked to step in and be baptized.”

As the friends looked at the Great Designer’s two dimensional doodles depicting detailed designs for districts of dreams; they were transported from 2D to 3D and they stood at the heart of this great project, this divine concept of collaborated dreams of home. As they scanned the scene with their senses searing with celestial resplendence, they saw it was their terrestrial city with its burnt out building bordered up, barren, broken, brittle skeletons, shells of second rate, suppressed statements of habitations, empty, abandoned, bereft of life. This vacuous void is all they’d envisioned, their vital improvements to the divine construction.

“All these buildings won’t be obstructions.” the rabbi said as He pointed to the destruction. “All of you will be part of this production; we’ll need some more. Can you get introductions? It won’t work if we resort to abductions but paint a portrait of perpetual seduction; Lilting lullabies of love. Meandering melodies of mercy. Holistic harmonies of hope. This is how we will win people to our cause. Sing to them simply of the Son who was sent to your city to speak out against injustice, racist hostility and stubborn statuses. “Sacrifice self” He said. Die to all you think defines, distinguishes, differentiate and divides. Die to all that makes you think ‘me’. That’s not how you are to be, its ‘we’, you see, us constantly, lovingly, eternally relating looking out celebratorily at creation, the manifestation of Our imagination which speaks of salvation. Stand against temptation. Participate in incarnation. Join Our nation.”

They were still in that upper room but now it seemed foreign. The rabbi was gone and they were free. They felt… called, with all creation, to participate in a Divine dance, dwelling with Him, deliberately drawing and deliberating over the debilitated definitions of themselves.

This divine creativity is now innate and it is to participate in a state where every breath is to create because the truth is we, humans can do nothing, we are pathetic, we are fragile, fragmented, foolish and frail. If it was down to us failure would frame our every fumbled attempts at life. But God doesn’t limit His giving of good gifts generously gathering His grace getting offspring and giving, blessing them with boundless benefaction and the ability to beautify the broken, black globe we abide in.

Creativity is the choice to catch the vision of His passionate parade of perpetual pleasure as He paints pictures in the palette of the sky and proclaims praises powerfully in proud oaks. Problem solving, parenthood, pottery, plumbing, all is creative in Papa’s production.

Do we care too much on product and not on process? Capitalism capturing our capability in creation. Yes, creativity is innate, equally distributed, designated, dished out. If we decide to delegate in this divine dynamism we decide to die for it is participation with His soul saving Spirit that gives life. Creativity is cooperating with our curiosity in creation, creating collaborations in community, making mutual memories made in mirth and misery shared. Stories singing through souls, sewing us, sculpting us, shaping us, scripting us into the narrative of the non-conforming Nazarene whose never-ending life and love lulls us into lucid lovers and alighting a light in our hearts, little wisps of wonder wilting the winter inside. All of us part of the process to paint the playground, perform the eternal play and promote partnership in people un-praised but packed with potential.

A song of hope and community is shared.

Story 3. In a tight, cramped, claustrophobic space, in a darkened corner above the city, Simon, who they called ‘Peter’, one of the group was stood amongst outcasts. This foreign group had not been a part of the original group of sparrows in that first upper room. They had gathered from elsewhere but he saw in them that sparrow song. He stood amongst them and remembered the night he had sat with the prophet rabbi Jesus and he had showed them God, divine community, love unadulterated and emptying of gift. Peter stood and spoke, he modelled love as he had known it, pure, from the heart of God Himself. The group were sparrows in a hedge; just for a moment. They sang, they laughed, they shared, they lived the life of communal God right in front of him.

I have shared my stories. I share them till I am empty, bereft.

Keno Charis means ‘emptying of gift’. It is the mystery at the heart of the Trinity; God in community, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; each one giving to the other attempting to be empty of all they possess in order that the other has more but in some mysterious way this creates more. God, the source of all things trying pass on all of it is the secret to life. When we live and participate in this activity we are caught in the basis of life itself and we experience God. Trinity. The Communal heart of creation from the Creator.

Liturgy of the empty and healed

Person 1: I have my music,

I give it to you,

I give it till I’m empty.

Response: We thank you. We love you till you heal.

Person 2: I have my thoughts,

I give them to you,

I give them till I’m empty.

Response: We thank you. We love you till you heal.

Person 3: I have my words,

I give them to you,

I give them till I’m empty.

Response: We thank you. We love you till you heal.

Person 4: I have my voice,

I give it to you,

I give it till I’m empty.

Response: We thank you. We love you till you heal.

Person 5: I have my heart,

I give it to you,

I give it till I’m empty.

Response: We thank you. We love you till you heal.

Person 6: I have my identity,

I share it with you,

I share it till I’m empty.

Response: We thank you. We love you till you heal.

One member of the group leads the following to close,

Find rest, O my soul, in God alone:

Response: my hope comes from Him.

We come this night to the Father,
We come this night to the Son,
We come this night to the Holy Spirit powerful:

Response: We come this night to God.

The Sacred Three
to save
to shield
to surround
the hearth
the home
this night
and every night.

Keep Your people, Lord,
in the arms of Your embrace.

Response: Shelter them under Your wings.

Be their light in darkness.

Response: Be their hope in distress.

Be their calm in anxiety.

Response: Be strength in their weakness.

Be their comfort in pain.

Response: Be their song in the night.

In peace will we lie down, for it is You, O Lord,

Response: You alone who makes us to rest secure.

In The Rubble We Will Sing

20133118111695840_8This morning I woke to the news of the government drafting legislation for three person IVF treatment to allow parents to protect babies from defective mitochondria which leaves them ‘starved of energy, resulting in muscle weakness, blindness, heart failure and death in the most extreme cases’ (BBC News page) by having the DNA from a third party used in the creation of their child. This opens up a vast set of issues on the very nature of life, family, society, etc. After this item there followed the news that surgeons’ individual performance is to be publicised to enable to help patients make informed decisions. This too holds so many much much larger questions about our lack of trust, social contracts, etc. These items come on the back of the issue of gay marriage, banking reform, energy sources, etc.

The Western world is in turmoil. There is no denying that. Change is in the air and most, if not all, people are feeling unsettled, chaotic and scared. The world is always changing; look at Heraclitus (Greek philosopher of 5th century B.C.) who is famous for saying

You never step into the same river twice.

What is scary for me (trying as best as I can to take an overview) is how lost we all are. I use the word ‘lost’ deliberately and I use the word ‘we’ with equal seriousness.

We are lost because we have no direction or rather we have no shared direction when it comes to ethcial discussions. There is an ever-increasing number of options and subjective choice as to which direction we should take that no one view can be held as better or worse than another. This is the fruit of individualism and subjectivity. I have been saying it for so long I’m tired of hearing myself say it. We have got a culture where “What I think and feel is right because it’s what I think and feel.” This unquestioning subjectivity of reality leads to a break down of society. Descartes has a lot to answer for!

We are lost in an ethical abyss with no firm footing or basis by which to discern right from wrong. Our laws and government no longer know how to speak ‘truth’ because ‘truth’ is not shared or agreed upon. The legal system now just protects us individuals from hurting other individuals by our holy, sanctified individuval lives. And we are surprised by the rise in loneliness, depression, a deep seated experience of isolation from fellow human beings, relationships hard to find and sustain and the language we use is so fluid that any meaningful expression is lost and misunderstood. At the heart of this is the current discussion on marriage. This is the sole, most important issue which is unlocking all other issues.

I am seeing this ethical debate on the nature of marriage (both the contents and the way in which it was undertaken) as a piece of dynamite ready to explode the constructs already teetering on their foundations. I say this because it cuts to the core of our discomfort and uncertainties; identity, society, trust, relationships, love, truth, the place and reality of un-tangible concepts within our society, etc. Again (and I really mean AGAIN!) I am not putting a value on either view of the outcome of this particular debate. I do not want to add to that discussion. I am trying to see the underlying issues at work and discuss those.

All around us is wobbling. We are unsure that what we’ve built our lives on is a firm and secure as we first hoped. Then this piece of dynamite is placed along side the cracks already forming and it is blown.

It feels that, in search of freedom we have become enslaved to our own feelings, emotions. Beliefs are based on hunches and gut reactions rather than wisdom.

Wisdom. Where are you, Wisdom? We have built our replica of you and parade it about while you silently watch on from the wings. We make this pathetic imitation dance and move and are deceived into think that it lives but it is but a puppet representation of your life and being.

When will we learn that this individualism and self-seeking, self-constructed framework of society is a sham of the most dangerous and destructive kind?

We have no ethics because we no longer understand the most important fact that lies, unrecognised at the core of our existence: human beings are imperfect, unknowing, ignorant fools. Each and every one of us is skewed in our perception of reality. We are drunk, hazed over with our inner selfishness. Even me. I am guilty of that most hideous of crimes: self-delusion, pride even in my own self-disgust. I am trapped and imprisoned in my own ego. My ego lashes out defensively and subtly twists all I see and do into ‘right-ness’, justifications of thoughts, ideas, policies. My ego distorts, degrades and destroys reality for self-protection. That is why I use ‘we’! I stand in the dock and am guilty!

We. We are lost. Lost in this pathetic state of life. Once the explosion happens and all comes down, as it will and should what will we do?

Firstly, I suggest, acknowledge our weakness, our shortcomings, the ethical mess we are in. To admit the devastation around us. To pick up the pieces of rubble and weep over the brokenness. To silence all voices and to stand in the reverential place of pure and painful humility.

After this we must sing sombre songs of lament. In this place of seeing ourselves as the pathetic creatures we can become we must sing a song of sorrow from our hearts with the tears of truth streaming down our faces. Allow the melody of a minor key to stir us into deeper reality and begin to experience a healing. This healing cannot come from any human source for all those fountains are corrupted and diseased; what comes from them is the fruit of a poisoned tree. No. This healing is found by those who enter this place of reality with humility and fear, reverence and care. Its source is a fearful and un-nameable place which we all would rather forget and push to one side but its reality is sure. We have buried this source with our humanistic, concrete-like concepts of progress and intellect. It is been stopped by force by us. Silently and subtly we have continued to block it up with small incremental steps and we did it all in the name of ‘liberty’ and happiness. Now all our constructs are rubble, the plug has been freed and the pure waters can be drunk from again.

Finally, I want to shout, in the silence, after the songs of lament, confession, sorrow and disgust there is a space to, together, open our eyes. In the cracks of the devastation where the water of healing, life and hope trickles fresh, new things are growing. We recognise them but have lost their names. None of us will dare move in case we trample on the young buds sprouting. The purer ones of us, the ones well versed in lamentation and self-surrender, they will move first and welcome the new arrivals on our landscape. They will smile and will speak first, naming them afresh and reminding us of their beauty and truth. We will hear it; some recalling quicker than others and we will finally share the story of reality.

At the moment this is not and never can be possible in the way we are progressing now. We are blind to the truth and we are doomed together.

Vulnerability and Disclosure

I have returned from a retreat from the Mother House of the Northumbria Community, my spiritual home. It has been a time of re calibration for me after what has seemed a difficult and pressured six months. A brother there suggested I looked “burdened”. The word didn’t quite describe my feeling appropriately. I feel ‘weathered’. Something, unexplainable almost un-definable has been wearing me out and tiring me. It has seemed, for the last six months that everything and nothing is the problem all at once; all I’ve known is something’s not right.

Whilst I was away, I began to write a personal journal; something I’ve thought about a lot but never thought I could manage it. After a period like I’ve been in it seems right that I journal down thoughts, reflections and feelings so that I can look back and see the inconsistencies and loose ends and, hopefully, see God. It seems that there are different voices within me (most of them imitations of other people who I aspire to be, which is not healthy or what a writer should do!) and when I know that the words I write will be made public it brings out a certain way of writing. My personal voice is… I don’t know… different. I can’t tell how exactly, but I hope that, over time, I will discover it and be able to share it with the public.

This discovery made me consider to stop blogging (as I have done many times before). I am not intending to write a blog about blogging; I’ve done that before (see ‘London Calling (part VII)’ post). No, what I am trying to get at is there are things which require a public voice and others which require a private voice, to begin with at least.

I am trying to accept my private and public faces. This is hard for me as I deeply desire an integrity, a one-ness to me. But vulnerability is not about a inner strip-tease or an exhibition of your soul but rather its living with an inner strength of knowing you who you are. As I don’t think it is possible for me to know who I am, as selfhood is a necessarily fluctuating concept, this knowledge is about being known rather than knowing myself.

What this leads to, therefore, is the discovery of the public voice and discerning how to support it with my private voice for the benefit of others.

For a long time I have felt a need to disclose my private voice to encourage people to question it and to shape me. This has not worked and maybe that was futile expectation anyway. This blog must be, I think, a space where I speak for and about others. It’s not a space to air personal issues and/or share my whole life just for the sake of it. I have wrestled with this a lot and, in the past, I have rejected that information (another example of the concept of selfhood in flux!) This is a season, I feel, where I need to see what it is like to limit the use of this site for issues of public interest rather than a place of personal disclosure.

Anyway, that’s all by way of introduction to the next post…

Mark’s Gospel: The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God

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This lent, Acomb Parish Church and I have been exploring the gospel of Mark in our Sunday morning services and in our home group material. The sermon series has been entitled ‘Who Do You Say That I Am?’ taken from the important verse at the heart of this gospel (Mark 8:29). Each week we’ve been looking at different ‘faces’ of Jesus; Jesus the radical, the teacher, the miracle worker, the healer, the messiah, the prophet king and now we get to the final week, the final day: Easter Day.

I’ve been aware, as we traveled through Mark’s gospel, of some strange and confusing parts of Mark’s account of Jesus. In my role as author of the daily reflections that have been published on Twitter and Facebook I’ve needed to do lots of studying on the text and I’ve needed to wrestle with those moments when you need to stop and re-read what Mark has just suggested or said; The Syrophoenician woman, the ‘loaves’, the spitting, the fig tree and many more. There’s a lot that could be said about these and I’ve wanted, through our daily reflections, to invite and encourage us, as a church, to explore and investigate, to come to some conclusions for ourselves or rather feel comfortable to ask the questions and ‘go deeper’ (a theme we’ve adopted for the year). There has been one major theme that has stood out to me through the reading and exploring of Mark which I feel is very important for us, at this time:

Who does Jesus think He is?

One question that members of my church have been asking me through out the series has been, ‘Why does Jesus tell people to not talk about what they have seen or experienced?’

This, in scholarly circles, is called ‘the messianic secret’ but I feel this may not be exactly right…

If we look at the verses where Jesus explicitly commands people not tell anyone they seem to come after major revelations of who he is. Particularly important, I feel, is the times of exorcism when the impure spirit is wanting to tell people who Jesus is. Have a quick look at all the examples, Mark 1:34, 43, 2:12, 5:43, 7:36, 8:30, 9:9. After chapter 9 Jesus seems to stop telling people to be silent and Mark 9:9 is the transfiguration which is the beginning of the story towards Jerusalem and Jesus’ crucifixion.

This is important. In fact I think it is from Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem itself, on a day we celebrate as ‘Palm Sunday’, that things start to change.

Up until this point we’ve seen a very human Jesus. Yes, he’s able to do special things (healing, miracles, teaching with authority, exorcisms, etc.) but these were not unique. Around this time there were others who were great teachers, others who healed, others who performed ‘miracles’, others who were hailed as the messiah. These ‘faces’ that we’ve been seeing are special but they are not unique to Jesus; they merely tell us that he was a very special human being.

This is where what I’ve been understanding comes into focus. People in Britain are very happy for Jesus to be called a ‘special human being’; “he was a great teacher”, “a prophet” , “a ‘miracle worker’ what ever that means” and Peter, in Mark 8:29 calls Jesus the messiah and he is praised by Jesus as receiving a revelation from God but then, quick as a flash, Peter begins to define what he means by ‘messiah’ and it reverts back to the staple understanding; “the messiah is a human sent by God”… but it was too human for Jesus.

On Palm Sunday Jesus walks into Jerusalem and he is happy for people to hail him their king. Why? Well because Jesus is now focused on revealing who he is and all other titles can disappear. What the crowd meant when they hailed him king is very different from what Jesus is about the reveal himself to be. Even the ‘king’ term is human.

You see, Mark has been hinting at a face of Jesus which has kept eluding the disciples, the crowds and the Pharisees and has alluded us a church up until this week. We, in our sermons, have been talking about Peter’s answer to the question ‘Who do you say that I am?’ We, as Christians, feel like the answer to that question is ‘You are the messiah, the Christ.’ But what do we mean by that and how quickly do we fall back on Peter’s next sentence which is aggressively shut down by Jesus?

Holy week shows, slowly and precisely, Jesus stripping back all the faces and titles and handing over the human parts of who he is to reveal himself as something altogether unique.

Good Friday is the final step as Jesus finds the strength to withstand all the mental, emotional and physical strain that being crucified as an innocent man would put him under. He does this all silently and without the typical human response of, “it’s not fair.” “I’m innocent.” He allows it all to happen. How did he, a mere human being, stay focussed on his task? You see, not even crucifixion is unique; hundreds, if not thousands, of humans were crucified and many of them did so without shouting out their innocence (usually because they knew their guilt).

The Pharisees and Pilate want Jesus to be the radical but Jesus refuses to speak.

Pilate claims him a King and Jesus shuns the title.

On the cross Jesus’ radical teaching of destroying the temple, thrown back at him (Mark 15:29-30). Jesus’ miracles and healings, thrown back at him (Mark 15:30). His messiahship, his kingship, all thrown back at him (Mark 15:31). But as Jesus hangs on the cross a centurion (famously played by John Wayne), who has seen countless crucifixions and death says something which reminds us of the very first verse of Mark’s gospel and some words which have eluded us…

Surely this man was the Son of God!

On Easter Day, Resurrection Day, Jesus reveals himself as the Son of God. For it is only God who can raise people from the dead. This is what’s truly unique about Jesus; not that He was human but that he was divine! It is through this lens that the whole gospel changes from being just some stories about a human being trying to be good and do good things into God coming to earth and dying on a cross. What’s unique about Jesus isn’t what he did but who he was at his very core. God made man. Good Friday makes sense only if we understand Jesus as God. No human being could do what Jesus did on Good Friday; I don’t mean die, nor die a painful death but the very fact that it reveals that God is willing to die to enter into death to defeat it like He did in the resurrection.

No other message is worth celebrating. Jesus’ humanity is only important if it is tangled up in his divinity. Jesus is the Son of God… go now and re read the gospel telling yourself that at each moment.

The Pope Is Dust Just Like You

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As the evening approached I began to get more and more excited. I haven’t been as expectant and excited about a service since the Midnight Communion a few months ago. Ash Wednesday had arrived!

This day, more so than most other feast day, gets to the core of my theology and spirituality. A preacher and minister has to work very hard to fudge the the central message of this celebration and act of worship.

Remember you are but dust and to dust you shall return. Turn from sin and be faithful to Christ.

Ash Wednesday marks the start of the season of Lent, a period of 40 days (plus Sundays) dedicated to repentance and re-dedication to discipleship. This season is known for the tradition of giving up/fasting from certain luxuries or habits that distract us from the work of discipleship and our journey to holiness. The restraining from luxuries, in the modern day, has become seen as some self-inflicted punishment and has betrayed the true reason for participating in such activities: to re-dedicate your life and attention towards Christ, to clear our mind of striving after short-term pleasures and receive the eternal pleasure of knowing God.

But this post is not about fasting and Lenten disciplines.

I approached Ash Wednesday this year with Pope Benedict’s resignation very much on my mind. I, like many others, have been struck by the timing and the manner in which the pope’s statement was made. Through this short and concise proclamation of intent, the pope communicated one thing: humility.

True humility is about naming the truth of one’s status. It is a fine virtue to public live out just before the celebration of Ash Wednesday because humility has its roots in humus (of the earth). The pope’s public declaration clearly spoke of his weakness, a self-awareness of his defects and mortality and limitedness in fulfilling the role to which God called him. In a world obsessed with promoting the strength and potential of humanity, this public resignation sings of our true nature: we are dust.

The pope’s conviction stands powerfully against the lie of this age which says humanity is the source of transformation in the world. We, as a race, need no one else to be great. If we could harness some metaphysical goodness and our inner strength we can achieve all we want and imagine. There is no god but us; we are the source of our own destiny. In this environment it is no surprise that the pope’s resignation and the humility expressed in his statement confuses and baffles our culture.

And so it is with Ash Wednesday! We stand prophetically against the humanism of our society, which, in many forms (Christian as well as non-Christian), grips our philosophy. We reject the temptation to stand on our own and name ourselves ‘good’ and beautiful, worthy of praise and adoration. We deny the powerful narrative that suggests that, if we work hard and gather together we can muster up ‘love’ (whatever that means!) and build a bright future for ourselves. This is a lie!

As Christians we must start with the humility that the pope lived out in making the public statement: we are limited, we are mortal, we are dust.

But the Christian story doesn’t end there, in the fatalistic nihilism that this truth can lead us to. The Christian message is that we are dust (and not God) but, by the grace of God alone, we are able to become living beings. We are not born as living beings, as things worthy of attention and praise. We are born as dust.

Prior to the pope’s announcement our attention was captured with the debate over equality. At the heart of this conversation was the bill of Human Rights which I spoke about in ‘The Hunch, the Compulsion and the Overwhelming Pain’. It begins with the statement: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…’ On Ash Wednesday and through Lent we, as Christians, proclaim a different truth which sounds seductively similar but distinctive: ‘All human beings are born dust and equally in need of God.’

We are equal in the sense we are equally dust, limited, mortal, nothing but we can receive the grace of God if we turn to Him and receive His gift. We cannot deny the giver and receive the gift, allowing its power to transform and change to manifest itself in our lives.

The pope shouted above this view that we, human beings, are the source of significant and lasting transformation of the world, a different view. The Catholic Church doesn’t need Pope Benedict to be the Body of Christ. The Catholic Church, as it has done through out history, needs God, the sole source of transformation and change.

Ash Wednesday begins a narrative in the Church’s calendar that journey’s through Good Friday into Easter and won’t end until Pentecost. There, in the upper room with the first  disciples we become aware of our dust-ness but then the Spirit of God moves and causes our lifeless bodies to sing of life, not just existence, but eternal life. The Spirit of God, like a breeze, blows through that room and causes those heaps of dust dance, refracting the light that shines from Christ, the risen Lord.

There’s two failures we as Christians can make: inadvertently deny our dependence on God by promoting humanity as essentially ‘good’ and able to change the world, the other is to deny the power of God to use us, limited and mortal as we are, to show Himself as the sole source of eternal transformation. We so often speak too much of God’s love for us and fail to speak against the notion that we are worthy of that love. We can react to this by pushing too much the sin and darkness of humanity and fail to acknowledge that God has chosen to use our frail bodies.

The pope, in humility, made a bold statement against the humanism of popular culture and proclaimed our absolute dependence on God’s free, unmerited grace on us, unworthy as we are. He proclaims God is good and His love endures forever. We remain powerless until God’s power manifests itself through us. We must clear our lives of our own striving to hold power and receive afresh the gift of God’s presence that transforms us into something.

We are nothing made something by God’s everything.

We are dust caught in the wind of God’s Spirit, dancing in His Light.

The Hunch, The Compulsion and The Overwhelming Pain

When I put my head above the parapet earlier last year on the issue of Equal Marriage I did so because of a hunch. It wasn’t a fully formed argument nor was it clear but it was there. I am unsure where it exactly came from but it seemed to be a strange positioning against same sex marriage or, to be more precise, against those who were promoting it in the media. This was made strange by my gut reaction to same-sex unions which is fully positive. I said then that I opposed the Equal Marriage legalisation due, not because of any discomfort with homosexual relationships but because of the tenor of the public discussion. I was finding myself saying those distasteful words: ‘I’m not homophobic but..’ I didn’t know what I felt exactly but I knew I needed to say something about my discomfort.

My views were not only dismissed but were found and attacked. I was attacked, personally for expressing such views. I was insulted and bullied. Vitriolic words were sent to me. Within this I tried to remain calm and collected… and then I failed. I lashed out and in my aggression I found myself plunged into more despair and upset because I felt I’d let my God down, for whom I’d give up the praise of any human to be with.

When I fell and I tried to deal with my shame and began the necessary confessions I was taunted and abused further. All this not by fascists, not by Nazis but by ‘liberals’!

It was so strange. With one voice they spoke of their desire (and a correct desire) to be valued, accepted and understood by their society. Underneath their voice, however, was a divisive tone which essentially wanted me to stop talking. My feelings were of no value to them because of who they thought I was. Ironic. Those who wanted equality for all, tolerance and acceptance were making me feel so outside of society; out-dated, abnormal and alone.

They were protected by a vast majority of people all screaming that they are a minority. They fail to acknowledge publicly that, in fact, they are a powerful minority. This is not a conversation about majority and minority because I have come to some clarification that such terms mean nothing anymore. There’s a powerful minority in power and don’t speak for us the majority, ‘the people’. But, also we are a minority trying to overthrow the majority oppressive view. It’s all perception, misdirection, game playing and non of it real truth! The only thing that such conversations about placing ourselves in different configurations of majority/minority do is divide. But we want to be one, don’t we?

An even more upsetting thing about these times was that because I didn’t want to stand fully, unquestioningly with a political liberal agenda, I was cast out and looked upon as a fundamentalist or ‘conservative’. I use the term ‘conservative’ in a derogative term because that is where our media seems to have led us to, which is interesting. With this perception people assumed so many things of me and pre-judged me. ‘Homophobic’, ‘bigot’, ‘fascist’, ‘pathetic’.

Even writing these things is making me dismiss it all as ludicrous. How dare I speak in such terms! You can’t be bullied because you’re ‘the standard’, you’re ‘normal’, you’re the thing that everyone is trying to be ‘equal’ to: white, male, heterosexual, middle-class.

At the same time I feel like I deserve all that they are saying to me. Maybe you are closed-minded, prejudiced, irrational, stupid. Maybe they have a point; maybe I need to change and forget… the hunch.

It still sits there deep in my belly that something in this whole process doesn’t quite add up. Something doesn’t feel right. I want wisdom; pure unadulterated wisdom. Wisdom that is of God (which many people won’t appreciate or understand.) Wisdom comes from waiting, from silencing myself and the world around me to sit in the abyss of silence and re-engage, truthfully with the world through the Holy Spirit (which many people won’t appreciate or understand.) Wisdom that is from that outside place and realm; an imagination that can think of a real alternative to problems in stark contrast to what we re-conceive of half-realised patch-ups in our limited concept of reality.

I thought this was about language; in a way it is. We have no shared custom of language anymore. Is it any wonder that concepts such as ‘justice’, ‘freedom’ or ‘equality’ can be owned by both sides of an opposing debate. Words such as ‘marriage’ and ‘love’ are strongly believed to be understood by a speaker but it is not the same concept, one to another. In this environment it becomes impossible to speak because the shared understanding of what words mean is gone. The whole debate is vacuuous because no one shares life and I find myself returning, increasingly, to that Jewish spiritual insight, ‘it’s all meaningless.’

The hunch comes from Stanley Hauerwas. I return to his writing again and again (mainly Community of Character!) Along with him; John Millbank, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the quiet, compelling life and spirituality of Thomas Merton. It’s all a big mess in my head that drives my passionate heart to beat to this inescapable rhythm that seems to put me into conflict with this liberal force surrounding me. I don’t have to fight. I don’t have to say anything. I could stay quiet and ‘live and let live’… but as my wife told me “you would if you could but you can’t, can you?’

She’s right. The hunch has become a compulsion…

I am no closer to resolution. I still feel uncomfortable about the content of the debate on Same Sex Marriage despite knowing and feeling the desires of couples desperate to proclaim their love from the rooftops. Then there’s my wife’s voice again. She puts it simply, ‘I don’t know what my opinion is. We’ve cherry picked our way out of the Bible that it doesn’t matter. I’m called to love God and love my neighbour and I’ll do that.’

YES! Let me unpick that…

the church’s first social task in any society is to be herself… to be the kind of community that recognizes the necessity that all societies, church and political alike, require authority. But for Christians our authority is neither in society itself nor in the individual; it is in God. (Stanley Hauerwas)

The issue with the liberalism that is so prevalent in the media is it promotes self built stories. Whatever you ‘feel’ is right is right. “This is my experience”. I have read a book recently, which I was asked to review, on homosexuality and the church. It was a good book with some helpful contributions and reminders but it’s main argument was essentially: ‘This is how I experienced it and you can’t argue with that.’ No discussion in case I dare question the authors self-perception; self-identity!

In social debate personal stories are emotional bombs; set them off and no one has a chance. The story is a powerful weapon in our society because we have no standard story which can compare all stories to. ‘Tradition’ is lost out of fear of being dogmatic and unchanging. The problem is the baby of shared history has plummeted with the bath water.

Liberalism is successful exactly because it supplies us with a myth that seems to make sense of our social origins… A people do not need a shared history; all they need is a system of rules that will constitute procedures for resolving disputes as they pursue their various interests. (Hauerwas)

With no need to ascribe to a shared tradition/story there’s no requirement to agree what is right or wrong. Personal experience and opinions are sacred because without them where are we? The Same Sex Marriage debate shows our society for what it is; desperately lost, with no map, no common language, people talking at cross purposes, not listening, not reflecting on what is at the heart of this problem, what is linking this with all our problems.

Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

 

The most coercive aspect of the liberal account of the world is that we are free to make up our own story. The story that liberalism teaches us is that we have no story. (Hauerwas)

Individuals all trying to cohabitate with other individuals. We don’t know who we are. We have no shared history, no common language, no desire to be radically dependent on another. This is because there is so much division. Walls comfort us, barriers protect us. If we lose them we are open and vulnerable to attack and so let us agree to live in our separate lives, managing interactions through protecting laws so we can continue to feel ‘love’. This love, however, is cheap. It fails as soon as you’ve experienced it. It’s cosy for a moment and then is sand. It is all meaningless…

… But a people who have learned that strenuous lesson of God’s lordship through Jesus’ cross should recognise that ‘the people’ are no less tyrannical than kings or dictators. (Hauerwas)

We have no one else to blame for the sad, empty, disappointing existence we experience than ourselves. We have created a system of society by which we can constantly remain in conflict whilst feeling like we’re making progress towards peace. We praise the legislation on slavery, gender equality, racial equality, sexual equality… None of these have been achieved. “We’ve made steps towards them, though.” The final step, in all of these issues, remains the hearts of the other people you share the planet with. Value in the eyes of another comes not from legislation but from trusting, long term, committed relationship. Our society refuses this in its promotion of individualism, subjectivity and dismissal for any need for shared history. The closest thing, and probably the only thing, close to this authority is the Bill of Human Rights which has no universal basis except itself. It requires another authority. This is a bizarre state of affairs that this document and the beliefs held within it are un questionable, except that it is fallible because it doesn’t mention sexual orientation in it and so we add and amend, reinterpret to fit in with what it should say because it was human’s who made it, right?

The root of this problem is that we feel our authority is to be found in humanity. The problem is that humanity is not trustworthy. We are fickle, broken. We could equally do good as do bad. The foundation on which we build our society is transient and movable. The Bill also uses language which, as we are seeing, is interpreted by a society made up of human’s with mixed motives. The same, of course, could be said of the Bible but the strength and protection of the Christian tradition is an understanding that you read it with God, through God the Holy Spirit, testing it with tradition and Divine revelation.

And the final arrow the sticks into my body as I teeter on the parapet is the most painful. I look and see that the same confusion is found within the Church as well as without. They proclaim the values made of straw and the principle standing on shifting sand. The Body of Christ apes society and culture in a desperate attempt to be ‘relevant’, to feel ‘acceptable’, ‘valued ‘ and ‘loved’. It dresses up in a mini skirt and high heels and walks out into the night proclaim “I can do what I like with my body because of the freedom bestowed upon by my own innate dignity.”

I find in myself being asked the question “What would you do?” or ‘What’s the answer to?” I want to say “I’d start from somewhere else” or “I’d ask a different question.” I don’t know where that place is or what the question might sound like but I know that anything we do won’t make us ‘happy’ or at ‘peace’.

But as I say that I am reminded that I am a Christian who believes strongly that Christ entered into our world, not where he would have (in fact, did) start from!…

You see even in saying that I find myself recoiling because that concept is hijacked by a liberal understanding of the incarnation. The incarnation has been grasped by a liberal theology which promotes a type of humanism. It is very popular because it can be used by society at large with no feelings of threat or challenge because it essential tells secular society that God thinks that everything they are doing are morally right. Jesus is being brought in from the wings in the Same Sex Marriage debate as the ultimate secular humanist and he wasn’t. He upset human society.

Jesus was the bearer of a new possibility of human and social relationships… the incarnation is not the affirmation of God’s approval of the human… but God’s breaking through the borders of man’s definition of what is human. (Hauerwas)

Where does this leave me?

To be honest; I’m done. We are so far from any meaningful equality and no concept or authority which can be the moral goal, the virtue paradigm. We can build one up but it will fall like all the other moral idols we have had in the past. Our heroes are falling, one by one and with each toppling crisis we are buried struggling always to stay afloat except…

The formless void. The dazzling light which seems to penetrate the rubble of our lives. The only constant. It is there, silent because words cannot encompass nor conceive it. When in its presence it compels beauty from within you and you weep because it is so painful to sit knowing how far short you are from its radiance. Through it you see necessary difference held in perfect harmony as three persons dance in one unity. Everything is brought into sharp focus and you laugh at how distorted your view of reality was and Love… Love sings so pure you can hardly bear to hear it. It is unrecognisable and you laugh because whilst you were sure what it was, now you realise you were sat in the dark talking of things far beyond our capabilities and you see yourself and everyone so messed up and far from the target and particularly yourself…

Oh Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

On Secularism

Secularism, as a philosophical and political concept, has had a long history within the Western world[1]. It first appeared in Ancient Greece in the writings of Plato[2], and was further developed during the Reformation in the 16th century with Martin Luther and John Calvin[3] and later by modern philosophers, Immanuel Kant[4], et al. It is clear from the literature that secularism started as a way of managing pluralistic societies where various theistic assumptions were held. Jürgen Moltmann suggests,

Outside the modern world, there were and are no religionless politics…The secularization of the modern state which Christian and Islamic fundamentalists lament is a religious achievement springing from the religious liberty of modern men and women; it is not an irreligious evil.[5] [6]

As with most philosophical and socio-political theories there are various forms in which it is found.[7] With the limitations of this essay I have chosen to engage specifically with the National Secular Society (N.S.S.) whose claim that ‘secularism is the best chance to create a society in which people of all religions or none can live together fairly and peacefully’ instigates this study.

I will use the N.S.S. charter and their other documents[8], explicitly highlighting a key issue of the inconsistencies in their proposals. From this perspective I will draw a comparison between the ideas put forward by the N.S.S. and those of liberal democracy, as depicted in Stanley Hauerwas’ Community and Character. Whilst exploring the assumptions of liberal democracy, I will debate whether a) it is a political system that leads to peaceful life and b) the N.S.S. can construct a polity that supports fairness for all in the context of a pluralist society. In doing this I will further highlight the contradictions between their charter and the foundations on which secularism is constructed and begin to question the N.S.S.’s implicit suggestion that society can be at peace only when everyone submits to an autonomous legalistic, ethical framework based on the ‘objectivity’ of secularist worldview. This will lead me to conclude that one appropriate Christian response is to live out a social ethic based not on restrictive denial of competing belief, whatever tradition or culture, but on open discussion, which will provide a fairer and more peaceful society.

Secularism, Liberal Democracy and Humanism

The separation of religion and state is the foundation of secularism. It ensures that religious groups don’t interfere in affairs of state, and makes sure the state doesn’t interfere in religious affairs.[9] [10]

The N.S.S. has set itself up as the public voice for those ‘working exclusively towards a secular society.’[11] Its charter consists of ten clearly defined aims of the organisation (see appendix i), which will act, along with Hauerwas’ classification, ‘All I mean by secular is that our polity and politics gives no special status to any recognizable religious group. Correlatively such a polity requires that public policies be justified on grounds that are not explicitly religious’ [12], as my definition of secularism.

Ultimately, secularism purports that there needs to be a separation of religious belief and political ethics. This, for the N.S.S., is articulated mainly on the macro-level of social polity but, as societies are made up of individual citizens, this requires a privatisation of religious belief on the micro-level. Hauerwas’ definition suggests that public policies, in a truly secular society cannot be justified on religious grounds. This is challenged in the documentation of the N.S.S.

Religious people have the right to express their beliefs publicly but so do those who oppose or question those beliefs.[13]

This statement is contradicted, however, in the N.S.S. charter when it states,

Religion plays no role in state-funded education, whether through religious affiliation, organised worship, religious instruction, pupil selection or employment discrimination.[14]

If religion is refused a role in state-funded education then it denies religious people a right to express their beliefs in that public forum. E.F. Schumacher argues that our ‘modern’ society is based on Enlightenment ‘scientism’ which, he suggests, denies any importance in ‘metaphysical’ questions such as “What is man?” In answer to this question the ‘modern man’, Schumacher suggests, may well answer

…Nothing but physics and biology. If this were true there would be no point in discussing “education”… What can be the meaning of “education” or of “good work” when nothing counts except that which can be precisely stated, measured, counted, or weighed?[15]

He goes on to explore the un-quantifiable aspects of our lives, which the modern man needs to give an answer to. Without a metaphysical framework

We modern people, who reject traditional wisdom and the existence of the vertical dimension of the spirit, like our forefathers desire nothing more than somehow to be able to rise above the humdrum state of our present life.[16]

He argues persuasively that if we maintain this non-metaphysical materialism then education fails to equip our young to ‘rise above [their] own humdrum, petty, egotistical selves.’ Schumacher asks,

What, in these circumstances, can be the purpose of education? In our own Western Civilization… its purpose used to be to lead people out of the dark wood of meaninglessness, purposelessness, drift, and indulgence, up a mountain where there can be gained the truth that makes you free.[17]

What this all leads to is a suggestion that behind the N.S.S. charter is an atheistic assumption that denies the engagement with a metaphysical aspect of the education of our young. If we, as a society, adopt this charter then we subject the next generation to a worldview that denies them the opportunity to gain ‘truth that makes you free.’ Schumacher ends with a keen observation,

Maybe all I want is to be happy… For happiness you need the truth that makes you free – but can the educator tell me what is the truth that makes me free?[18]

In denying the participation of religion within the public education of our young, the N.S.S. is not only contradicting their claim that ‘religious people have a right to express their belief’ but also expressing a desire to remove an acknowledgement of the metaphysical aspects of our humanity from public policy.

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian writer, ‘takes the classical view that it should be the function of politics to direct people individually and collectively toward the good.’[19] With this in mind he, like George Will, state, ‘we are right to judge a society by the character of the people it produces’[20] which does not mean, as Hauerwas is quick to point out,

…that it is the function of the state to make people good, but rather to direct them to the good. Politics as a moral art does not entail the presumption that the state is a possessor of the good, but rather that the good is to be found in a reality profounder than the state.[21]

If we continue down this line of argument it becomes clear that we must ask, “what role does morality and ethics play in the N.S.S. charter?” Hauerwas addresses the dismissal of Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard address and the question of the metaphysics of humanity.[22]

Some have suggested that Solzhenitsyn has confused a social and cultural critique with a political critique. Yet to dismiss Solzhenitsyn in this way is but to manifest the problem he is trying to point out. For we have assumed that we can form a polity that ignores the relation between politics and moral virtue.[23]

When reading the supporting documents of the N.S.S. it seems they have no explicit concern of morals or ethics, or rather they are attempting to rise above such issues and become a ‘framework’ encompassing all morals and ethics,

Secularism simply provides a framework for a democratic society. Atheists have an obvious interest in supporting secularism, but secularism itself does not seek to challenge the tenets of any particular religion or belief, neither does it seek to impose atheism on anyone. Secularism is simply a framework for ensuring equality throughout society – in politics, education, the law and elsewhere, for believers and non-believers alike.[24]

If we read this statement alongside the view that politics must be concerned with the moral character of its citizens, then to deny any ethical direction, atheistic or not, within a polity is to ignore the responsibility to develop moral and ethical agents within its society. Hauerwas and others see this as

…an extraordinary moral project that seeks to secure societal co-operation between moral strangers short of reliance on violence… In the interest of securing tolerance between people, we are forced to pay the price of having our differences rendered morally irrelevant, for recognition of such difference if the basis for fear and envy. As a result, our nature as agents in and of history is obscured.[25]

Hauerwas’ depiction of liberal democracy serves us well in critiquing the implied assumptions of the N.S.S.. His chapter, “The Church and Liberal Democracy”[26], is an excellent observation of the many inherent inconsistencies within this polity, which I do not have the space to fully sketch out here. His main argument, however, is important if we are to offer some appropriate Christian response to the N.S.S. charter.

…liberalism is a political philosophy committed to the proposition that a social order and corresponding mode of government can be formed on self-interest and consent.[27]

It is clear in the literature on the history of secularism, which I would argue underpin the N.S.S., that the 18th and 19th century philosophy of Kant and others leads society to pursue individual happiness.[28] [29]

The problem with our society is not that democracy has not worked, but that it has… We have been freed to pursue happiness…[Solzhenitsyn] thinks it is the inevitable result of a social order whose base is the humanism of the Enlightenment, which presupposed that… man [does not] have any higher task than the attainment of his own happiness.[30]

If we follow this aim to its natural conclusion, however, we come across the deepest incompatibility of the N.S.S. charter. It is clear that the N.S.S. desire people to experience freedom, of ‘religious belief’ and ‘expression’[31], but ‘the great ironies of our society is that by attempting to make freedom an end in itself we have become an excessively legalistic society.’[32] With this in mind let us turn again to the explicit aim for the N.S.S., to seek a state where,

There is one law for all and its application is not hindered or replaced by religious codes or processes.[33]

The religious freedom, and the moral and ethical freedom that grow out from our metaphysical frameworks, inevitably leads to conflict when one comes in contact with another opposing view. In order for us to live peacefully, it seems, we require a legal authority on which to call upon at such times,

Liberalism is successful exactly because it supplies us with a myth that seems to make sense of our soicial origins… A people do not need a shared history; all they need is a system of rules that will constitute procedures for resolving disputes as they pursue their various interests.[34]

Ironically, within such a legalistic society ‘there is no need for voluntary self-restraint, as we are free to operate to the limit of the law’[35] but this then requires a lack of freedom to pursue our own happiness. To clarify this contradiction I could say it in this way; ‘The ethical and political theory necessary to such a form of society [is] that the individual is the sole source of authority’[36] but this form of society requires a primacy of legal authority to restrict citizens from fully expressing their freedom in ethical action[37] in fear of creating internal conflict. Hauerwas offers this response,

[the church’s] first social task in any society is to be herself… to be the kind of community that recognizes the necessity that all societies… require authority… [and] our authority is neither in society itself nor in the individual; it is in God.[38]

The N.S.S. claims it allows authority to remain with the individual to choose his/her religious belief and to hold to their own self- determined metaphysical framework for their moral and ethical development. It cannot, however, maintain such a view when establishing public policy and so claims its own beliefs as the necessary authority by which to resolve disputes. We can compare such a view with that of humanism,

Humanism… declares an optimistic view of the capabilities of men and women: they are entitled to moral autonomy… and are known to possess rights which dignify the individual without the need for reference to any transcendent authority …the sacralising of welfare provision and the cultivation of what are now called ‘caring’ attitudes assume quasi-sacramental status in the new Religion of Humanity…[Humanism] is about the sovereignty of humanity and its imagined needs, and not about the demands of God at all.[39]

Moltmann admits the difficulties of such a view when he says,

The great dreams of humanity which accompanied the ‘discoveries’ and the projects of modern times from their inception were necessary dreams, but they were impossible ones. They asked too much of human beings.[40]

Within this form of society it seems that, in order to achieve peaceful existence whilst maintaining individual freedom of belief and moral assumptions, it is necessary to construct a political framework of rules and laws which force citizen’s to subjugate themselves under as a necessary authority. The Christian community, as with other religious groups, have a problem in this respect; we submit only to the authority of God .

The hallmark of such a community, unlike the power of the nation-states, is its refusal to resort to violence to secure its own existence or to insure internal obedience. For as a community convinced of the truth, we refuse to trust any other power to compel than the truth itself.[41]

Before outlining an appropriate Christian response to the initial claim of the N.S.S., there is a more direct inconsistency between the views expressed by the N.S.S. which I would like to highlight. My aim in drawing out these contradictions within the charter has been to establish my argument on the incompatibility of the N.S.S.’s stated assumptions and, therefore, question that their social framework is logically valid.

Individuals are neither disadvantaged nor discriminated against because of their religion or belief, or lack thereof… The state does not engage in, fund or promote religious activities or practices.[42]

In the first of these premises the N.S.S. claim the secular state neither ‘disadvantages nor discriminates’ individuals whatever their religious belief or practice but how can this be when they simultaneously state that individuals can receive engagement, funding or promotion by the state in activities on non-religious grounds but not on religious grounds? In this, very possible situation, one is discriminated against because of their religious affiliation, belief and practice. This means that N.S.S.’s charter fails to be logically valid.

To begin my conclusion I’d like to use a quote from John Adams, one of the founding fathers of the secular state of the USA, which says, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.”[43] This suggests that any secular state requires a moral or religious framework, which is strangely absent from the N.S.S. or, rather, is, despite its claims to the contrary, atheistic. This materialistic assumption, despite not being articulated, leads to a society that fails to develop citizens of moral character. Its democracy is based on ‘facile doctrines of tolerance or equality’ but the church’s society ‘is forged from our common experience of being trained to be disciples of Jesus’[44] under the sole authority of God.[45]

Despite Moltmann’s positive view that, ‘the freedom of the church from the state, and the self-assertion of the church in the face of political religion or state ideology, are the best securities against totalitarian state, because they do not allow the state, which is a human creation, to turn into a monstrous Leviathan’[46] [47], I cannot see how the proposal of N.S.S. will allow its citizen’s to pursue moral goodness whilst religious belief is denied its voice in matters of public policy out of fear that such expressions create conflict. The Christian response, therefore, must be to ‘help us to experience what a politics of trust can be like. Such a community should be the source of imaginative alternatives for social policies that not only require us to trust one another, but chart forms of life for the development of virtue and character as public concerns.’[48] For in such a society, ‘discussion becomes the hallmark… since recognition and listening to the other is the way our community finds the way of obedience.’[49] 


[1] We must also appreciate the use of this polity within the modern Indian culture and other Eastern societies but its origins are in Western philosophical tradition. It is interesting to note that the secularism in India and elsewhere has not got the same atheistic assumptions as it does in the West in modern day.

[2] Plato, Desmond Lee (tr.), The Republic (London: Penguin Books, 1987)

[3] Harro Höpfl (tr. &ed.), Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)

[4] Immanuel Kant, Allen Wood & George Di Giovanni (trs. & eds.), Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and other writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)

[5] Jürgen Moltmann, Margaret Kohl (tr.), God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology (London: SCM Press, 1999) p.212

[6] Moltmann also outlines the history of secularism from ‘the messianic hopes’ of the modern world buoyed by the new discoveries of the Americas and the scientific advancements brought about by Christian scientists Sir Isaac Newton, et al. Robert Miller also argues this in Arguments Against Secular Culture (London: SCM Press, 1995) p.180-185

[7] Paul Toscano likens secularism to a religion: ‘For each secularist, secularism will be defined a little differently… It only mean that secularism, like Christianity, is a religion of many froms, manifesting itself in many sects.’, Invisible Religion in the Public Schools: Secularism, Neutrality, and the Supreme Court (Utah: Horizon Publishers, 1990) p.46

[8] “National Secular Society’s Secular Charter”, National Secular Society, http://www.secularism.org.uk/secularcharter.html ,“About The National Secular Society”, Ibid., http://www.secularism.org.uk/about.html  and “What is Secularism?”, visited on 23rd April 2012.

[9] “What is Secularism?”

[10] See also Moltmann, God for a Secular Society

[11] “About The National Secular Society”

[12] Stanley Hauerwas, Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1981) p.72

[13] “What is Secularism”

[14] “National Secular Society’s Secular Charter” item (f)

[15] E.F. Schumacher, Good Work (London: Jonathan Cape, 1979) p.112

[16] Ibid., p.113-114

[17] Ibid., p.113

[18] Ibid., p.117

[19] Hauerwas, Community of Character, p.75

[20] George Will, The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts (New York: Harper and Row, 1978) p.3

[21] Hauerwas, Community of Character, ff. p.248

[22] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart”, address at Harvard University, Harvard Gazette, June 1978.

[23] Hauerwas, Community of Character, p.75

[24] “What is Secularism?”

[25] Hauerwas, Community of Character, p.120

[26] Ibid., pp.72-86

[27] Ibid., p.78

[28] This philosophy was written into the American Declaration of Independence and is now universalized into the Declaration of Human Rights.

[29] C.f. Schumacher’s observation mentioned above.

[30] Ibid., p.75-76

[31] “What is Secularism?”

[32] Hauerwas, Community of Character, p.75

[33] “National Secular Society’s Secular Charter” item (b)

[34] Hauerwas, Community of Character, p. 78

[35] Ibid., p.75

[36] Ibid., p.78

[37] See Hauerwas, Community of Character, p.115 and also Martin Rhonheimer, ““Intrinsically Evil Acts” and the Moral Viewpoint: Clarifying a Central Teaching of Veritatis Splendor”, The Thomist 58 (1994) p. 1-39

[38] Hauerwas, Community of Character, p.83-84

[39]  Edward Norman, Secularisation (London: Continuum, 2002) p.1-3

[40] Moltmann, God For A Secular Society, p.17

[41] Hauerwas, Community of Character, p.85

[42] “National Secular Society’s Secular Charter” item (c) & (g)

[43] Cited in Hauerwas, Community of Character, p. 79

[44] ibid., p.51

[45] This is obviously shared by other religious organizations.

[46] See Thomas Hobbes, Richard Tuck (ed.), Leviathan: or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) p.114

[47] Moltmann, God For a Secular Society, p.40

[48] Hauerwas, Community of Character, p.86

[49] Ibid., p.85

There Is No Majority.

A picture that vaguely communicates a part of this post.

A picture that vaguely communicates a part of this post.

As a white, British, middle class, heterosexual male many would say I am privilege to have a culture and society constructed for me. In many ways those people are right. I look at those in seats of power and authority in our society and I see humans in the same demographic. This demographic is not the majority, it is a minority but so is every other kind of concoction of identity a society of different people creates. My particular cocktail of identifiers entitles me to an ‘easy life’ but it refuses me a voice in parts of public discussions about discrimination and human rights.

I would love to give my voice to a number of disenfranchised people and ask society to give them a chance for work, respect and ultimately for peace. I do give my voice to such people; those struggling for work due to the lack of education and some bad decisions which are held against them, those people who, by the arbitrariness of biology, have different chromosomes to me, those who’s life and circumstances have shaped them and moulded them to fall in love with a person of the same gender as them and not the equally complex factors that made me fall in love with my wife. I give my voice to them and would ask society to give them a chance for work, respect and ultimately for peace.

It is for this reason I can support the decision made by the Church of England to have women ordained into a seat of Bishops. It is for this reason I will continue to work with my brothers and sisters who don’t see it the same way to build a community where both, different views are at an agreed consensus and not majority rule (which never exists anyway!) I give my voice to ensure that women and men, different for physical reasons as well the plethora of experiences, contexts, etc. that makes one person different from another, are respected as human beings with the pains, anger and frustration that comes from facing different people. I want all people, male and female to find peace and this is where my voice may be lost…

It is for the reason stated above that I want this government to think seriously about how they take money out of the public purse without considering the vacuum they are creating. My voice is given to those people who are being forced to work through their dependency on reserves and welfare, in a culture geared towards consumption whilst they look around and see the culture has not changed and there are many still dependent on others sources of finance. I give my voice, my privileged voice, to those who are confused by the mixed messages they are receiving from this government to have austerity but to keep shopping and enjoying luxury dinners because that is ‘good for the economy’. I want all people rich and poor to be given a chance to work for even pay, politician or labourer, and to give all the respect of being human with the pain of misfortune and circumstantial events and bad decisions to be forgiven and cared for. I want all people to find true peace and this is where my voice may be lost…

It is because I want to give my voice to disenfranchised people that I want to see respect given to people in same sex relationships because they are human beings shaped by the culture they are in and the lives they have led just like me, a heterosexual. I want my sister, my dear friends and the people they love respected. They should not be refused work because of their sexual preference if it has nothing to do with how well they do or would do that work. This restriction should not come into play unless it’s pertinent (I can’t think of a job where it would… there might be one but I can’t think of it.) like an Italian being chosen over an Asian to be a waiter in an Italian restaurant. I happily give my white, British, middle class, heterosexual, male voice to these various identifiable people to ensure they have a chance to work, respect and ultimately peace but in this last instance my voice begins to be lost…

My voice is heard when it is the same as those in another minority. The moment I become different I am treated as an enemy, named a bigot, misogynist, blind, cruel, pathetic. I am silenced. I am made to feel guilty because of these strange external factors that make me like those who have a seat in power in this society. All of a sudden my voice, listened to and worthy of a chance to offer opinion in one moment, taken from me when I begin to say something that is contrary to the current popular voice. That guilt is strong and I am scared to voice my dis-ease with the way in which our society is living together.

I look at our current government I see them responding to that same guilt because they are being told, like me, that we don’t understand and we will never know what it is like. They, the white, British, middle class, heterosexual men are so desperate to be liked, to share the majority voice, that they are rushing to appease division and lead us to peaceful cohabitation. They want to be seen as the voice of the people and so they try and gauge the largest opinion and go with that. They will fail.

The way these moral decisions are being worked out is on a utilitarian model of moral ethics. It reminds me of Charles Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’ where Dickens satirizes the stupidity and violence of such a system. The greatest good? We oppose the system when we are the small voice but when we are the large voice we state it as ‘fair and just’ and should be followed. More people wanted female bishops so why don’t we have it? Less people wanted this Conservative Government and yet we get it? We protest and change our approach depending on where we see ourselves; a majority or a minority.

We are all so complicated that simple solutions don’t exist. Simple changes never work. Shakespeare wrote, ‘Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast.’ I agree and this is why I want time spent speaking in the General Synod until consensus not majority wins. It is why I want a discussion about what our society looks like and where the real changes need to be made until consensus and not majority wins. It is why I want time spent on talking through the Equal Marriage issue until consensus and not majority wins.

It is in the desire for all people, male or female, rich or poor, gay or straight to find peace that I think my voice will be lost because I am a Christian and I see communal living differently to many.

I believe in a God who is ontologically communal; i.e. trinitarian, consisting of one being, three persons, this means that God has difference held in unity as His perfect nature. Stanley Hauerwas outlines John Milbank’s view that,

the Christian faith owes no allegiance to the idea of the univocity of being, which can only uphold difference coercively and violently, but is instead moved by a trinitarian understanding of God, an absolute that is itself difference, inclusive of all difference, and thus able to affirm difference in a peaceful manner. (Stanley Hauerwas, Performing the Faith, p.87)

Creation, in my perspective, stems from a God who is pure peace and yet who has difference in His very nature. Creation, in my perspective, is ontologically an expression of that Divine nature and therefore peace is achievable without destruction of difference. When creation acts in accordance with this principle of ‘difference held by its internal harmony’ then it acts in accordance with its true nature.

Milbank suggests that non-trinitarian views of the world are different. Difference ‘enters the existing common cultural space only to compete, displace or expel’;’in the public theatre, differences arise only to fall; each new difference has a limitless ambition to obliterate all others, and therefore to cancel out difference itself.’ (John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p.376) We are, without an understanding of creation being ‘a positive expression of God’s limitless inclusion of all difference’, reduced to ‘secular peace… a tolerable regulation or management of conflict by one coercive means or another.’ (Performing the Faith, p.88)

I have tried, on a number of occasions, to voice my judgements on a situation be it General Synod’s vote on how we allow Women Bishops or the Equal Marriage debate and have been met with confusion and aggression. I am always wary of violent protest and aggressive fighting for rights. I am wary because it is not peace and peace never comes from violence; violence comes from violence. This opinion is always met with a loud ‘you would say that because you’re white, British, middle class, heterosexual male.’ I am judged and my voice is silenced. I want peace. Peace is a life lived as we are created to be. We are created in the image of a God who is pure difference and peace.

The manner in which we make moral and ethical decisions is what makes such decisions morally right or wrong. There does not exist a right or wrong action separate to the existence of a moral character.

I am for women bishops but I am also for the minority voice who are against because they deserve respect and peace. I am for same sex relationships but I am wary of the Equal Marriage Bill. I am for the poor, the lost and the broken and I am for us all acknowledging that this group, over all the others is not only a consensus but also the only real majority, indeed unanimous, group this world possesses.

I will end with Hauerwas,

Because the Christian multiple is not a multiple set dialectically over against the one but is instead an infinite flow of excessive charitable difference emanating from, and finally returning to, a single divine spring, differences are preserved rather than eradicated. Charity is the resource that makes the blending in God of all differences possible. (Performing the Faith, p.89)

Synod Works… Frustratingly

On Tuesday night the Church of England voted against the legislation that would allow women to be ordained as bishops. That sentence needs clarifying on a couple of points before I continue…

‘the Church of England voted’: the General Synod is the legislative body of the Church of England. The General Synod meets two or three times a year for four or five days depending on issues arising. It is organised into three distinct ‘houses’; bishops, clergy and laity. General Synod is made up of representatives of all 44 diocesan synods organised in a similar way but over a smaller geographical area; the members of which are nominated from deanery synods, which are smaller still.

For a significant motion (like the legislation for women bishops)to be passed it needs to be voted in all three houses by a clear majority, 66% of the vote. This is where there has been some discussion in the aftermath of Tuesday’s vote. When I say ‘the Church of England’ I mean the decision making body of the Church of England and not the whole Anglican populous in this country.

‘the legislation that would allow women to be ordained as bishops’: the Church of England has already voted in favour of the ordination of women as bishops in theory by the majority spoken above. It is now a matter of making that expression of intent a reality in practice. The legislation being discussed on Tuesday was an attempt at this practical aspect. The Church of England wants women bishops; we haven’t discovered how to do that with integrity for the whole church body.

As the dust settled around this vote there have been some reactions expressed in public that are understandable but not necessarily wise. There have been some expressing a desire to scrap or change how votes are taken in General Synod to allow everyone to have a say. Some have suggested that the bishops should be able to override Synodical decisions. Some have suggested that the Church of England is weak and fails to lead its people. Most of these opinions express, for me, a lack of understanding of what is happening. We, as the church, are not organised so that our leaders have power. We are organised so that our leaders serve. As a leader in the Church of England I serve; I serve broken, fallible, emotional and unpredictable people who demand things that may not be good for them, who express things which haven’t necessarily been processed and thought through but I serve them nonetheless. Would I act or say what they do and say? No but I am called to serve them but… I’m also called to help them to grow and transform themselves from what they are now into the  likeness of Christ. It is a difficult and long process of holding and waiting. This process is made harder by the fact that I too am needing the same thing. I am broken, fallible, emotional and unpredictable. 

We, as the church, have a social narrative which underpins our discussions; the principle of ‘I am a fluid entity in search of solidity in another.’ What this means is one principle behind our society in the church is the understanding of self as changeable. If we are unnable to change then we refuse the power of the God we believe in who transform us daily by His Spirit.

So the reactions have been boldly claimed and emphatically announced but are they right?

One question arising from Tuesdays shock vote is over how the laity, sitting in the house of laity, are nominated and from what demographic. Synod is understood to be a representative body speaking on behalf of the whole communion in this country. How can the vote against the motion vastly contradict a previous vote in favour by 42 diocesan synods out of a possible 44? It must come down to which laity is sitting on General Synod.

Although the question needs to be asked we do not need to change the synodical structures. The system works and Tuesday’s vote shows that it works. The solution to the ‘problem’ is to encourage more members of the church to respond to the call of God to change the world from a seat of responsibility. Mark Russell once told a seminar at Soul Survivor Conference that there are two ways to change the world; from bottom up and from top down. He suggested we need to do both in order for change to stick. This is profoundly true and is one reason why I’m so keen to sit on synods (deanery and diocesan only…for the moment!) What Tuesday night shows us is that those sitting on the laity have put themselves forward to be responsible and they have acted. They went through the system and got to General Synod by nominations and votes. We, as the Church of England, put those people there by our votes. We cannot then ask who is representing us in the various houses. We got what we voted for. If we wanted a different outcome we need to look at ourselves and ask; is it me who needs to speak?

I was deeply encouraged by the amount of my lay friends taking an interest in the synodical governance of the church after Tuesday. It no longer was a dry, impotent body but one that has an impact on our mission, our life together and our worship. Synod is important and powerful. If you are upset and angry about the vote on Tuesday and you are not on a synodical body (deanery, diocesan or General) then maybe you should test a call to stand up and represent.

It is deeply upsetting that it was such a painful motion that finally woke us up to our responsibility and missed opportunity to speak. It was as if shouting from the bottom up just wasn’t loud enough; we  need to also join the voices at the top to ensure the centre (and it really was the centre in this vote) hears what is being discerned. After all this is said, synod works. It ensures that the whole body is united in a decision. If one part hurts the whole body hurts, or in this case if one part of the body is uncomfortable, unsure and angry the whole body is. We have been too lax in our responsibility to discuss and connect together. We mock and belittle the point of meetings and synods but then are upset when they don’t speak for us. Being elected onto synods is not like government elections its about being willing.

My time on deanery and diocesan synod has been frustrating but only when I sit and listen to the voice in my head which says you have nothing to say on this issue. I have sat and listened to some bizarre opinions during synod but always they are listened, counter balanced and discussed.

The other reaction that came from Tuesday night was one that upsets me more than any other: This feeling that we need to ‘get with the program’. That a government body who say with their lips they listen and respond to the people but in their action fail to respond to the vote against welfare cuts, NHS, war in Iraq and many others is hypocrisy of the highest order. The political process in the house of  parliament is so separate from the  people that it relies on opinion polls and gossip to make a decision. The Police Commissioners vote is just one proof of this. Equal Marriage is being passed despite reservations by a large part of our society…

And here I am, arriving at my main point. Synod works because it forces us, as a Christian family to be aware of the minority and to ensure that the decision we arrive at is collaborative. The vote on Tuesday shows us not that we need to force, bully or violently oppress a minority voice but, frustratingly, continue the discussion. Yes, this faction may not want to discuss the issue and may enjoy the hostage situation in which they hold the power but, nonetheless, we must. Justin Welby said in his first press conference after the announcement of his move to Canterbury that we are to disagree in love. This is what that looks like!

We in the church don’t do what government do which is twist and distort opinion and PR to suit our own will but rather face up to the conflict, to enter into the pain of living together. Nor do we respond in the knee jerk way that popular culture does. We are not like the Jeremy Vine Show which any voice, if shouted loud enough and insistently enough gets what they want. Synod ensures a deep collective discernment and if it is not completely collective we wait, we heal, we forgive and we unite in love. We allow the shouters and impassioned voices are heard and wait for them to shout themselves into silence and then we wait for the dust to settle and discern what is the wind and what is our own frantic movement causing the dust to fly.

What this means in terms of moving forward is not about forcing this motion through to the detriment of this ‘insignificant minority’ but rather about continuing the process of disagreeing in love. We have come along way since the motion was first introduced; we’re heading in the right direction. The response should be to continue to love one another, painful, upsetting, confusing and frustrating as that always is but that’s what we do as the body of Christ.

As I process all of this along with my brothers and sisters, there’s so much to say but that’s not what’s needed. Silence, contemplation and prayer, that’s what’s needed. Our society has nothing that unites them and so the fear in these situations kicks in causing frantic change and rash decisions but we, in the church have one thing that unites and it comes into its own in situations just like this. Synod works because it forces us to admit that no matter how hard we shout it is in silence and calm surrender that we can, as a whole body move forward together into the presence of God who will transform us increasingly into the likeness of Christ… frustrating, isn’t it?

If

There’s a question that puts fear into many people’s heart, forces others to put up defense mechanisms and for others encourages the opinion that the one who is asking the question is naive and foolish. I believe this question, however, opens us up to inner transformation and the reception of joy and wonder. This question, when entertained and digested, changes our view of reality so that all we experience is brought into question. What is this question?

What if…?

Konstantin Stanislavski, a Russian theatre director, actor and writer on acting method, discusses the ‘magic if’. This kind of questioning allows an actor to transcend their perceived realities/ actualities and enter into the realm of possibility/potentiality. What is interesting about this technique, in light of philosophical understanding of ‘truth’, is it calls into question what we know about our experiences. Too often, in life, we believe only that which is actual, empirical, stable and tangible.

Rene Descartes’ search for true knowledge led him to dismiss anything that he could doubt in anyway. After discarding perception as unreliable he arrived at the famous belief ‘I think therefore I am’. Descartes’ conclusion is based on an understanding that if he doubted, then something or someone must be doing the doubting, therefore the fact that he was able to doubt proves his existence. At the most basic, Descartes knew he was a thinking thing. Despite my reservations about how this theory has been adopted and adapted by philosophers since (enforcing a natural turn to individualism and self centredness), it is useful in beginning the process of understanding the world around us as questionable.

The Matrix popularised this concept in 1999 as the protagonist, Neo, is pulled from his perceived reality into the real world. All that he had experienced up to that point was a fabricated, controlled and projected world which only existed in his mind; his real body was being farmed and used as a battery for alien beings. His discovery and explorations all start with the potentiality of such truth; he asked ‘what if…?’

What if I’m not who I am told to be? What if this is not the only way? What if it’s not true? What if it is true?

I grew up in a house where the search, the discovery, the process of learning was embraced and encouraged. In our family understanding and learning was the main aim of life. This has shaped me to be a person who asks questions, who never ceases to test, reflect and explore (much to the frustration of those around me!) Such questioning is not a challenge to authority nor is it a rejection of tradition; for me it is an awareness of and search for Beauty and Truth in the world around me.

As I continue to settle into this new community in York, I am re-discovering how uncommon such an outlook on life this is. I have been fascinated by how many people react so strongly to simple questions. People have felt threatened, challenged, insulted by me as I grasp hold of things, turn them over in my hand, investigate, prod, probe but ultimately with an attitude of wonder and intrigue. My wide eyed excitement at learning and experiencing something; trying to identify the uniqueness and intricate truths about something, enjoying it for what it really is and trying to find that which will make it mare real, more truthful.

What ‘what if’ questions do is open up our minds to the possibility of an encounter with the unknown. The reason this is scary is because the known is safe, comforting, stable. It is a rock on which we can have some foundation. We all have, however, just under the surface of our consciousness, a deep awareness of the changeability of life, the existence of flux; truth is not as certain as we thought it might be. The moment we entertain this thought our hearts begin to race and fear sets in. In matters of faith this becomes difficult to take. How can God be our rock, our firm foundation, whilst at the same time be ‘unknowable’ and transcendent. God refuses to be held, pinned down, confined and articulated fully. His relationship with human beings, throughout the Bible’s narrative, is one of playful, part-revelation. Ultimately His approach to encounter is one of ‘glimpses’ rather than fully and unrestrained.

I digress.

Innovation and creativity always starts with a question. The power, however, is not in the answers to such questions but the journey it starts. People often misunderstand the role of questions. As a theatre director, my role was to guide actors through a process of discovery, an invitation to enter into a world of awareness to the stimulation of their environment. An alert, aware, responsive actor is a prepared actor; the same is true of human beings.

Here’s where the question becomes powerful: We walk around on this earth taking so much for granted, assuming so many things, leaving most ideas, objects, beliefs unexamined. Socrates was right,

An unexamined life is not worth living.

‘What if’ questions begin the process of examination and contemplation. This process is scary, unsettling, overwhelming and uncomfortable but it is only by entering into this space that you find a strength so transcendent that you can remain calm even in the deepest storm. Living the question, in my experience, is becoming aware of the beauty, wonder, and amazement of the world around us. The smallest thing becomes of infinite importance, you hear words with all their meaning, you see faces with all their history, you see the potential of every person, even yourself.

People today close themselves off to the unexamined out of fear and trepidation whilst, at the same time, they close themselves off to new discovery, life giving encounter, affirmation, understanding of what is really going on. That which seems frightening, overwhelming is in fact an invitation to receive a gift; life.

Peter Brook finishes his book ‘The Empty Space’ with the following thought,

In everyday life, ‘if’ is a fiction, in the theatre ‘if’ is an experiment. In everyday life, ‘if’ is an evasion, in the theatre ‘if’ is the truth. When we are persuaded to believe in this truth, then the theatre and life are one. This is a high aim. It sounds like hard work. To play needs much work. But when we experience the work as play, then it is not work any more. A play is play.

I’ve been struck by how many people have questions and they feel uncomfortable with them. They are told by some unknown force that questions are bad and should be eradicated. I find the opposite to be true; answers destroy life. Rowan Williams suggests,

Christ may indeed answer our questions, but he also questions our answers.

I have returned again and again to the realisation that life is best experienced as a playful exploration and creative journey. Answers are the end of growth, searching and newness; questions begin journeys, discoveries and new life. In the theatre ‘what if’ questions wipe the slate clean and begin things again. Questions invite relationship with someone. Questions, when handled as gift, encourage our souls to sing with wonder, humble adoration and openness to all that is around you.

As I ponder my place in this new ministry I am aware that the world doesn’t need a church to answer their questions but one that creates a safe place to seek, explore and experience the Unknown. A church which asks the questions of society’s answers is a church embodying Christ Himself.