For all the detectives out there When the trigger was pulled everything fell apart. Once the bullet was released the bloody end was inevitable. Up till that moment there had seemed to be an escape route, and in fact the murderer was most reluctant to even commit the deed. But after that instant there was no longer time to duck; the trigger was squeezed just that little bit harder and it was over. It's a perfect puzzle for the forensic detective. On the surface an open and shut case; the motive, means, and opportunity were obvious to all. The chief suspect pulled the trigger in front of eye witnesses - his guilt was undeniable. Yet something was not right, why did the victim not escape when he could? Was the murderer really the murderer, or was he merely a puppet? What about the bystanders, were they innocent? And the victim, was he culpable? An open and shut case by all accounts. Yet there was this trigger point - an instant that illuminates everything, reveals all that’s needed to solve the conundrum. Until then, humanly speaking, the bullet could have been avoided. But a single statement changed the outcome; it was the final straw that tipped the balance and nothing has been the same again. The trigger? A collective cry of the crowd, a voice of agreement that pushed things over the edge and put in motion a wonderfully tragic death. Like a cornered tiger the murderer was desperately trying to find an escape; he had let himself be boxed in and you could see a point coming when he would desperately lash out in attempt to survive. The only question was, who would get hurt? The crowd was baiting him like hunters mercilessly taunting a beast, or like children playing with a loaded gun they were blind to the danger of the moment. Then they cried "We have no king but Caesar.” In that one instant they forced Pilate to pull the trigger. With their voice they declared their allegiance to human pride and murdered the authority of life and death. They chose a doomed rebellion. The evidence for the prosecution: John 19:15-16 Pilate was not the murderer, he was the means. Caesar was not the motive, he was the excuse. The trial was not the opportunity, merely a perfect storm waiting for someone to add the final straw. One statement formalised a rejection of perfection in favour of failure. Who in their right mind would choose to keep authority over their failures rather than submit to something better? All of us apparently, because we do it day after day, as if our pride could have the power to put it all right. Life is a series of rolling hills punctuated with precipitous drops. Just as you're rambling along and think you can relax, you come over a crest and find yourself standing on the edge of a cliff. Then something pulls the trigger, the pin pricks your balloon. A perfect storm made from lots of tiny events explodes in your life. We fall off the cliff and it can't be undone. We never saw it coming, and afterwards wonder how we could have been so dumb. At the inquest the coroner concluded that death was inevitable. No one individual was to blame; rather it was the the fault of the collective rebellion by all individuals. Fortunately the victim somehow mysteriously unravelled the logical consequences of that collective cry, or at least he has made it possible for individuals to choose to live in an alternate reality of ascribed innocence. A reality so close to their present one that at first it seems almost impossible to tell them apart. Yet like a minor perturbation will grow in time until everything is changed, the paths of these two realities separate until one falls off the cliff as the other goes on for ever.
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Ever get tired of the same-old same-old Easter language? Its not that the familiar language we find in blogs, essays and sermons is unimportant, but that in our desire for therapeutic deism we've numbed ourselves to the deeper meanings of what is glibly stated.
I know two boys - I suppose I should say men since they're 20-something, but at the moment they're letting emotions batter their reason into submission, so I think of them as boys. They have hard questions: does God exist, why should they pay him any attention, and why can't they hear from him? Quite frankly, the whole thing is a bit of a mystery. I guess that's why we need faith: substantiated belief in what we can't completely understand. In class the other day I posed a question for the group to explore, and the response was "that's hard". I said, "Yes, and the hard questions are how we learn, the easy questions are boring". They students did not like that, they wanted me to hand out answers and were offended that I would not. The dangerous thing about questions is that there are usually answers. These two boys are going through what we should all do: question the basis of what we've been told in childhood. Until we do so our faith is a blind faith, and will remain shallow and weak. The danger, of course, is that we so easily mix our emotions and reason, and so build barriers to the answers we don't like. Add some youthful hormones driving desires of sex and rebellion, and its not surprisingly that those who come to this in their teens and twenties walk a tightrope. This Easter I've been thinking about the questions we pose to God, and the answers we could reasonably expect. I was raised with the teaching "Ask God, and he will say, yes, no, or wait". I always found this dissatisfying, because my experience didn't match. In fact, very often my experience was of speaking into a void of deafening silence. I wonder, if I was to talk with these two boy-men, what explanation could I give for a God who says he listens and loves and judges and acts and answers and ....? If I ask God a question, these are some of the wide range of the responses I might expect:
A few points on this:
Have you noticed the propensity among modern "evangelicals" (an increasingly meaningless word) to ask God for guidance about everything - you find this quite a lot among the independent churches and especially the youth. "Should we ask so-and-so to dinner", "should I go see that movie", "where should I invest my savings", etc., etc. Now of course God is involved in our lives, but I think this is sometimes taking it to the ridiculous. It's like being on a hike and asking the leader "should I step on or over that stone". It is like saying to God: "I abdicate responsibility, I have no competence to make decisions, I'm simply a robot, tell me everything I must do". We're created beings with creativity, a mind, reason, soul and emotions. Absconding from our responsibility to use our created abilities is like treating God as our personal on-demand hand-holder. God asks us to live as we were created to be - intelligent and creative - and do so in relationship with him. That means we employ all our capacity in full awareness of what God is doing, and engage as the much loved (very junior) partner. What I'd like to say to these two boys: put your emotions on a leash for the moment, rein in your anger (for you are angry). Think rationally about your questions in the light of a reason'able and substantiated belief in what you can never fully understand. Ask your questions, but also ask, is that the right question? Easter: most people will write and cite the standard phrases that get trotted out each year ... true sentiments (mostly) that bounce off our numbed skin. Yet I'm conscious of this Easter intersecting with the world like a knife plunged into the morass of personal and global events.
The penultimate line in a traditional Scottish poem goes like this: From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us! And so on to another poem (hat tip to Melanie Penn): THE SECOND COMING (William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? So lets remember to take the long view. Exceptionally, seriously, uber-smart people know where Joy is not found.
That's so "seriously cool", and some other uses of "serious" about YOLO. It's as if our language is inadequate and so we add the word "serious" for intensity to imply to others that it'll be their loss if they ignore it. Such as "The club was seriously crowded", or "That’s a seriously funny joke" (and if you don't laugh there's something wrong with you). Or in a heat wave we might say it was "seriously hot" because it was so hot it had consequences. While "seriously cool" implies a different double dose of intensity - not only "serious", but also "cool" as in having gravitas, focused, or insightful - something you really "need" to pay attention to. It's as if all the normal adjectives and adverbs have become inadequate so we need to add a new level of emphasis. Or perhaps we simply want to break through the unthinking'ness of people to get their attention. Yet we forget; either everything is serious, or nothing is. YOLO: You Only Live Once. The next hour is unique, never to be repeated, so that's a serious matter. If I'm going to use the time to laugh, or run, or eat, or love, it seems appropriate I should be serious about it. But "seriously laughing" is not about having hysterics, it means embracing my laughter wholeheartedly, taking it for everything laughter is, and nothing that laughter is not. Serious frivolity is not a contradiction in terms - and I should really know how to be appropriately frivolous (for awhile, after which it's merely being seriously excessive!). Serious grieving - I should grieve with appropriate intensity (beyond which I'm merely having a pity party). Yet YOLO is also very vulnerable to our human stupidity, our propensity to mix up magnitude and importance as if they were the same thing. We might see a massive wedding cake, and say "that's a serious cake", or be racing on a highway and say we're going "seriously fast". True enough; but that's seriousness of excess - and that illogically implies that more equates to importance - that the bigger the quantity the more "serious" it is. But take instead "she was a serious musician". This is a different type of "serious" - its an accolade for a persons commitment, and a recognition that the person finds fulfilment in their serious commitment to something we deem of value! It does not mean they were sombre, boring, or dull people - in fact the opposite is usually true. People about whom we say "there goes a serious ____" are usually people who are stimulating, interesting, and inspiring (as well as making us feel a little inadequate by contrast). Let me tell you a story, one so common that most middle class kids experience it. I'm a little embarrassed to say that when I was a child my parents did occasionally use the argument “think of the starving millions in India” in an effort to get me to finish my food. Unfortunately I was a kid who tended to try and rationalize things. So their argument usually got a response such as “I don't want any more, I've had more than enough to sustain me, and I know there's no ways these leftovers are going to magically make their way to India, so why not just chuck the rest”. My parents never gave a coherent answer that I can remember. Now days, of course, I know that they were trying to instil an attitude; "don't waste” - to which I should have responded "Don't cook so much." But in that experience lies a germ of wisdom: If YOLO, and if I want to "seriously live" (rather than live seriously) it begins in attitude. The end outcome (the things people talk about in your obituary) for most people's lives is rooted in attitude. So if I'm to be a "serious Christian", and because Christ is about Joy, then I should be serious about Joy (not happiness, that's something else) - and in fact people should look at me and say "there's someone who is seriously joyful (presuming they know how to distinguish "joy" from it's poorer cousin "happiness"). We like to quip about the the pessimist with his half-empty glass bemoaning what he doesn't have. Or the optimist with their half-full glass who is thankful for what they do have and thinks a top-up is coming. But neither are being properly serious about life; rather they are being seriously irrational about only one side of the coin. It is not about whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, its about committing to "what is", and the important thing about "what is" is that it has nothing to do with where I am now or how full the glass is, and everything about which direction I'm facing and whether I'm draining or filling the glass. That "serious musician" is as admirable when they were still learning their scales as they are when they (might) become a concert pianist. The only difference is how far they've travelled in the direction they're facing - all the time they've deserved the accolade "there goes a serious musician". Of course this is nothing to do with achievement. Focussing on achievement is seriously misleading. Focusing on being ... that's facing in the direction of serious Joy. There was an interesting article in the Washington Post about smart people having fewer friends - which has an unfortunate (but thankfully false) corollary that if you have few friends you must be smart. Among all the interesting possible interpretations of this study is this: perhaps "smart" does not mean "intelligent", but "smart" means someone who has learned the value of being serious about life, and that life is not seriousness. The smart people are the ones who find that investment is a smart thing about living, because we are a finite being in an infinite experience. Of course the really, really smart people are the one's who also think about the value and truth of what they invest in. And the really, very, exceptionally seriously uber-smart people know where Joy is not found. PS: what is the opposite of "serious"? It is "Trivial": that attitude that treats things and events and people as of little importance. YOLO anyone? PPS: Just seen this article, which has the interesting line "The three keys to success ... are attendance, attitude, and the ability to learn ..." [My bold] How's your body image? Ever worked at building that perfect shape? Strived for something "better"? Obsessed about physical looks? Embarrassed to show yourself on the beach? Or perhaps you think you've achieved the status of "God's gift to humankind"?
I once got surrounded by naked bodies. I was walking the streets and it happened to also be the London Naked Bike Ride; the bodies on display were, shall we say, "interesting". In this strange experience two things stood out: the fact that 99% of the naked bodies were a long, long way from the media's ideal, and that these thousands of naked people were so comfortable in their skin that they felt free to simply be - no façades, it was just "me in my skin".
Why can't Christians be comfortable in the spiritual equivalent of a naked bike ride? Good body image applies as much to the spiritual body as it does to the physical body - for both the collective and the individual. Yet more often than not we either ignore the shape of our spiritual body (hoping no one will notice), or else out of embarrassment dress ourselves up in yesteryear's spiritual fashion, after which we look like time travellers from the 18th century - a body oddity. What spiritual body image do you think was held by the early church? They were unashamedly spiritually naked for all to see, and confident in their spiritual skin. What spiritual body image does the church carry today, what do individual Christians carry today? SBNR anyone? Here's to finding a good spiritual body image: let's undress the church and take a good long look in the mirror, see the sags, the misshapen curves, and the skin blemishes. Let's say "in that God finds the beauty, so perhaps we should stop dressing it up in the hope people will not see what's really underneath". Instead, how about if the church could simply stand naked in our community and let people look at what is under the coverings? And then perhaps we could find the courage to do the same with our own spiritual body, and then we can all go on a spiritual naked bike, comfortable in our skin, and let people see. I been following a blog “debate” (well, not so much a debate as a bit of an online polemic, as tends to be the nature of blogs).
It began when the blogger (who I know) posed the question “Do you think there will be any historically white evangelical Anglican churches in existence twenty years from now in South Africa?”. If you want to read the posts, you can find them here, here, here, here, and here. Now the question as initially posed irked me, because it hides what I think is a far more important question. I have an unfortunate propensity on hearing a question and ask myself, is that really the important question, and what are the assumptions and presumptions on which it is predicated? Let's first consider the question as posed. Undeniably there are issues about the future of the church in this a still-fractured, hurting society of post-apartheid South Africa. But as posed the question is, in my view, at best very ambiguous. Probably the question is asking if a particular form of church, that which reflects a remnant of the apartheid era, will still exist. Fair enough, but the problem is that the question provides 3 qualifiers to the noun “church”; it refers to "white", "evangelical", and "Anglican", each of which complicate any sensible answer. Moreover, it does not ask the underlying question of “Who cares what the answer is if we can't say what 'church' means in this hyperactive, post-Christian, pre-apocalyptic(?), and relativistic society?” But lets try and answer these first three points:
However, step back for a moment and reconsider the question. Underlying the query of what the future might be for a type of “church” are two far more fundamental questions that are simply crying out to be examined through the lens of “being real in the world”. First, what is “church” today? It seems clear that the questioner had in mind the likely longevity of a certain expression of Anglicanism, but how important is it to answer whether such an expression of church will continue to exist or not? Its always useful to challenge the premise by many that persistence is a good thing. So then, what is "church" for today? Because clearly much of today’s "church" seems to have lost the plot. For all intents and purposes the everyday use of the term means the institution (when not referring to the building). Yet when Jesus says to Peter “upon this rock I will build My church” he is not referring to the plethora of institutions we've unfortunately constructed, and which have become rather like a modern day Tower of Babel where no-one understands anyone else. Yet in this diversified and complicated context, surely each of us need to be rigorously examining what it means to be church in my community. As those who read this blog will know, this question has tortured me in recent times, and still troubles me deeply (e.g. Assumptions; An atheist, catholic, and evangelical; The music that was 2015; and more). The inertia of the church, as it broadly exists, seems so huge that any course corrections seem nigh to impossible; meanwhile much of Gods work goes untouched for want of labourers to go into the fields – they’re so glued to their pews while engaged in introspective preservation of their church culture. Second, what expression of church (the ____ ____ Anglican?) is God calling us to? For whatever we understand “Church” to mean, at its heart the church is called to be missional, worshipful, and discipling – anything beyond that is merely decorative clothing. So then, what is the relevant expression of church for today's culture, for my context, for my community, for the place where God has placed me? What descriptors, in the language of the questioner, would best fill the blank in the phrase “a _______ _______ church”? It surely won't be the same everywhere, but what is it for the context I inhabit? So we have two fundamental questions that are longing to be interrogated under the lens of relevancy to God, and relevancy to the world. For the first of these questions, "what is church", there is surely an orthodox response in the Bible; “Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshipping together as some do but spurring each other on” , as put in colloquial language by Eugene Peterson. That's an useful encapsulation of being orthodox church, yet requires freedom of expression, permission to be different, authorizing people "try, even if you fail". (Three great talks on this: using your gifts, the vision, and being part of the story). The answer to the second question is surely addressed by Paul when he says “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some”. When did your church last prioritise the challenge of becoming what's needed to reach others? This, I suggest, is a good way to measure the outcomes from our collective worship gatherings (our "services") – when, through our worship we find God's heart of compassion such that we would even stand in the shoes of another to understand how best to reach them. Of course there's much more to be said. So much more. But for me, in my time, and in my place, these are the important questions I believe we should be wrestling with: what should church be and what should church do, here and now in our community, and do we have the courage to follow through despite our habits. To cite the bible again in Eugene Peterson's colloquial language "What I’m getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you’ve done from the beginning [as in the church in Acts]. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I’m separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure." |
Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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