Tag Archives: free will

Freedom

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Freedom is a word,
Easily spoken,
Easily heard.

Freedom is a phrase,
Easily used,
Easily phased.

Freedom is an idea,
Often misunderstood.
We all think that we want it
But only because we should.

Because freedom is something
Surprisingly hard to live.
It’s thought in terms of how we take it
But no one considers how to give.

The forgotten secret is
It is we who oppress us,
It’s our self-identities, personal choice
and free wills that suppress us.

Before you baulk
And run a mile,
Consider this, pause,
Reflect a while:

We all love freedom
When it suits us best.
‘Surely freedom won’t challenge,
Upset me or test.’

It’s us with our fake freedom
Which ultimately binds us.
True freedom is what I wait for
And I hope to God, will find us.

If I am the captive
To whom He comes to free
Who are my real captors
And how have they bound me?

Our worldview and our culture,
Built from Reason, long ago,
Has led us to a place
Where depression’s our status quo.

I don’t want freedom
If it leads me to self harm,
Twisted confusion as to where we are
Lost beyond all calm.

This fake freedom stinks
It’s odour easily blinds us
Yes, true freedom is what I wait for
And I hope to God it finds us!

Written for a Burning Fences event called ‘Liberate’ on Sunday 9th March 2014

They sat with their arms above their heads, the blood having drained from them weeks ago. Conversation had dried and their eyes hadn’t felt tears for months. Every crack of light was now a disruption of the darkness and no longer the desired contact with a world beyond the four walls. Every noise was an imposition on the silence, a silence filled with their comforting lists of hopes lost.

They had resisted arrest; they had fought against captivity but there was a moment when they weakened but they no longer remember the details. The barriers of self-preservation had crumbled once one brick of integrity had shifted. How quickly they had settled into routine! How easily they had embraced the chains that bound them!
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Whilst the shackles found the grooves in their skin to make their home, the two men impotently discussed release, escape and freedom. This conversation became as mundane as asking about the weather and the reality of it became a dream, became a fantasy, became rhetoric empty of power. They no longer imagined life outside although they spoke of nothing else.

Days became weeks became months became years and the chains began to keep their wrists warm. The gloom was their natural habitat and their eyes were native to the dimness and still the poetic proclamation of liberty echoed in the emptiness of the cold, hard walls of their imprisonment. Cycles of conversation and expressions settled into a rhythm of seasons and they no longer measured Time outside of these recitals of exchanges of dreams.

sep8 Where he came from, neither of them knew. How he got past their captors; who could say? He was either a fraud, one of the warders provoking them for his own amusement; or their captors had fled leaving the cell unguarded; or it was a miracle. None of this mattered much as he walked over to them and spoke.

“Do you want to be free?”

His voice was soft. It was not a weak whisper but a powerful authoritative bass that seemed to hold all other voices in tune. It had no need to clammer to be heard or strain to carry any strength.

The simple answer became lodged in the prisoners’ throats, desperate to be released into reality. It remained, snared in its place as the silence enveloped and overpowered them. As muteness overwhelmed them, doubt took its grip and finally fear pinned them: What if it was a trick? How was this even possible? Where had he come from? Where would he take them?

“Do you want to be free?”

“How did you get here?” they stuttered.

“You have nothing to fear. I have been sent to set you free.”

By whom? For what? Why now and not before? Before they accepted any offer of liberty they wanted to know that where they were being led to would be better than this oppression. This stranger needed to earn their trust.

The two captives waited for him to make a move but he just stood there. There was no apparent rush, no captors running in to stop their release… where were their guards? Had they been overthrown? Had they fled? Or were they waiting outside? Their thoughts and questions were beholden on the condition of their captors but through all of the uncertainty bombarding their minds the stranger remained steadfast before them. His face showed no impatience. He waited for an answer. After a time he sat down.

“They can no longer keep you,” he said, as if reading their thoughts. “Do you want to be free?”

“Yes.”

The word hit the walls of their enclosure and echoed on the stone cavity despite being released weakly from the cages of their mouths.

They had spoken of freedom so often but now it seemed so real. The visitor stood and walked towards the first prisoner and pulled at his shackles. To their amazement they slipped easily off their wrists. The newly released man gasped, in part in relief but more so at the ease at which his chains fell. How had that not been possible before? He had tried, in the early days, almost every night to squeeze his hands through but they were tight around his skin. In the hands of their liberator, however, they crumbled like sand.

Once he had been freed the other came just as easily and in no time they both were standing in the darkened room, free of their chains.

“That was the easy part,” the man said with a smile, “Shall we?” he gestured to the door.

Through the door a soft light spilt into the room. It was not bright and the prisoners thought it must be a corridor with little to no natural light or it was night time. Then they were struck by the realisation that they no longer had any concept of Time; they were so programmed by their oppressors, that life, independent from them and the rhythm and restrictions governed by them, was alien to the prisoners; out of tune. How were they to function now? They no longer remembered reality as free-men.

“Follow me.”

The enigmatic emancipator began to leave. As he passed the threshold he turned and held out his hand. His wrists were scarred, marked with the shape of fetters long since freed from.

“You can hold onto me. You must be weak on your legs.”

It was true, they were out of practice and they stumbled towards the door and the gentle man who stood in its frame.
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File0042594 Through the doors they saw their guards sleeping soundly. It seemed so strange – no – illogical that they could slumber during a rescue mission in the jail they were meant to watch. The whole incident was feeling so mysterious and implausible; a dream with no reason. Yet this man kept leading them down the corridor towards a bright light; the final exit to freedom.

As they finally reached the escape to liberation they turned back for one final sight of their home for the last years. They felt a fondness towards that place; the predictability, the certainty and steadiness of their life in the embrace of the enclosure. The two men had built a life together.

In the walk between their cave and the infinite unknowns that lay outside they began to consider the life they were about to embark on; a life they had talked and dreamt of for so long but never contemplated possible. It felt so scary and paralyzing now. Whilst salvation was a fantasy within their heads, it was guarded, protected, boxed in and manageable; in the stark reality it was vast, un-wielding and oh so debilitating.

As they looked back the guards began to wake and stand. They started to walk towards their prisoners. They seemed afraid, wary and disarmed. Their eyes were fixed on the third man who stood between oppressor and oppressed.

“Go. You don’t need to fear. Go,” he said but they could not.

They remained fixed to the spot staring at their masters as they came closer.

What happened next remains the most shocking and mysterious part of the whole story. One which I will never be able to explain.

My friend, companion and fellow slave turned and smiled. He said nothing but it was like he was pleading with me to stay. I stared back, unsure and helpless. His head dropped and he walked back to our cell. The guards embraced him and sent him on his way into the comforting darkness at the end of the corridor.

I called to him but he never heard me or he chose not to respond. My liberator faced me, looked me in the eye and said,

“I have come to set you free. Choose freedom.”

With that he followed after my friend. The jailers allowed him to pass but did not touch him. They showed no power over him and were clearly uncomfortable in his presence. Before the door was closed, the stranger turned and said words that echo in my head even today,

“Some people love their chains too much to be free. Others choose the chains of freedom and overpower all oppression.”

The Future Doesn’t Exist/ Everybody’s Free

WARNING: This post is more sporadic, disjointed and ultimately more passionate than most of my posts. Hang in there and invest in the proposal…please… oh and comment, suggest books, ask questions. Now, more than ever, I need your help!

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (Jer 29:11)

Over the last year I’ve become more and more convinced that God is more interested in the present than He is in the future. I often sum up the idea by proclaiming the un-nuanced version; “I don’t believe in the future.” I don’t exist in the future, which is a healthy psychological position, and therefore I don’t participate in the activity of believing in that realm. I also don’t have trust in the future, I don’t have faith in this thing we call ‘future’. As well as both of these opinions I also don’t believe the future exists, i.e., It has not been created yet, it is not a static place or thing that we can in anyway grasp. The future is not reality. In most Churches the use of language about future is not fully explored.

What is ‘the future’?

The future is a designated time after this moment. We can call anything that may happen after now as ‘the future’. Its existence is considered inevitable due to the laws of time (tomorrow will happen after today). The inevitability of its existence doesn’t mean it exists currently, indeed the definition rejects any possibility of the future existing in the present for if it did it would be the present…

If we live in the belief that the future is a reality then we live within that belief system. For example:

Say someone believes that in the future they will be a doctor that belief impacts their present. They then believe that that future is inevitable and so the present moment and the decisions taken are changed in order to prepare for that reality. When that reality doesn’t arrive there’s a tear in their inner belief system. They had built a false reality around an imagined future and believed and trusted it would happen.

Trying to define the concept is difficult but I want us to rely on our simplistic understanding of ‘the future’ so we don’t have to enter into the physics of the future. We all feel at some time, divorced of the scientific thoughts, the sense of time just washing over us. Each moment has gone in a flicker of an eye and we enter into the next moment or it pushes onto us. Here is where I’d like to stop and ask a question.

Can we step into ‘the future’? or, do we step into ‘the future’?

You may ask what’s the difference between entering into the future or the future stepping into us? I believe it’s all in the interpretation. If you see yourself stepping into the future then there’s an implicit understanding that the future is a place/reality in which you can step into; it has become more concrete then just a mere concept. The onus is on you to make a decision as to whether you go or not. You have some element of control. We all know, however, that we will be in that moment whether we choose to or not. The future will become the present and the present moment will become the past. So the heavy concoction of sensing some control of time and its frightening inevitability makes us want to know the future before it happens. “If I am being forced to step into a room I want to at least know what’s in it.”

If, however, you see the future as coming at you like a freight train or a gentle stream then there is no control over it, implicit or explicit; all you have to do is stand there and deal with what comes. It is this idea that has been deeply liberating for me.

The passage from Jeremiah which we started with implies God is a puppet master of the cosmic order. The confusion happens when we acknowledge we also believe in free-will. What is free-will if God, ultimately will get His own way. That’s not true freedom, that’s manipulative! So how do we marry these two opposing views?

I wrote, last year, on God as the Divine Director and cited both Joseph Myers and T.J. Gorringe. The two posts (Divine Director (part I) and Divine Director (part II) posts) talk about the subject from a leadership perspective. Today I’d like to see it from a more general perspective.

What does God want me to do? What are His plans for me, plans to prosper me and not to harm me?

I’ve had so many conversations with people who are desperately trying to figure out what to do with their lives (one of those people was me!) There are so many options and choices to make; work, relationships, houses, money, religion, etc. We all have to make the ‘right’ choice and God is interested in the choices we make because the choices we make define who we are and our priorities. But what if we state that the future doesn’t exist yet and that any choice we make in the present directly impacts the creation of the future?

We create the future.

Take improvisation in drama. As an actor you stand on stage and, in order to create a narrative, you have to make a decision, you have to impact the story. This is deeply frightening as you stare into the emptiness of the next moment. You don’t know what is going to happen and the more you remain silent and frozen the larger that abyss becomes. There’s great wisdom in the slightly frustrated director’s command, “Do anything.”

The truth is it doesn’t matter what you do in that moment, what matters is how you do it. The question we must ask when making decisions in the present is not “Is this what God wants?” but “Is this in line with the character of Christ?”

So what are God’s ‘plans’? In this passage the word for ‘plans’ can be translated as ‘thoughts’. In the Hebrew Bible it is translated as ‘For I know the thoughts I am having for you…” “I know what I think of you.” It is more about the character of the person rather than their action.

What if following Jesus isn’t about asking What Would Jesus Do but rather How Would Jesus Be then the choices we make are important not because of the actual decisions but whether they’re made in line with the character of Jesus. God requires us to live this moment in the character of Jesus. Do not live in the future for it doesn’t exist yet, live in this moment. ‘Do not worry about tomorrow…’ The future will happen and when it does, if you live like Jesus, then all will be well. If you make a decision, God will bless it if you make it whilst being faithful to the character of Christ.

As a director, in improvisation, I don’t care what actor’s say or do as long as they do so with consistency of character. Jesus, likewise, criticizes religious hypocrisy a lot because their actions are not in line with their belief. They maybe making good decisions in line with the law but not in line with the character of God.

Do I marry this person or not? It doesn’t matter. What matters is how you marry them and consequentially fulfill those promises that matter. Or how you separate. Faithfully follow God’s commands; ‘Love God and love your neighbour.’

What do I do for a living? It doesn’t matter. What matters is how you live as whatever you become. Faithfully follow God’s commands; ‘Love God and love your neighbour.”

Does God know the future? Yes. He knows everyone’s decisions and the consequences of everyone’s action colliding together. Can He fully control the future? No because He has given His people free-will.

I hope you can begin to see why I’m struggling to write this book! So many ideas and implications it’s hard to contain them all. I guess I want everyone to know this; Do not worry about what you will do or what you will say. Life is not about which path you walk but the way you walk it. Jesus is ‘the way’ not path so walk like Him. The future will arrive inevitability and will ask you to make choices but you cannot predict what those choices are so concern yourself with making decisions now in this moment.

We’ve not been able to get into the subject of prophecy, eschatology, discernment. At the end of the day (it gets dark!) God wants us to share responsibility for our decisions, He wants you to choose. He can’t control what you choose but He can advise and give you strength how to choose.

I will finish on some lyrics from Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen)’:

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday… Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Divine Director (part I)

My reading over the summer has been sporadic to say the least. I constantly jump from ‘Organic Community’, ‘The Empty Space’, ‘The Shifting Point’ (another Peter Brook book), ‘The Invisible Actor’ by Yoshi Oida and now into my more theologically heavy tomes, ‘God’s Theatre’ and ‘Transforming Fate and Destiny’. Books move from the top of the pile to the bottom frequently as my interest and whims change day by day. This reading is also interrupted by revision on theatre practitioner’s theories in preparation for ‘The Workshops’ running the first couple of weeks of term. Add to this the inevitable daily activities of a wife wanting to do those household chores put aside for the holiday season and you have all the ingredients for a mental meltdown!

There has been, however, some exciting and recurring themes coming through in my research and one of which is particularly helpful for me for a couple of reasons.

For those of you who have been reading for some months now will know, I have struggled with the idea of ‘God’s will’ and how one should discern it; the theological balancing of the providence of God and free will. My evangelical background has led me towards an understanding of God as having a plan for each of our lives and has a map of how our lives should be lived. This means that listening prayer becomes really important to discern which decisions one should make in order to be aligned to His will. This discernment is not a perfect solution as you can never be totally sure you’ve heard him right (if at all!) and so confusion and doubt creep in. The pray-er justifies decisions and outcomes depending on how confident they are that it was God’s will in the first place. This is an adequate theological standpoint and I’m sure there is some truth in it. It does lead to, however, some Christians proclaiming knowledge of God’s one and only will and leading many down destructive or damaging paths. I want to clarify, I don’t think everyone claiming to hear God’s voice in a situation is leading people into destructive or damaging paths but sometimes it has happened.

I struggle when new Christians come to this teaching. Having heard a gospel of grace and cleansing of bad decisions made, they are then pressured to hear God’s will in how to live their lives now and when they make one wrong decision then it’s hard not to feel like you’re not good enough to be a Christian because you’ve messed up God’s plan again!

Joseph Myers in ‘Organic Community’ suggests;

‘A theology of God as master planner implies that God has a purpose – even one purpose – for your life and it’s your lifelong job to pursue it, identify it, and live it out. The gospel becomes, “God has a plan for your life.” God has planned the job, the life partner, the house, the child, and so on. He wants nothing more than our cooperation with his plan. A theology of God as organic order, however, allows for collaboration with him. We are privileged to participate with him in the forming of our future. He invites our ideas, our energy, our creativity, our perspective. He gives up a measure of control to facilitate relationship with us and to demonstrate his love.’

In ‘God’s Theatre’ T.J. Gorringe dissects the main theological and philosophical thoughts on providence, walking his reader through Calvin, Augustine, Aquinas thought and many other historical heavy weights. He argues that you fall into the trap of saying human free will is always working contrary to God’s will and therefore we should cast it aside and be automatons or God works all things to good and so we can do what we like because God is going to fix everything anyway. There are other standpoints, as you can begin to discover, but I just want to give a flavour of the different and varied views. How do we balance God’s omnipotence and Scripture clearly proclaiming God having a plan for human kind and working in this world for the furtherance of the Kingdom and our innate free will?

Gorringe goes onto suggest an understanding of God’s work amongst human beings that has helped me to see more clearly how we can pick up Myers call for ‘organic order’ and see God as someone who wants collaboration rather than cooperation. Gorringe’s ideas come from none other than Peter Brook…

I was immediately interested!

He begins by retelling the story, originally told by Brook himself in ‘The Empty Space’, of one of Brook’s early directorial posts on Love’s Labour’s Lost for the RSC. I returned to ‘The Empty Space’ and read the account. Brook describes how he would have a scene mapped out before rehearsals; He knew where people should move and how and what every moment would look like. He would use cardboard figurines to move them about the stage at different moments and would have it all charted out. I was reminded, as I read this, of two things; firstly, how closely this describes my method of directing early on in my career and secondly, of this implement called ‘a director’s tray’ that was brought to my attention a week ago. This ‘tray’ marks out the stage into different areas and a director would move markers (signifying actors) around the tray like a general would in a war room. Brook, like many directors before and after him, discovered,

‘As the actors began to move I knew it was no good. These were not remotely like the cardboard figures, these large human beings thrusting themselves forward, some too fast with lively steps I had not foreseen…We had only done the first stage movement, letter A on my chart, but already everyone was wrongly placed and movement B could not follow… Was I to start again, drilling these actors so that they conformed to my notes? One inner voice prompted me to ddo so, but another pointed out that my pattern was much less interesting than this new pattern that was unfolding in front of me…I stopped, and walked away from my book, in amongst the actors, and I have never looked at a written plan since.’

I hope you can begin to see where Gorringe begins to see how God might work with human beings.

Join me tomorrow for part two of this post. Go and have a cup of tea or whatever your beverage preference is and I ask that you mull over how you see God working His plans in your life. Have you ever struggled with the idea of God having one plan for your life and that’s it? How do address life decisions? Have you ever struggled with discerning prayer?

See you tomorrow…

Back To Basics

As my placement in Byker finished I began to breathe a little deeper and slower and looked ahead at the wide expanse before me, otherwise known as ‘summer holiday’; two months of rest and recreation, a chance to catch up on personal fulfilments not dictated to me by college or the Church of England. What is it that a trainee vicar, who fills his work time with reading theological books, listening to different Christian leaders’ views and assessing what God is doing in the life of His church, does on holiday?

Read theological books, listens to some preaching from some Christian leader and assesses what God might be doing in the life of His church…of course!

As I have said before (see Reading and Telling Stories post) I have lots of books on the go, all of which are chosen by me with no pressure to write any essay on what I learn from them. I will, of course, be writing a personal journal and, if anything stands out, some posts here. Looking at the pile of books by my desk I can count eleven books not started and two books waiting to be finished. It’s not this that I want to talk about but rather the listening to the preaching of Rob Bell and Shane Hipps.

Rob Bell has been a very influential figure in my walk of faith. I know lots of people don’t like his style, they find him too ‘trendy’ and his style of writing and delivery can be slightly patronising at times but I find his passion contagious and his approach to his relationship with God is something that I would love to have. He is humble and honest about his ministry and I believe he has discovered a real balance between being ‘in the world’ but not ‘of the world’.

I used to listen to Mars Hill Bible Church’s weekly sermons online and found that they really spoke to me. They encouraged me to appreciate the greatness of God and the love he pours out to all people. When I started college I couldn’t find the time to dedicate to listening to them on top of all the work and time with my wife so I stopped. Now that summer is here (and I’ve just got an iPhone 4 with iTunes on it) I decided to download the last six weeks talks to enjoy.

Rob Bell and the new pastor, Shane Hipps, were preaching together for three weeks. Their aim during these talks was to share their stories and try and discover what God might be saying to the Church on the whole. What spoke to me was their description of Jesus and the Church. Their understanding of God and the Church is one that can encompass ‘all people’. It’s basic. They are becoming more and more aware, it seems, that Jesus is bigger than we could ever hope to imagine. They describe Him as a lion that cannot be tamed. He is beautiful only when He is un-caged and in the vast wild. They suggest that we as Christians want to ‘cage’ Jesus in a nice little box because we are afraid. We are afraid that something will hurt ‘the lion’, we are too focussed on ‘the lamb’ image and forget that Jesus is bigger than that, fiercer than that!

And this is disconcerting for us.

‘If you are not disconcerted by how big Jesus is, then you have shrunk him down… A lion does not make a good house cat.’ (Shane Hipps)

‘For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.’ (Ephesians 1:15-23)

It reminded me, as they spoke of the greatness and power and authority of Christ, of the people of Byker. The small, faithful congregations of St Michael’s, St Martin’s, St. Silas’ and St Anthony’s knowing deep down that Christ will always be in Byker; that there will always be a Church. It reminded me also of the latest episode of ‘Rev.’ (an astute comedy of ordained ministry!) where the main character struggles with the lack of numbers but stands in opposition of ‘selling out’ to hype and bribery (smoothies!) in favour of faithful worship and service.

The talks from Mars Hill reinvigorated my passion for God’s Church, reminded me that I worship a God who has fought the battle a lot longer than I have and that I am his servant. Rob bell reminded all of us, in his talk, that we do not need to agree on everything, we are not a cult! But we must centre ourselves on Christ, worshipping and listening to Him. He suggests we can disagree with our leaders because they are ‘interpreters’ of the Word, they are not God. He uses 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 as his basis,

‘Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly – mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe – as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.’

None of us has it totally together and none of us has the only way because if we limit God we limit his power and authority. I was challenged because I had found myself saying in Byker, “This is of God… This is not.” Who did I think I was? Yes, we have been called to claim God’s work but how do I know? I don’t have an answer. I’d like to suggest that if the action or behaviour is moving people closer to a relationship with god, if it is creating a sense of wonder and desire for God, if it is making people bring glory to God then it should be blessed and named as Christ… but am I in a position to do that?

I know I have fallen into the trap of domesticating Christ and shrinking my view of God and this time at rest is allowing me to see God as the awesome, fierce and all encompassing God that He is! We as His Church should be equally big and all encompassing. What happens, therefore, when real disagreement comes up? Take the situation in the Church of England at the moment where ‘division’ is the biggest fear, how do we remain the big Church who preaches to have a big god who can encompass ‘all people’? Unfortunately, we need to walk a careful, prayerful and steady walk together. We need to centre on Christ and re-centre on Christ again and again and again and again… We need to allow disagreements to be present as a reminder that we are not God but ‘servants’, none of us has the last word, only God. Division is not an option. To get to the stage where we, Christ’s united Church, say “I cannot be in the same room as such and such” “We cannot worship God because they are not ‘proper’”, is not unity.

Yes to have a gay bishop, is an issue for many Christians, laity and clergy. Yes to have a female, ordained leader, is also an issue for many laity and clergy, but none of us is God. None of our leaders is God. If we divide and start to say “I follow Forward in Faith.” Or “I follow Rowan” or whatever it is, then we are going against the message of the Church set out in 1 Corinthians 3.

I must remember, as I go into my placement in October, to ‘interpret’ in godly and prayerful way. I must not limit God’s all encompassing love. To allow ‘all people’, from whatever background, to encounter Christ for themselves and to be placed firmly in the position of His servant to do His will and to allow Him to be the ‘un-caged lion’ that He is.

Amen?

Wrestling With Truth (part VIII)

Sorry for the delay. As you scroll down you’ll see this is a bumper edition! I have been on holiday and have tried to resist writing too much. But what a week!

After our time in Isle of Wight, my wife and I travelled to my home town of Tunbridge Wells, nestled in the Kent countryside. This time was to catch up with friends and family because, being all the way up in Durham, we don’t get any time to visit and be present with them and for them.

On Thursday night I went to the National Theatre. I travelled up to London on my own due to the fact that the play I was going to see, ‘Love the Sinner’, was definitely not my wife’s cup of tea. It also gave me loads of time to be by myself for the first time and to catch up on some reading.

The play promised much! It was about church politics and debates. A group of church ministers gather to discuss policies of the church. With this backdrop we a faced with the life of Michael, a church volunteer, who has joined the council as a scribe and who gets sexually involved with an African boy who is a porter at the hotel. Back home, with his wife, Michael faces questions within himself of ethics and how he lives his life as a ‘Christian’. The African boy then turns up at his home and throws his world into chaos.

The play was great, well executed and full of subtlety. There’s always a certain standard you can expect from the National Theatre and if it meets it there’s nothing of note to say (if that makes sense). The set was clever and simple. An office-like blind replaced curtains at the front of stage meaning you’d get glimpses of the set changing when a breeze caught them. The lighting was nothing amazing but nor was it distracting and the music that accompanied scene changes was a shrill African voice that worked well at keeping you on edge and uncomfortable.

And that’s what I felt through the whole play… uncomfortable. The topic being discussed was well researched. The play opened with a debate by Bishops on homosexuality and there were the liberal Bishops (mainly from the States) and the conservative Bishops (mainly from Africa) and the discussions were funny in their truthfulness. During the debate, however, I felt myself growing tense inside. I suddenly realised that the debate going on onstage was the debate I have with myself on every issue.

I grew up with a liberal mum (see Wrestling with Truth (part VII) post) and I can see how this approach and mindset is helpful in discussions and how it can be embracing of many people. My desire is always to bring people into a relationship with Christ because I believe it makes a person understand themselves and the world around them. The liberal approach to major ethical issues allows as many people come to that relationship and breaks down barriers. There is, however, a strong problem I have. I don’t believe Christ made it easy for people to follow him. He always challenges and always asks for more. For me, the heart of Christianity is the cross; to die in order to live, to allow all that you want and think is best to die and free yourself from self sufficiency. This call is not easy, it’s the hardest thing you can do.

There was a scene in the play where Michael, the volunteer, returns home and gets into an argument about squirrels with his wife. She asks why he’s reading his Bible more at home, he says he wants to take his faith more seriously. She doesn’t understand. It then turns out the wife wants to try IVF treatment and Michael is unsure and says that He doesn’t think it’s right and that they should ask God if its right. The wife gets angry and says that God wants her to have a baby and asks why God would want to stop her from being happy.

This standpoint made me really upset. I know several couples who have used IVF and are now expecting children. I am overjoyed with this and am praying for them continually. Do I, therefore, believe that IVF is always right and is blessed by God? No. For the couples I know and for countless others I know IVF is an answer to prayer. God gives us what we want. So why did I get upset with the character’s understanding of God? God gives some couples babies through IVF not because it’s their right to have children but because they understand the wonderful gift they are from God. My friends didn’t demand babies from God and expect them. They didn’t say “If God doesn’t make this work then I refuse to follow Him.” They prayed that God would bless them and if it be His will then babies would be given to them. The character in the play demanded God give her what she wants; she was putting God to the test saying her belief in Him is dependent on Him giving her what she wants to make her happy.

Too often I see the world demand they get what they want. God gives good gifts. Yes. But God isn’t our slave or our genie in a bottle. “If God is good, then he’ll want me to be happy and what will make me happy is…”

I find myself quoting that well known philosopher, Mick Jagger,

‘You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.’

Too often I find people listen and can’t believe God wouldn’t want to give them what they want. I believe God gives us first and foremost what we need and we discover that actually that’s what we want. Only sometimes does he give us what we want because, we discover, it’s what we need.

Love the Sinner demanded much of me as a Christian audience member. Having seen Peter Brooks’ play ’11 and 12’ about tolerance and being challenged to see my faith differently this play asked the opposite. The Bishops at the beginning talked about the battlelines. Are we, as a faith, willing to sacrifice the things that define us to slip away in order to allow people to get on board with us? Are we sacrificing the cross in order that people don’t have to make too much of a life changing decision to become a Christian? At times I feel the liberal side of the church demands too little of people. Then again, the conservative side of the church demands too much and continually trip up over hypocritical statements. The liberals get grace but the conservatives get sacrifice.

Usually this is something that people can wrestle with for ever and never come down on one side or the other but the issue for me is I’m becoming a leader and it’ll be demanded of me. “Where do you stand?” What are my battle lines? Where are my boundaries? For many of us struggling with ethical issues in relationships we must ask what does God want? Some many people say they pray and feel God wants them to be happy. That may be what God wants but how do we know? Are we just hearing what we want to hear? Where is the prophetic voice of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah saying “This is not what God wants” It’s a tough message to hear and it sometimes sounds like a roar (see Reading And Telling Stories post) but it needs to be said. God demands alot from us and His way is not always our way. Where has the prophetic voice gone?

The play was deeply upsetting because it hit me right in the heart. It made me sit up and listen to God. Too often I jump from liberalism to conservativism and I do it so that God thinks what I want Him to think. Underlying my viewing and my thoughts was a Bonhoeffer quote;

‘We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unmasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard’

As I left the theatre i walked through the streets of London and saw poverty, anger, misery and was deeply troubled; so many people needing to hear that god has a way of life that brings peace but it’s a narrow path. In the play the African boy who lives a life of real poverty and violence and he turns up at Michael’s house demanding help. Michael was frozen in fear. “It doesn’t work like that!” I saw a guy begging under a bridge near Waterloo. I thought to myself, “There are a hundred and one reasons why I don’t invite that man to come and sit with me and have dinner. There are countless reasons why I can’t help that man but Jesus did and demanded I did.” We sit around and argue our standpoint on issues of sexuality and politics but every day we do people die and starve and miss an opportunity to know peace.

But there are a hundred and one reasons why we can’t make a difference…

This is a big topic and one which continues to divide the Church but it’s important that we all know the strengths of both sides and also question and allow God to challenge all of us in our views.

My mind is in turmoil about all of this (as you can probably gather) all I know for sure is I want to follow Christ and to have boldness not to sacrifice his powerful life changing word for cheap grace!