Thinking about John 3:16

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

I am reading Ann Morisy's book "Bothered and Bewildered" and every few pages I stop and make notes. Today I was challenged by her comments on John 3 16-17 which was at one time my favourite bible text..

"No matter how many times we reassemble this precious offer of salvation, it ends up as one of those unconvincing self referential cliches that are convincing to fewer and fewer people....  In postmodern times this is easily dismissed as fairy-tale nonsense because of the absence of anything that anchors it in earthy day-to-day life. This growing resistance to the authority of sacred text cannot just be willed away.... It is deeply distressing to have to face up to the reality that the formulas for our faith have become threadbare and that precious summaries of our faith have become mantras for a fragment of the population. However, the good news is that this lack of respect for the conceptual aspects of the faith can be countered by the demonstration of the truth of Jesus in the way he lived his life."  (pp 55-56)

Jesus brings salvation by both his life and death. It is necessary to lessen our emphasis on Jesus bearing our sins on the cross. The idea of a man dying on a cross taking away sin is nonsense to most people and most people have no sense of sin. If only a few believe this then they can be in danger of falling into the trap of "I'm all right" gnosticism. Morisy does not say that this doctrine is not true and relevant but is pointing out that it is inaccessible and and implausible.

There has been an avoidance of taking seriously the radical life and teaching of Jesus because it challenges so much that our society and the powerful take for granted. Vested interest, status and power have corrupted the church's outlook. As a result Christians have concentrated on Jesus' death and resurrection at the expense of reflecting on practising the distinctive ways in which Jesus lived his life.

Healthy and Unhealthy religion

"What people believe can uplift their lives and make them strong, or it can steal life, clouding it with guilt and all kinds of distortions.  It can divide communities, one from another and religion,  too often in history, has been the rationale for war."  -  Ron Sebring

Sebring said this in a sermon reflecting on what had happened in Jonestown, Guyana when, under the leadership of Jim Jones, 914 people committed mass suicide.  He lists some characteristics of healthy religion as a result of reflecting on what had gone wrong in Guyana.

-    Healthy religion does not indoctrinate, but teaches people to think for themselves

-    Healthy religion invites us to be humble about what we believe and what we know

-    Healthy religion does not invest in negativity; it does not major on what it is against but rather on what it is for.

-    Healthy beliefs stay in tune with reality, never filling in gaps for what we do not know.

The Church of England report "Faithful Cities" added four other characteristics -

Healthy religion will:

-    enlarge the imagination

-    teach and encourage the practice of wisdom and holiness

-    open us to the new

-    deepen our sympathies

By contrast Sebring suggests unhealthy religion:

-    tends to draw its strength from having an enemy

-    coaxes and encourages people to make a stand against this evil

-    even mild forms of  negativity such as finger pointing, backbiting and self righteous indignation are associated with unhealthy religion.


Based on my notes on "Bothered and Bewildered" by Ann Morisy p 48-49

Asserted Hope and Enacted Hope

We can make a distinction between asserted hope and enacted hope. Asserted hope is a hangover from the power ridden days of Christendom. Asserted hope relies on traditional authority or fluent rhetoric. It involves one party asserting or declaiming "In God we Trust" or "In Jesus there is salvation" or "Jesus is Lord." Asserted hope is not wrong or misleading. 

The problem is that for more and more people it is unconvincing. Asserted hope in difficult times also carries a risk because it is the tool of fascist leaders; it is the resource drawn on in totalitarian environments. In worrisome times Homo-sapiens is prone to be gullible and prone to wish fulfilment, desirous of protection from those who use their capacity for asserting hope as a route to power. 


The story of Apollo 13 is a story of enacted hope. Had mission control asserted hope, rather than worked with the crew to identify a series of actions, the spacecraft and the lives of the crew would have been lost. 

Enacted hope is hope that is accompanied by action. Enacted hope is tangible because it involves micro-actions which might on the first view seem insignificant. Enacted hope is at work in the story of the woman at the well, Her encounter with Jesus shows how micro actions contribute to enacted hope.




From "Bothered and Bewildered" by Ann Morisy p 34

A danger of Fundamentalism

The challenge that purposeful, committed Christians face (and likewise purposeful, committed Muslims) is to acknowledge that:

"There is a particular danger in religion... for all religions claim to mediate the absolute. It is easy to topple over the brink and identify that absolute with the finite and fallible human structures through which that absolute is disclosed to human beings."  (Richard Harries)

Keith Ward observes 

"There is brutal, callous intolerant religion in the world and there is kind, compassionate and tolerant religion."

However this observation that religion and Christianity and Islam in particular, can be 'both and' is mostly ignored in a fragmented and intellectually sluggish society.


This post is a quotation from "Bothered and Bewildered" by Ann Morisy (page 12)

Social media has come of age - but the ethics need to catch up

Social media has come of age because you can use it freely without being a nerd or necessarily having any idea how it works. The change has happened subtly over the last few years. It was not so long ago that you had to have specialist help or knowledge to get any new technology to work. Facebook, myspace, twitter, bebo all let you sign up and start interacting within a few minutes. And this is across devices from computers to tablets to phones to book readers. The average phone has more computing power today than my desktop pc of ten years ago.

Furthermore the expectation today is that any device or system will work as soon as you take it out of the box and charge the battery or plug it in.


The result is people are enjoying technology without knowing anything about it. We have reached the stage identified in the following two quotations:

"tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring"  Clay Shirky

"any sufficiently advanced technology should be indistinguishable from magic"  Arthur C Clarke

We don't often reflect on what we are doing because we don't need to. It works, and for the most part workd effortlessly. But I think we should sometimes stand back and look at what we are doing and think about possible unintended consequences.

Social media could be bad thing if you never read all the small print when, for example, you sign up to facebook. (Does anyone?) Do you know what you are allowing them to do with your data?

It can be a bad thing if you move effortlessly into a new social media experience and fail to consider who the technology is allowing you to connect with - are your comments just going to a friend or are you broadcasting to the world?

The increased ease of use has not been accompanied by an increase in an awareness of the ethical and privacy issues relating to the sharing and interaction that is now possible. We are lazy and the ease of communicating and our enthusiasm for "talking" with our friends can blind us to ensuring that we are only speaking to our intended audience. Which parts of life do we want to keep private and what information are we happy for our employer, customers and neighbours know?

Book review "The Testament of Gideon Mack"

"The Testament of Gideon Mack", James Robertson, Penguin 2006. (Long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.)

This Scottish novel tells the life story of Gideon Mack, as recalled by himself, as he seeks to explain his life before he arranges his disappearance from the world. It describes the stifling atmosphere of being brought up in a manse in Scotland in the 1960s. He analyses the conflict he sees between his father, the minister, and the rest of the world as "the 1960s coming into contact with the 1930s" and concludes that the sixties won. 

He then describes his journey as he tries to escape the influence of this father. Despite not believing in God from the age of 12, he becomes a Church of Scotland minister himself. As a result of this deception he spends a good part of his life wondering if he will be rumbled!

As I read the book I remembered the somewhat naive argument of an atheist that went like this. All intelligent Christians must be hypocrites. If they are intelligent then they must know that God doesn't exist yet they continue to promulgate the myths. This is an act of immense hypocrisy.

Robertson was brought up in Bridge of Allan near Stirling but I don't know if he himself was a child of the manse. If not, he has done his research well as the descriptions ring true. Though probably, even in the Church of Scotland, atheism is rare in the clergy. The novel explores the themes of families, father son relationships, philosophy, tragedy, faith and culture. Gideon clearly believes that God is not present in the contemporary world and even if he were then people are completely alienated from him. He is a lifelong emotional eunuch who never really loved his wife, spends much of his life infatuated with another woman and had difficult relationships with both his parents. He never understands them as people until after his "supernatural encounter" when he can admit with distaste and regret what he has not been able to articulate before about them.

Gideon carries on this pretence of life as a minister through his wife's death and then, few years later,  he falls into a gorge and disappears for several days. Believed dead, he reappears with a fantastic story of having met with the devil. As the story is narrated entirely in the voice of Gideon Mack we have no way of knowing if there are other ways of interpreting this fantastic experience. Is it an imaginative way of describing a breakdown when the tension of keeping his unbelief secret for so long erupts in his life? He continually asserts in the text that he is completely sane.

The last chapter of the book is an epilogue written after Gideon has disappeared and a body been found in the wilds. The narrator is a journalist who is investigating Gideon's manuscript which has come into the hands of a publisher. The journalist travels to talk to the protagonists that Gideon named in the narrative and as a result doubts are cast on the accuracy of Gideon's account. Some key individuals not only see things differently but also recall an alternative narrative of what happened.

The characters, subject matter and distortions of religion in this novel are reminiscent of  "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" (1824) by the Scottish novelist James Hogg.

It is a well written book that I enjoyed reading. Many details of the practicalities of the workings of the Church of Scotland are uncannily accurate but the book misses the humour and camaraderie that I have consistently found in the ministers and church families. The use of psychologists and other perceptive specialists in the assessment of potential ministers would probably have ruled out Gideon Mack being accepted as a minister today.

Being alongside someone in need...

Yesterday, after church, Brian asked me if I had any books on Job that he could borrow to help with his current course assignment. As I rooted through my bookshelves last night I found Ward B. Ewing's "Job: a vision of God" which I had forgotten that I owned.

Little wonder I had forgotten the book as inside the front cover I had written "purchased 29 June 1983, SPCK, London". I remember that the SPCK shop was in an old church and I used to pass it as I walked from the station to Portland Place where I attended institute meetings. Now that is a long time ago! They say the past is a foreign country and that was certainly another life!

As I flicked through the pages I found the following quotation on page 50 which I had marked with a felt tipped pen "back in the day":

"All of us who seek to minister to others need constantly to evaluate our own lives and our own responses to despair and failure. Any true ministry to the outcast, the poor, or the ill is not advice from outside but empathy from alongside. It is not judgement from above, but quiet acceptance. It is not analysis of the situation, but presence within the situation beside the one in need."

Timeless.      

Ward B. Ewing, "Job: a vision of God",The Seabury Press, New York, 1976.

Poem about love

Love just is
by John Butterfield


“I love you”
is a phrase that never
should be followed by “but” or “even if”

for if it does then it is not love

Love does not have pre-conditions
does not require exemptions
is not qualified

love just is
and being so
is enough

for love does not notice imperfection
love does not count faults
love transcends petty annoyances

so love is not easy
and love does not happen often

and if it does
treasure it
nurture it
keep it safe from harm

for though it is strong
like all living things
without care and attention
it will wither and die.

I love you
never with a “but” or an “even if”
for love just is.

(I should have posted this on Valentines day but I'm only a few days late!)

The Iron Lady - a review

I had not read any reviews of the film "The Iron Lady" before I saw it last night so, unusually, I was unsure of what to expect. I had heard reports from the BAFTAs that Meryl Streep was superb and I too found her performance magnificent!

Having lived through the Thatcher years I remember the various events of the time and I know the vitriol that a mention of her name can evoke. I never liked Thatcher in the years of her premiership but since her departure, and in the light of the experience of subsequent holders of that office, I have come to view her with more ambiguity. She was a powerful, single minded woman who broke the conventions of her age and based her whole life on the common sense middle class values that she had learnt from her father. How appropriate those values, which may well work for a household and small business in the 1950s, are when transferred to the national and international stage is the core of many critiques of Thatcherism. But this is not what this film is about.

Much of what she did was wrong. Many of the opinions she held without compromise were abhorrent. But some of the things she did, could have only been achieved through very strong leadership.  For example, it seems to me that radical reform of Trade Union Law was urgently needed in those days after the turmoil of the Ted Heath years. 

My first reaction to the film was sympathy for the confused and somewhat frail elderly lady through who's misty eyes the recollection of her life occurs. (I question the ethics of making such a graphic portrayal of dementia when the main character is still alive.) This was not the demon often portrayed but a human being who still held strong views and yet still suffered. She suffered recalling the friends she had lost in IRA bombings and the service personnel she had sent to the Falklands who would never return. (I wonder if the inevitable biopic that will be made of Blair will show him similarly reflecting on those he sent to Iraq and Afghanistan who returned home in coffins) She was also alone and lonely, but perhaps this had been her experience all her life.

The political agenda was touched on lightly in the film. The immense changes that she brought about to society and on the world stage were acknowledged but this was a film about a person and not about politics. This has annoyed many critics who say that you should never discuss Thatcher without discussing Thatcherism. This was not a political documentary.  It was a film about ageing, dementia, and remembering.
 
Streep has described Thatcher as a feminist, which both Thatcher and many feminists would deny, but the film showed clearly the male dominated and misogynist world of parliament that she entered and in which her political toughness was formed. Any woman who was not tougher than a man would never have survived in that environment.

The tragedy that the film highlights for me is that she had no confident with whom she could thrash out her ideas robustly. She was surrounded by yes men. Dennis, who might in reality have had this role was shown as a bit of a buffoon.  Without that sort of combative development of policy, if any one persons ideas are accepted without question, they will enter the public arena without having the "corners knocked off".

Norman Tebbit said of the film that he didn't recognise the protrayal of haranguing and bullying of the cabinet. I am not so sure. Unlike Tebbit I wasn't there but I have read the reports of similar haranguing and bullying by the PM during the last days of Gordon Brown's premiership when he was under pressure from his own party as well as the rest of the country. In such a situation it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking you are the only one left who is in the right and regarding anyone who disagrees with you as a spineless coward.

Streep was brilliant, both as Thatcher in her heyday and in her old age. There was more to this portrayal than imitation. The actress who played Carol Thatcher I recognised as having recently been Mrs Smallbone in Rev. and I found this distracting!

I know of people who can't bear any humanity to be added to the mental image of Maggie that they have demonised for years. This film will annoy them.  Thatcher was one of the key political figures of the last half of the twentieth century and an ambiguous product of her time.

Why Christians care about carbon

The lifestyle common in the prosperous west involves excessive consumerism that not only uses more than our fair share of the planet's resources but also emits more than our fair share of carbon dioxide. A majority of the world's scientists link human output of carbon dioxide with accelerating change in the global climate which has the potential to be devastating for people in the poorer parts of the world. Measuring our personal carbon footprint has become a shorthand way of measuring our personal contribution to these problems through our consumption and lifestyle.  When doing these calculations we can see if the impact we are having on the world is an increasing or decreasing trend and whether or not we are above or below the average for our society. These trends and our relative position in relation to society's average are more important than the actual numbers generated. This is not a process that is intended to induce guilt as people have very different carbon footprints due to our very different family circumstances.

We should care about carbon emissions because from the very beginning Christians view a central task of humanity as being to cultivate the garden of Eden (ie the earth). Humans are not left to observe or stand back but are endowed with the responsibility to preserve and direct the powers of nature. St. Augustine commented that in this process we become more fully and joyfully who and what we are. Sometimes the word “dominion” is emphasised to authorise exploitation of the earth and the non-human creation. Rowan Williams describes this as a clumsy and lazy reading of what the book of Genesis actually says. Nevertheless, these two strands, nurturing/caring and dominating/exploiting, have existed in many different forms in an uneasy tension throughout Christian history.  It is too simple to see the urge for domination and exploitation as the action of unredeemed humanity when, for example, the frontier mentality of the early colonial settlers in the new world was, they believed, a devout re-enactment of the people of God entering the promised land.

We should care because it is a justice and fairness issue for as soon as you start to examine the effects of climate change you are drawn to consider who suffers as a result. And we quickly see that the poorest in the world, who themselves have very low carbon footprints, will suffer disproportionately from the effects of raised sea levels and extreme or unpredictable weather events.

Creation care or stewardship is a biblical attitude of mind that sees the earth as God's and the human race as occupiers of it with responsibility for its care and nurture. Our stewardship is forward looking as we are conscious of the effect our choices will have on generations yet to be born.  Christians should be concerned to embed this attitude of mind into our lifestyle.

This blog post was originally written as the theological introduction to a report on carbon accounting for the Iona Community.

Beauty, God, worship and the church

The novel 'Chasing Francis' by Ian Morgan Cron suggests five themes that churches in the 21st century should be pursuing: Meaning, Transcendence, Community, Dignity and Beauty.

Beauty is difficult to define because it is something ethereal, ephemeral and subjective. However I think that  there is an objective element as well. Most people agree when they have encountered something truly beautiful. For example many would agree on the beauty of sunsets and even the most hardened rock music head-banger will probably be moved by some sublime choral music. Perhaps this is because there is something creative about beauty which is apparent to the senses, bypassing the intellect. It would account for the fact that an original art work's beauty cannot be re-captured fully in commercial mass reproductions.

Places of worship have beauty too - the Abbey at Iona in its island setting comes immediately to mind.  As I prepare to lead worship I am challenged to create something that is beautiful!  This is often easier said than done and without a grand setting you are working with clay rather than jewels.  There is something beautiful about truth and truth that is understood both with the mind and the heart. This must be the beauty of holiness. But where worship is concerned, human beings vary in what they find or consider to be beautiful. God is inherently beautiful and our response in life and worship should be beautiful in reflecting the glory of God. I have heard it said that if worship doesn't have a taste of heaven about it, it isn't worship. Worship needs to reach in and touch us deep inside, and enable our deep inner selves to reach out and touch God. Music, art, things of beauty reflect that part of the creator which is in our nature as we are made in his image. Contemplating things of beauty can often add to our experience of worship.

Methodism in its the early days was blessed with the beauty of social holiness that it lived and invited others to be part of.  Beauty can also be present when an individual finds purpose and dignity for their life.

It is the vocation of the church no less, to transform ugliness into beauty. 

Pissaro - “Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing”

(This posting is still a work in progress....)

Sunday - a day of rest?

I have been reading "The testament of Gideon Mack" , a novel by James Robertson and the following paragraph caught my eye.

"I wouldn't wish on anyone the Sundays of my childhood, and I have no objections to ferries or newspapers or play-park swings or television on the Sabbath, but I understand where the impulse to ban such things comes from. Sundays for too many people have become noisy, unrestful days. I like quiet Sundays, Sundays of thought and reflection, churchgoing, family lunches for those who have families, long walks, long naps in front of old movies on the box; Sundays without supermarkets and traffic, loud neighbours and trouble in the streets. Sundays without sirens. Even the wicked have to rest, in spite of the proverb, and if they do it gives everybody else a break too."

The quotation reinforces to the blog entry I wrote last week about the cycle of the week...

Rangers football club - A Rant

I have noted a strange omission in the news reports about a certain Glasgow football club.
I have not heard anyone state what seems to me obvious - hospitals are closing and schools are short of resources because large companies use complicated tax avoidance measures to avoid paying what they should. Thus the public purse is strapped through corporate criminal activity.
Christian Aid have recently been running a campaign calling on the government to stop corporate tax avoidance by multinational companies which can harm people in developing countries. 
When some people talk about Rangers they seem to think that a football club is very different to a bank. But it is not. It is a very similar corporate entity. It has highly payed star players who are like the top traders in a bank. These individuals get huge salaries and bonuses and they employ clever accountants to try and make sure they pay as little tax as possible. In doing this they often are close to the line that divides what is legal and what is not. It would seem from the aggressive pursuit of Rangers by HMRC that the tax authorities believe Rangers have gone over the line of legality.
Some time ago Livingstone football club went into administration to avoid paying a huge bill to the council, and then through a clever and legal dodge by lawyers and accountants started up as a new club with the same name but leaving all its debts to the town behind.
I don't like football. I don't like criminal behaviour. I do not like the cuts in public spending because the tax revenue is not there. The whole business stinks.....


HMRC stands for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs which is the Taxation department of Government

Index

This blog has grown to a size that needs an index to help find the various posts....

(the list is not yet complete - as it is being compiled manually it may take a little while!)

a
Adomnan 
adultery
advent
advent 2
Atheism 
Amazon Kindle screen
Australian novel 

b
beauty
belief
biblical certitude and violence
Book review
Brother Roger

c
carbon footprints
celtic Christianity
change
charity shops
chocolate
Christian zionism
Christmas
Christmas eve service
Columba
counter intuitive and counter cultural action
creation love
creed
CV 
cycle end to end

d
dark chocolate
dispensationalism
dying

e
easter
emerging church
epiphany

f
f words for health
facebook 
facebook 2 
fair trade
faith
farewell sermon
flash mob
Francis of Assisi 
fundamentalism

g
Gideon Mack review
good samaritan
guilt

h
heartbreak kid
Harry Potter 
hate 
headroom
health
healthy religion
hindsight 
hoarding 
hope
HTML

i
IKEA
incarnation
India 
intercession in the garden
Iona
Iron Lady film review

j
John 3:16

k

l
learning
love poem

m
Magi
menagerie
miracles with cameras

n
nationalism
N D filters
neo-natal ethics poem

o
Orthodox theology

p
Pastor characteristics 
pastoral care
politicians
prayer
prayer important

q

r
Rangers football club Glasgow
repent
R S Thomas

s
salvation
Scotland 
Scottish poem
sea fever
sepulchre 
sexologists
snow 
socialising
Solas
spiritual search 
strange world 
Sunday -day of rest

t
tax avoidance
tempus fugit
the trinity
think before you send
Thomas Merton Prayer
timekeeping
time travellers wife
town planning 
turmoil

u
uncertain future
unemployment 
unhealthy religion

v
value

w
week 
well being

x

y

z

Four "F" words for a long and healthy life

I was told the other day of some recent research that identified four common factors in the lives of those who have a long and healthy life.  The four all begin with the letter F -

Faith - this did not necessarily have to do with religion. It was the fact that people actually believed in something -  it might be football, beekeeping, birdwatching or any number of other things. They had something in their life that motivated them and about which they could be passionate. There was meaning beyond the day to day activities of survival. Of course it also included having faith in a religious way.

Fulfilment in their work. People who did something that gave them a sense of satisfaction and achievement. It doesn't seem to matter what their employment was. Fulfilment also links with the category above as some without paid employment find fulfilment through volunteering and other leisure activities.

Fellowship - people who are surrounded by friends, colleagues, or family who support, encourage, challenge and help them in many ways also get a health boost. There was no one type of fellowship which was better than others but there was clear evidence that one of the biggest negative factors working against good health was loneliness.

Freely giving  - this is a bit of a stretch of a F word but it essentially means that people who act more generously than those who tend to act selfishly are likely to enjoy better health.


Unfortunately I don't have details of the sources of the research.

Perhaps he Christian church can use this research in a marketing and outreach strategy - I can imagine the slogans for the lapel badges - "Become a Christian and stay healthier and live longer"  "Doctors prescribe faith as a cure!"  I wonder what the advertising standards authority would say about that?


 Image courtesy of domdeen / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Making change happen

"change happens when those who do not normally speak are heard by those who do not normally listen"

I do not know the providence or origin of that quotation and neither does Google but it says something important. It can apply in many different situations.

As a Christian it is a core part of my faith to speak out on issues of concern, especially peace and justice.

The quotation rings true but the more important question is how can people make their voice heard today? Most people are by nature fair and are instinctively compassionate. How can these feelings be translated into expressing concern about the things that matter and in a way that will be heard by those who can make a difference.

In an age of Internet dominated technology is there still a role for the protest march or meeting? Or have they been relegated to only being relevant to parochial issues such as preserving local landmarks?  I have taken part in huge public demonstrations against going to war in Iraq and to highlight the consequences of climate change. But these happened on Saturdays and achieved little media coverage. It is a day when the Television news doesn't have normal length bulletins and the following days newspapers have more features and magazine articles than news. Unless there is violence the media do not seem to be interested. And if there is some violence of vandalism, the actions of a few can be used as a distraction from the concerns of the majority. The lack of media coverage meant that the heartfelt message of all those thousands who turned out was only seen by the shoppers and drivers who were inconvenienced as we walked down their streets.No matter the rightness of their cause, if it is not picked up by the media then it will remain unheard.

I am sceptical of online petitions and wonder if they do any good. My cynical self suggests that they make aspiring activists feel good by creating the allusion of doing something for a cause. It may be the case that these so called online petition sites are part of a conspiracy to diffuse activists: they let people think they are making a difference whereas an online click may be nothing more than that. How do trust the integrity of any site on which you register an opinion.

Do emails sent directly to the government actually get through? Are they read? Or do they have a program that automatically recognises activist email as spam and sends an automated response. (I have received several.) They may not even measure the number of messages in their inbox.

The only thing that I can guarantee being heard is to get out an envelope and postage stamp and send a real letter to your own Member of Parliament. MPs know how few people bother to write letters these days so when they get a few real letters on a subject they will take notice and do something. They are much less easy to ignore. So if you want your voice to be heard get retro! Buy some postage stamps!

Atheism

Karen Armstrong writes well and I liked this paragraph....

Historically atheism has rarely been a blanket denial of the sacred per se but has nearly always rejected a particular conception of the divine...  Atheism is parasitically dependent on the form of theism it seeks to eliminate and becomes its reverse mirror image. Classical western atheism was developed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, whose ideology was essentially a response to and dictated by the theological perception of God that had developed in Europe and the United States during the modern period. The more recent atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris is rather different, because it has focused exclusively on the God developed by fundamentalisms, and all three insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religions. This has weakened their critique, because fundamentalism is in fact a defiantly unorthodox form of faith that frequently misrepresents the tradition it is trying to defend.

from "The Case for God" page 7. 

As I was re-reading this paragraph I was reminded of a friend of my daughter who during her school days had been a devout Roman Catholic.  When I met her a few years later she said that she was now happily an atheist. I looked her in the eye and said, "But I bet you are a Catholic atheist!" She agreed and knew exactly what I meant!

Biblical certitude and violence

 I have just found a good quotation from an article in the current edition of "Reform"

The Bible has contributed to violence in the world precisely because it has been taken to confer a degree of certitude that transcends human discussion and argumentation. Perhaps the most constructive thing a biblical scholar can do toward lessening the contribution of the Bible to violence in the world, is to show that certitude is an illusion.

John J. Collins in his presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature 2002.

Well done Amazon!! Thank you

I got a Kindle last year and have travelled with it as a constant companion. It is a great way to take my eclectic library around with me. I can read some modern trashy fiction and then a work of serious non-fiction and flick from one to the other easily without losing my place in either.
It was great to have books with me when I was travelling light in Croatia or staying at the Camus centre on the remote shore of the island of Mull. To be able to sit on the top of Duni, the hill on Iona, and choose a Terry Pratchett escapist novel to suit my mood.
It has the other great advantage of both wi-fi connectivity and a 3g connection. The 3g connection, though limited by the basic browser, I have found to be a lifesaver when I have been out of contact with the world and nowhere near wi-fi.
But this morning I had a shock. I settled down in my seat in the train and took it out of my backpack to resume reading the book I had started last night.  I was stunned as I opened the case and found that there were horizontal and vertical lines on the screen. I could not read the text clearly. What had happened? It had been OK last time I had closed it in the case.
I will never know what happened. Perhaps it got accidentally touched by some high magnetic field. I can't see how it could have been bashed or dropped without me knowing about it? I was pretty devastated to say the least. I had had it for less than a year during which time it had become part of my life.
But as I looked on the Amazon website when I got home I realised all might not be lost. There was a one year guarantee with certain exclusions.
I phoned the hot line and talked through what had happened and the nice lady I spoke to promised they would send me a new one in 3 days time. And then a few hours later I received an email saying my kindle had been dispatched and would be with me tomorrow!! Wow - what amazingly good customer service.  Amazon I cannot praise you highly enough.
Perhaps I should be worrying if there is a fault that causes screen problems. Perhaps I must be extra extra careful and keep it in a safe place all the time to avoid any possible repeat. (But as I don't know what caused the problem it is impossible to know what to do to avoid it recurring!)
But tonight I simply want to praise Amazon for knowing how to make people feel better! Thank you.

Postscript

I have just google searched for information on kindle screen problems and they seem very vulnerable to damage and mostly people are given relacements. The screen is vulnerable plastic and the whole unit is very thin and so easily twisted or bumped perhaps even without realising it. However, there are many reported instances of it breaking for no reason at all. See reports here, here , here and here.

The cycle of seven days: taking time out...

In the lovely novel “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson the following quotation struck me as particularly true.

“Now it’s Sunday again. When you do this sort of work, it seems to be Sunday all the time or Saturday night. You just finish preparing for one week and it’s already the next week.”

The novel is about a church minister and the feeling expressed in this quotation is something that I and many of my colleagues feel. Sunday comes again in seven days no matter how much other important stuff fills your week. No matter how little time you find you have left for preparation, the “big weekly gig” will come around as regular as clockwork. On a bad week the approach of Sunday can feel like the sword of Damocles hanging over your head.

On the other hand I like the routine that having a set pattern to the week brings. For Christians, as for Muslims, a week is a period of time that marks a regular cycle of devotion. My life is shaped in segments that regularly return to the source of life.

In contemporary society I believe much disfunctionality comes because every day is the same and people's work patterns do not differentiate between work days and weekends. Sunday is lost in the chaos and struggle of everyday life. Though I may feel Sunday is somehow special, if I go into the supermarket after church, I see that for the majority of people it is just another day.

The regular cycle of seven days goes back before the Jewish bible (Genesis) to the Sumerians and Babylonians who were observers of the night sky. They saw and named the days of the week after the five visible planets and the sun and the moon. This tradition has continued through to the present day. In many cultures across the world seven is a holy number which may also account for the choice of seven days for a week. There is actually no logical reason why there should be seven days in a week – it doesn't fit any natural cycle: lunar, planetary or otherwise. But to me it feels right. And certainly I agree with the sentiment that on six days you shall labour and on the seventh you shall rest.

In practice though that can be more difficult than it seems. The commandment comes from an agrarian, subsistence economy where work was often a backbreaking struggle for survival. Today people often narrowly define work as the time they spend selling their skills to others and all the other parts of life are defined as leisure. But I think it is more confusing than that. Is shopping work or leisure? (growing/harvesting/gathering food would have been work) Is repairing or working on the home work? (the fact that you enjoy something does not make it leisure) Is digging the garden work? If you lose the simplistic distinction that work is what you get paid for and everything else is leisure then it all becomes very complicated. I can't even define work as what I have to do rather than what I want to do as much of the time I am in the fortunate position that what I am paid for doing what I want to do.

So whilst accepting it is virtually impossible to define work, I want to affirm that it is important to have a regular rhythm to life. Time to be rather than do should be built into the schedule at regular intervals. When Jesus took time out and went away alone to pray he was doing just that. He was making time to be in the presence of God and these moments of calm allowed him to return revitalised into his busy life where people were always making demands on him and on his time. 

See also my related blog post on the use of Sunday .

Hymn of the day - on prayer....

(Those who were at the workshop I facilitated this evening on how to pray in

 church or at a meeting will understand why this hymn was on my mind.)

1. Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, 
 unuttered or expressed, 
 the motion of a hidden fire 
 that trembles in the breast. 

2. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, 
 the falling of a tear, 
 the upward glancing of an eye, 
 when none but God is near. 

3. Prayer is the simplest form of speech 
 that infant lips can try; 
 prayer the sublimest strains that reach 
 the Majesty on high. 

4. Prayer is the contrite sinners' voice, 
 returning from their way, 
 while angels in their songs rejoice 
 and cry, "Behold, they pray!" 

5. Prayer is the Christians' vital breath, 
 the Christians' native air; 
 their watchword at the gates of death; 
 they enter heaven with prayer. 

6. O Thou, by whom we come to God, 
 the Life, the Truth, the Way: 
 the path of prayer thyself hast trod; 
 Lord, teach us how to pray!

 James Montgomery, 1771-1854. 

Getting excited about the trinity...

(this is a work in progress - working towards Trinity Sunday which isn't until June.)

Do you remember the dialogue from the hilarious film "Nuns on the run"?
Brian:    Explain the Trinity.
Charlie:    Hmmm... well, it's a bit of a bugger. You've got the Father, the Son and the holy ghost. But the three are one - like a shamrock, my old priest used to say. "Three leaves, but one leaf." Now, the father sent down the son, who was love, and then when he went away, he sent down the holy spirit, who came down in the form of a...
Brian:    You told me already - a ghost.
Charlie:    No, a dove.
Brian:    The dove was a ghost?
Charlie:    No, the ghost was a dove.
Brian:    Let me try and summarize this: God is his son. And his son is God. But his son moonlights as a holy ghost, a holy spirit, and a dove. And they all send each other, even though they're all one and the same thing.
Charlie:    You've got it. You really could be a nun!

The doctrine of the trinity has just been "one of those things" that you hope people will not question you about.

If you want to know what I mean by this, just ask yourslef why so many ministers arrange their holidays so they do not have to preach on Trinity Sunday.

Three in one and one in three; undivided union; three distinct persons; one God. It is irrational, incomprehensible, pointless and even absurd.

Sermons try to explain and encourage but once you start trying to explain or elucidate the conundrum that is the trinity we can get in a muddle. Or if you try to read out the Athanasian creed seriously and with a straight face how do you not sound like a Monty Pythonesque parody of religion.

Basil, one of the Cappodocian fathers of the early church, (320 - 379AD) wrote about the trinity in a way that I find exciting. In over twenty years of ordained ministry I have never previously felt excitement about the trinity.

Basil taught that the point of the doctrine of the trinity is to stop Christians thinking about God in rational terms. If you used rationality then you could only think of God as "a being". Our minds cannot get beyond this. The trinity was an image to be contemplated. It is a device to counter the idolotry of thinking of God as a being as in the Arian heresy, contemporary with Basil. The trinity was a mystery because it initiated Christians into a different way of thinking about the divine. (I see here a parallel with Zen and the visulisation of the sound of one hand clapping) It is purposely logical nonsense because meditation on such an image swings your mind beyond sense and human understanding to the pure being which is God. God lives beyond human comprehension. Meditation on the trinity is an activity to be actively engaged upon rather than a metaphysical doctrine to be believed.

The orthodox icons helped in this meditation. The best known is Rublev's old testament trinity. The picture showns three characters (angels) each absorbed in each other, united around a meal. There is a perpetual motion in the picture as each of the three engages with the other two, but this is not a closed circle as the viewer is also drawn into their circle of contemplation. The three characters gain their persona from the presence and their knowledge of each of the others. This is spirituality and artistic creativity giving insight that is too deep for words.

Fair trade coffee dilemma

I like good coffee. I Also try and support fair trade goods whenever I can. These two statements used to be an oxymoron: I remember twenty or so years ago when to drink fair trade coffee you had to be really committed because it tasted dreadful. Now there is a wonderful range of fair trade coffees from many different parts of the world available from the specialist fair trade suppliers and in our regular supermarkets.

When we purchase fairly traded goods we know that the growers will get a better deal and they and their communities will benefit. I was privileged two years ago to have a coffee farmer from Ethiopia stay with us for a night as he was on a tour of the UK to promote fair trade. Since then I have particularly looked for Ethiopian coffee as he was very convincing in his arguments that his Aribica was the best in the world!

But last week I was faced with a dilemma. In the supermarket there is a fantastic range of fairtrade coffee and my local traidcraft representative has a selection of fairtrade coffee too. There is a difference though. And the difference isn't in quality but in price. To put it bluntly the supermarket is selling fairtrade coffee at a much lower price than the person who has a stall in the church and who I have been supporting for years. It is a significant difference and not just a matter of a few pennies. If it were just a few pence then I perhaps it could be because of the bulk buying power of the supermarkets. 

Is Traidcraft fund raising and loading its prices to cover these advocacy activities? I suspect they have significantly higher margins than supermarkets. Are the farmers still getting a fair price from supermarket fair trade? They must be because I know the Fairtrade mark is very carefully regulated and major supermarkets know that there are many critical watchdogs examining their ethical credentials.

I am delighted that Fair trade coffee has entered the mainstream and is competing on a level playing field with the major brands. I know that it is very able to compete in terms of quality. I expect to pay a small premium for the product to ensure that the producers are not ripped off. But I am not alone in looking at price as a factor in everything I buy. If there are two equally good fair trade brands I will pay for the one that costs me less. There needs to be more transparency in this area.

St Columba: the Saint of Iona and George MacLeod

Columba (Colum Cille) was the great grandson of the high King Niall who ruled Ireland when Patrick (St. Patrick) had been taken there from Roman England as a slave.

He became a monk and then, probably because of his royal status quickly was promoted to be an abbot and he founded several great monasteries in Ireland. In the year 563 he felt called to leave his homeland and go on a pilgrimage. He chose twelve fellow monks to go with him, which is a biblically symbolic number. The history is unclear but he seems to have had other reasons for getting out of Ireland – he had had a row with King Diarmaid and had also had a court judgement against him for stealing a psalter – which he said he only borrowed from St Finnan to make a copy!(Doesn't that sound very contemporary - Copyright piracy 1500 years ago!) The argument led to the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne in the year 561 in which many men were killed.

So whether his journey from Ireland to the Hebridean island of Iona was a great missionary pilgrimage as his loyal biographer Adomnan described it, or a case of him making the most of being sent into exile we will never know.

On Iona Columba and his brethren erected huts to form a monastery using wattle and daub (ie sticks and mud) and eventually building a small stone church, near the present day abbey.

From there his monks set out on many coracle bound missionary journeys to Tiree and the neighbouring islands and into south west Scotland. In Argyll he consecrated Aidan as the king of the Scots in the year 574, making the most of his royal connections. Aidan's kingdom covered the western islands and some of mainland Scotland as well as stretching into Antrim in Northern Ireland.

There are many fanciful tales of Columba's life including his meeting with the Loch Ness monster, as well as stories of pastoral and missionary work across Scotland. His influence spread and some “saxo” (ie Saxon English) were sent to him for instruction in the faith.

Columba died on Iona on 2^nd June 597, the same year that the king of the Saxons, Æthelberht, was baptised by Augustine, the Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury..

In the Revd the Lord George MacLeod (1895-1991) similarities can be seen to Columba. He came from a privileged background - his father was a Baronet. He was educated at an elite English public school (Winchester) and Oriel College Oxford, before becoming an officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders through the first world war.  He then devoted himself to following in the footsteps of Christ and worked as a church minister to the poor in a deprived area of Glasgow. He might have seen himself as a latter day Columba as he took groups of men (artisans and trainee ministers) to Iona to rebuild the ruined ancient stone abbey. Also like Columba, was motivated throughout by a missionary zeal for the life changing values of the gospel. He couldn't escape his background and was promoted in later life to the House of Lords by the then prime minister, Harold Wilson.

(The photo is of St Columba in the stained glass window in Iona Abbey)