A Simple Faith

My shower is evidently a very inspiring place to be. I seem to think up most of my blog posts in it.

(Yes, you needed that contextual information.)

As usual, this morning, I was thinking about my frustration at A-Level R.E. It's a great subject, but it doesn't relate to my faith at all, and so I struggle with the dull critical essays which bandy around words like 'soteriology' 'replacement theology' 'eschatology' e.t.c. without ever getting to the heart of the matter. I sincerely doubt that heaven will only be open to those who can describe using key words and quotations the development of the covenant relationship between God and Man. I don't mean that we should be ignorant and never question faith, not at all; I just doubt that many people will discover their faith on page 235587395158a of Religion for Dummies. 

So I've decided to tell the story of faith in my own words here, as I'd tell it to a child or a bible scholar. I can't guarantee its theological accuracy or even state that it fits in with any particular denomination. Since I took my faith on for myself around thirteen, I've been working on this, asking God questions and trying to make sense of it all, something I'm going to be doing all my life. So this story isn't perfect, isn't complete. Please be patient. 

(When I write 'God thought' e.t.c. this is artistic liberty. I'm not trying to put words into God's mouth.)

This story has no beginning. Recently, I heard a quote from a famous writer on short stories, suggesting that when the story is finished, the start and end should be cut off. I, however, do not know how this story starts or finishes. I am not the author. I am a minor character on page 98, but I'm quite content with my little part. 

For all intents in purposes, it starts with God. No-one except God knows how he got there, or why. Some people argue that this is an unsatisfactory start and that God ought to justify being there if we're meant to believe in him, but as yet God has not answered this question. As I said, the story is far from finished. 

After demanding angrily from God what business he has in existing in the first place, and making things so awfully complicated by doing so, the next question is 'What is God anyway?' Generally, humans like to greet each other by demanding 'Who are you?' but no-one seems to have thought of asking God this yet. They've been trying tests and writing papers on the question for years, but just asking the question never satisfies human curiosity. Humans like to poke and prod and ask questions. Again, this is not a bad thing. 

The one thing that one particular group of people have become certain of about God is that he is Love. Love, like God, is notoriously difficult to define and at some point in their lives every human attempts to do so. My own favourite definition was for some years 'God's favourite drug', a sentence that I felt embodied a suitable amount of sarcasm, naivety and fashionable faith lingo. For now, I've given up pretending to know anything about love. We all know enough, anyhow. You don't need me to tell you about it. 

The scene is thus set for the opening of the story. God is love, or at least he is very good at loving, or something like that, is existing. Nothing else does. There is silence. Peace. 

But all creatures who love need others to love them back. Contrary to human preoccupation, this whole faith-thing didn't start because we needed God. It started because God needed us. 

So God made all of Creation, and it was beautiful. Everything was good, and everything that was good came from God, and was of God. The animals loved him blindly and were part of him in their love. 

The problem was that love does not come from obedient, unswerving devotion. Real love is a choice, and God knew this, as he chose to love his creation, but they did not choose to love him. It was the love of master and servant. It was beautiful, but it was not enough. 

So God started again. He had a brilliant, radical idea. He would make people, built on his own image, with the same capacity to choose to love. He knew, with a heavy heart, that they might reject him and do terrible things to each other in their capacity for hatred, but he did it anyway. Love was worth paying the price for. 

So humanity came about, and they were beautiful. God loved them immensely, and was desperate for them to love him back. Yet as he had feared, they began to turn against him. Temptation lead them into ignorance, and even evil. Some did love him, but a good many simply forgot about him in their rush to discover the new world, and so the relationship with God was lost to humans. 

God stayed with them. He watched them develop and evolve, guiding them, walking amongst them unseen. Some glimpsed him and as the people split over continents and seas, different understandings of God appeared. Some saw his left side, some saw his right, but no-one ever saw him in his fullness. God hid himself in the good things of the world to shield their eyes, and hoped that one day, they would find him.

Time passed.

Then God has an idea. He would tell someone about him and they and their descendants would be his helpers. They would tell others about him, be teachers of the human race. Eventually, he settled for a man named Abram and his wife Sarai. At this point, God could have appeared in glory, surrounded by angels and trumpets and loudly demonstrating his power, although the poor elderly couple probably would have had heart attacks. Instead, he decided to do the most marvellous thing for them, the thing they had been longing for all their lives. Sarai had never been able to have children, and she was too old. But nothing is impossible for God, and he gave her and Abram a son, Isaac. He also chose to rename them Abraham and Sarah. If I was writing an essay I'd call this a 'symbol of their new life', but I'm not, and I'd rather just call it one of the unfathomable quirks of God. 

Abraham and Sarah became the ancestors of the Israelites, God's chosen people - chosen to tell everyone about him and his tremendous love. But not even the Israelites could believe. So God sent them prophet after prophet. He rescued them from slavery, sent them brave leaders to keep them safe, and guided them to a place where they could live in peace. However, the Israelites were just humans like us, so they disobeyed God, and frequently failed to understand him. They fought with their neighbours and kept the truth about God to themselves, so no-one else really came to faith. Who can blame them? The Christian Church has often done the same thing. It's a very human crime. 

God watched all of this and he was sad. He saw them go further away from him and make each other suffer, and it hurt him. He'd tried everything. 


Then, God had a brilliant idea. 


This is the complicated part, because now we get to the idea of 'Trinity', or, three in one. Frankly, no-one, not St Thomas Aquinas or Simon Peter or the Archbishop of Canterbury really understands how this works. God is just too big for human minds. To be limited is to be free to make mistakes, to be ourselves, to make choices and be amazed by the wonders of creation, but it does make God hard to understand. So God needed to meet humanity in a way we would understand, and to do this, he sent part of himself to earth. To demonstrate his love, he set this up as a Father/Son relationship, but in reality they're the same, two different ways of seeing God. To cap it all, God then threw in the Holy Spirit, because he knew we'd find it tough, believing in him, and he wanted to show us a way to reach him, without expecting celestial telephones to drop down whenever we want a chat. The best way I can describe it is like an iceberg. They say that only 20% of an iceberg is visible above the surface - that's the 'Son' part - and 80% is underneath, and that's the 'Father' part. Then I guess all the frozen water nearby is the Holy Spirit... perhaps I'll let that analogy drop. 


Anyway, God sends his son to earth. As humans have proved we're not very good at recognising God, God made his son a human, born in a provincial backwater of the Roman Empire amongst the Israelites and named a rather common Hebrew name, Jesus. 


Here I could write books and books. (Although I don't need to: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have done it for me). Telling this story 2000 years later, about a man I never met in the flesh, I am almost overwhelmed by my feelings for him. Creation was brilliant, but Jesus was a master-stroke. Many humans came to respect him, even those who disbelieved his teaching, for his morality, his kindness, his love. In the three years he spent teaching, he gathered around him a small group of followers who would go on to spread his message throughout the world. But Jesus wasn't just around to spread the word. He had something else in mind, harder and more complicated to explain than anything God had ever done before. 


When asked why Jesus had to die, many Christians have come up against a massive wall. 
"We're sinners," They reply, "We have to be saved." 
"Are we sinners?" responds the atheist. "Why? And why do I owe this God anything? Personally, I think I'm quite a good person. This Jesus didn't have to die for me." 


I cannot even pretend to have a decent or full answer to this. Like I said, I'm writing a unfinished story. 


I suppose the nearest thing I have to an answer to this is that choosing God, choosing to love him means giving up everything that is not of God, all the evil thoughts, temptations, un-Godly ways of living. Humans never manages this. Through the grace of God, some of us can get pretty near - think Mother Teresa - but in the end we just can't give up our evil enough to get close to God. Life comes from God and is of God; without God, we die, far apart from him. It's the worst punishment ever. Humans have tried to imagine Hell as a representation of our worst fears, all flames and whips and chains, but the truth is Hell is worse than this. If all that is good is of God, than to reject God, or turn away from him because of our dependence on sin, means that in the next life when we should be with him and all that is good we must go where God is not, and all that is of God is absent. This is an evil of our own making, and it makes God so very, very sad. 


So God decided to break the rules.


Okay, he thought, they can't break away from sin and all that, so they're stuck with the consequences. But what if I took the consequences away? Jesus could do that. 


Although, they won't be grateful .


But I love them. I'll do it anyway. I miss them so much, and I want them home. 


So God gave Jesus a task. He, God himself, had to die, and descend into the place of unbelief, breaking its power. Then all the people would have to do is follow him out, and forget all the consequences. Jesus was a man and he was scared, but he was also a God who loved humanity, so he obeyed. And God the Father did give him the choice. Jesus chose to love, and chose to die one of the most terrible deaths ever invented. Crucifixion was an excruciatingly painful, drawn-out, public way to die, offensive to the religious beliefs of the Israelites and designed to humiliate the victim. Uncomplaining, he went to his death.


But God wasn't finished yet. 


On the third day, something happened. In the tomb where Jesus' body lay, God stirred. The son came back to life. Time was ripped open; those who had died, those who were dying, those who hadn't even gotten around to being born yet - everyone was saved, and could choose to live again with God, should they accept it. All they had to do was trust God and accept his love, and they could be forgiven anything, could escape the consequences of their prior actions, could be renewed. It was brilliant. 


Of course, nothing is so simple as just accepting love. 


"Why did you make us suffer? Was it you? You weren't there. What about the cancer? The floods? The wars? Did you do that? Why didn't you help us?"


So the questions started, and the people began to vivisect God. It got complicated, very quickly, and even the best storytellers had no proper answers.


Yet God was always there, in the confusion. He walked through hospitals, holding hands, guiding the surgeons, opening the eyes of the children, weeping with the bereaved. He sat with the soldiers, in the pubs, in the back-rows of the lecture theatres, crying for our losses and celebrating our joys. Some people said that it was a test, others that the only way to see God is also to see evil. Some spoke of a devil, the embodiment of evil, or a battle between good and evil in the world. Evil existed, they were sure, but often they forgot about all the good that existed too.


God did not give his reasons. He was proved and did-proved, loved and hated, lost and found. He waited. All the time, he still loved. 






Writing this I'm so conscious of how much I owe God, more than I could ever repay. The beauty is, I don't need to repay him. Just accept his love. My love for him is imperfect, small, flawed, but I know I am loved and one day I hope that I will be able to love him perfectly back.


God Bless & peace out x 
J x 

Goodbye Rowan

Warning: Post with lots of Church-y jargon! Please feel free to ask if you don't understand anything and I'll amend the article.

Today, the Archbishop of Canterbury has announced his decision to resign as Archbishop and take up a position as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

( The full article can be found here)

My immediate reaction was shock, then sadness. I know that these days most senior religious leaders - except the Pope - do not die in office, but move on or retire, but to me, Archbishop Rowan Williams feels like a moral pillar in religious and secular society, someone a great many people have depended on, loved and respected. It is with great sadness the Church must wish him well with his journey and his new position. Besides, it's far better to congratulate the Most Reverend Dr Williams whilst he's still alive!

I recently had the privilege of hearing Dr Williams speak at a service for the reconciliation of the United Reformed Church and the Church of England (it was the 350th anniversary of the split, when the dissenters left/were thrown out of the established church). His sermon was engaging, theologically relevant, beautifully crafted, poignant and powerful. The service had a special meaning for me; I was brought up in an interchurch family, Catholic and Anglican, confirmed ecumenically, and these days my 'spiritual home' is URC, so to be there at the healing of these two churches (and we had VERY good seats! :D) was incredibly special. As a representative of the established church, Rowan Williams is conscientious, brave, and intelligent, and unlike so many politicians never abuses others in giving his opinions of judgements. He has worked tirelessly for peace and justice and to resolve both internal conflicts in the Anglican Communion, to mediate between faiths, and to speak on behalf of the oppressed and suffering. As Archbishop of Canterbury, he has earned the respect of sceptics of the faith and world-leaders, without ever abusing his power or discriminating against non-Christians. His wisdom and kindness - who can forget the response to 6 year old Lulu Renton's Letter to God?) are inspirational.

I also have a special respect for Rowan Williams as a poet. I've been frantically searching the internet for his poetry this last half-hour and it is truly beautiful. Some people can do everything! The independant's comment here seems to be typical of the praise for his writing. I recommend, if you're into poetry at all, to search out his poetry. As a poetry geek, I'm thrilled to discover a different writer, especially one that the other poeple on my course may not have heard about and so I can show off about... ;)

If you're reading this, Dr. Williams (if only!), I'd like to wish you the best in your new post, which will suit you down to the ground! The students of Magdalene College are very lucky! I hope you continue standing up for the faith and those who need a champion, and I'd like to thank you for ten years of strong guidance of the Anglican Communion through some trying times. God Bless.

J x