Après church

great speech about the benefits of getting in touch with your inner tortoise..

Briefly, the book talks about how you can train yourself to be aware of God, more specifically the Holy Spirit, in everything you do.  I have been having a hard time at work - as we all do - and I pretty much had to become seriously aware of God 24/7 in order to stop myself from handing in my notice.  This was especially difficult as I felt that God led me to this job!  By listening to what God is doing, which is an intuitive process that requires practise and patience, I was able to remember the reason I went into teaching - God inspired me. 

When I started my new job in September, I had keenly got on with my new job and became exhausted with endless discipline issues and stupid admin tasks (it is hard to find the teaching some days!).  It had not occurred to me that the school’s agenda and God’s agenda for me in the school might be different.  The school’s agenda is pretty much for me to become a cross between a performing seal and wonderwoman. 

Ortberg obviously doesn’t just write “listen to God more” in this book.  The book contains a wealth of listening practises, which I have found to be crucial rituals.  For example, I now try and start my day by doing 3 things:

1. Acknowledging that I can’t get through the day without God
2. Giving each thing I am anxious about for that day to God (especially small things that I think I can control on my own - thank you very much!)
3. Asking God to be with me all day.  He is anyway, but I forget He is.

I am really not a 3 point person at all, but I have found it immensly helpful.  In addition, I don’t just go through this ritual when I’m going to work, but also on my days off.  This has meant that I have had amazing experiences with God on Saturdays.  Once I went to a gallery and then for a walk in the woods on my own - where I saw a deer - in Bracknell!  Typically, I spend my saturdays with other people or shopping for things I can’t afford, not seeking God in the woods. 

Practising listening to God has changed me and I want to find spaces where I can really sense God.  I keep meeting people randomly as well.  People who know God well and people who don’t.  I sometimes feel pressure that I ought to be talking to them about God, but I’m not sure if it is God or Christians telling me to do this.  I need to keep practising how to listen because there is a thin line between God’s timing preventing me from Bible bashing and my own fears. I don’t just want to be a talker - What do you think?

There are a lot of labels to contend with in life now aren’t there?  These peanuts may contain nuts. Wash separately in cold water and then stretch while wet. Harmless labels maybe like he’s “a bit of a character” through to more serious ones that make assumptions based on race or age or social strata.

I get the feeling that Jesus isn’t much into labels. I don’t mean he’s into making us all the same either, far from it. 

Here’s a label - “non christian”.  I really don’t like that one much.  People get the wrong idea when I say that sometimes.  It’s not that I’m throwing out the idea that people can be saved or not so much as pointing out that I don’t think it’s our job to make that decision and I can’t see much good coming from trying either.

I prefer to think of everyone being loved individually by God and being called on a journey to Jesus.  Whether they know it or not, I believe we are all on a spiritual journey towards Him.  The choices we make affect that journey for sure and we can learn a lot from fellow travellers along the way.

So how does it help to be labelled a non-christian?  I can’t see any benefits.  Who is to say that a person who doesn’t maybe know facts about Jesus isn’t in some way communing with Him in their spirit?  Who is to define how “deep calls to deep” in a person and declare all their spiritual experience as invalid?

I just don’t think that is my job. I’d rather get on with the journey and encouraging others along the way.  I’ll let God handle any judging that needs to happen.  He’s a lot better placed to get it right if it needs doing.

Creationists believe everything Genesis says is true, I don’t even think Phil Collins was a good drummer.

Essential to C.S. Lewis’s journey to faith were the intellectual stages along the way. He identified his teenage self as a materialist, in that though his passion was for mythological literature, the grimness of the material world was all that he could truly believe in. At university, he began to recognise that realism is somewhat limited: how can simple faith in the ‘real’ be maintained when much of what is ‘real’ -such as consciousness- is abstract?  This thought process, described in his autobiographical work ‘Surprised by Joy’, was obviously sacred to him.

I am not suggesting that faith is the ultimate destination, but I am suggesting that it’s ok to hold an opinion. This might not seem too radical to some people, but to me the understanding came late, and has been quite liberating. I still find myself editing my thoughts so that they fit with a hazy conception of what is ‘christian’. My fundamentalist conscience is in rehab, I think, and still self-destructs sometimes. I’m learning not to believe people who say ‘you can’t say that’, or ‘you can’t think like that’, because maybe I can.

Growing up in a conservative, evangelical church can leave you with a very depressing vision of mankind and, therefore, a rather low self-image. Only the ‘elect’ are saved: those who confess the lordship of Christ and work to ‘live right’ by conforming to religious rules and practices. All good is considered futile because ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ and ‘righteous works are like filthy rags’. Even if the good is acknowledged, the perpetrator is hellbound: eternally, and consciously, tormented. No wonder some ‘christian’ leaders act like bullies; they are only prefiguring the flames of eternity; who will care, ultimately, about being insulted and demeaned on earth when they’re on fire in hell? Hell then becomes the justification and rationale for all kinds of behaviour. As Brian Mclaren writes in his latest book Everything Must Change, ‘the colonial gospel is the gospel of avoiding hell.’

If hellfire is a possible end, the means of saving someone from it become irrelevant and easily justified. Rudeness becomes a strategy. Discipleship means making someone conform to certain beliefs and behaviours so that they will ’shape up or ship out’. Being judgemental towards others in church becomes essential, as does judging ‘the world’ so as to save it from future judgement.

There’s little time for God to penetrate the surface requirements of this type of christianity, what with everyone in the world needing to change their opinion before Jesus rides over the clouds on a horse to save them. The focus of the church I’m referring to tended to be on societal trends and international politics, and tended to be confrontational in its attitudes towards the lives of the congregation. As I said, you needed to ‘live right’ and in that sense weakness was something to be targeted and removed, so that nothing would sully the purity of a church on a serious mission to change the world.

To say that this church had a low view of mankind is, actually, an understatement. ‘Original sin’ made all people tarnished and made church members fit to ’sacrifice’ themselves to serve the purposes of church. God was cast as a threatening and austere bully who despises any hint of human weakness. I’ve been late in associating the leader of this church with fascism, and late in realising that it doesn’t offend God to have an opinion. I’ve enjoyed coming to this realisation, and it’s perhaps the purpose of another post to consider God’s kindness in helping me to do so.

Recently, we have been trying to work out ways we can reach out and connect with people in our community and several ideas were suggested.  We’ve been praying and listening to recent research undertaken by Keith Saynor about the needs in Wokingham to see what can be done.  Jonathan mentioned a “ministry” he’d heard about, I think in Newquay, where there are a lot of people who go out drinking on a friday and saturday night.  A church there decided to give out water to rehydrate drunken people - no preaching, no bible-bashing, JUST WATER.  This simple act connected people in the church to people who don’t come to church. 

When we talked about this, it was mentioned that drunk people didn’t deserve our social action.  Instead we should focus on more deserving characters in need, such as the elderly.  Indeed, the elderly do need our care and Wokingham has a high proportion of older residents.  However, to categorize people into those who deserve the love of God and those who don’t is not grace.

WWJD? Jesus went out of his way to find the outcasts of society, deserving and otherwise.  Zacchaeus did everything he wasn’t supposed to do as a Jew and was seen as a total backslider.  Surely the fact that Jesus called him is a demonstration of God’s abundant grace.  It’s the love we don’t deserve, but still get. 

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. Matthew 21:32

What do you think?

The early christians were known as followers of “The Way” I think.  I was reading one of Brad Hightower’s posts a while ago.  I don’t always agree with everything he writes but I thought he was onto something with this perspective:

In the institutional church, we are taught that Spiritual growth comes through the listening to and sometimes discussion of concepts when in fact spiritual progress is attained primarily through repetition of certain practices. Like any other activity, Spiritual progress comes through the development of certain talents and skills. Church meetings are modeled more after a sports practice than an academic classroom. Again, Christianity is learned more like gymnastics than geometry.
Ultimately, Christianity is not a body of truths to be intellectually known but a body of practices to be learned and skills and talents to develop. I think of the Martial Arts. In the Martial Arts, skills are learned, a certain type of kick or a certain type of stance. Or we could use the analogy of ballet. The result is a dance but the method of learning is repetitive practice of skills. Then the skills are put together like sentences in a story and the dance is developed. Church then is to be modeled after a ballet or Martial Arts lesson where we learn and practice skills as opposed to an academic exercise where we discuss and learn truths.

It is all too easy to go to church, enjoy a good sermon and think “yes I agree with that” and then forget all about it.  If we took a less knowledge-based view of teaching and a more experience or practice oriented view, we might do better at integrating these truths into who we become.  After all what matters is surely how I am changed, not how much I know about transformation?

And isn’t it in the little things that we win the battle?  It’s every time we choose to do the kind thing rather than the selfish thing, every tiny decision we make in the mundane everyday humdrum of life that shapes us.  To weave the way of love into our very DNA so that under pressure, when we don’t think but just react, we react in love, instinctively through repeated practice.  The Holy Spirit can highlight for us opportunities to practice the way of love every day, every hour giving us a chance to sacrifice our interests in preference for His or for others.  Each time we choose love, we deepen the truth into our characters.

‘That’s great I’m happy for you’. ’If it helps you that’s wonderful’. ’I understand that is true for you’.

Ever heard these kind of statements from people today? Relativism is a common trend in postmodernism and taken to its extremes erodes the whole concept of truth.  If something is true, can it be true for me and not true for you? Maybe in some things - beauty is in the eye of the beholder holds the common wisdom.

Now it’s worth pointing out that emerging church is not about the support of postmodernism.  It may have more to say about how to apply faith in a postmodern culture but that is not the same thing.  In making this distinction, there are many areas we need to stand guard over - we must ensure that in our desire to be relevant, we are not unwittingly just being diluted.  One such area, I think, is relativism and so this post is maybe the complement to my previous post about the elaboration of doctrine.

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I’ve been meaning to write this post since I read Velvet Elvis.  I already talked about the bible is not an instruction manual for life - a point also made by Rob Bell in the book.

Rob makes a very well argued point which I hesitate to try and summarise - although if you like my flawed attempt to do so maybe you’ll buy the book and read it so here goes..

Now the ancient rabbis understood that the Bible is open-ended and has to be interpreted.  And they understood that their role in the community was to study and meditate and discuss and pray and then make those decisions.  Rabbis are like interpreters, helping people understand what God is saying to them through the text and what it means to live out the text.

The way that a given rabbi interpreted the law, what they forbade and allowed, their rules and approach was called their “yoke”.  If you followed a certain rabbi then you took on their interpretation - or their yoke upon you.  If a student missed the point of a passage the rabbi would say “you have abolished the Torah” and if they got it right, “you have fulfilled the Torah”. 

Most rabbis would teach the yoke of a respected Rabbi, referring to another.  It was very rare for someone to come along preaching a new yoke, so imagine what it was like to hear Jesus speak “with authority”.  He would say “you have heard it said.. but I tell you..”.  Jesus said his yoke was even easy and light which was utterly radical.

When a rabbi would forbid something, it was said to be bound and when they allowed something, it was said to be loosed.  So when Jesus says in Matthew:

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

he was giving his followers permission to interpret the scriptures in new ways.  This is part of our passion in apres church to debate and discuss, to pray and to seek to understand Gods word. We need to constantly seek to interpret and apply the Bible to our culture and our current circumstances.  The job of understanding what scripture says is not done, it is not yet complete.  Our grasp of what God is saying gets clearer throughout the ages even if sometimes we have to work back from a blind alley and rediscover something the church has lost in order to move forward. 

This is the Holy Spirit’s job of “leading us into all truth” and the baton passes to us in this generation to do our part in God’s unfolding story to bind and loose and understand the Gospel a little more clearly. 

The extent to which we allow the Holy Spirit to work through us in this most sacred of callings will define the legacy we leave to the church that succeed us. How thrilling that we can play a role in the elaboration of truth and the history of the church!

Religion is: “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.” So says Christopher Hitchens who has just written a book called: “god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” and has appeared last week on Radio 4 and BBC’s Question Time. In many ways I agree and in fact Jesus exposed these religious traits in the Pharisees of His time. Unfortunately Hitchens throws his blanket of criticism over all faiths however they are practiced.

I listened to him on Radio 4 hoping for a balanced argument - Apres Church is nothing if not open to “free inquiry”. Unfortunately Hitchens

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