One

What a difference a year makes.

Today is Elijah’s first birthday. He is fast leaving the baby stage behind.

In four days time we will be leaving the house he was born in.

And Grandma and Grandad have taken Susannah and Noah away overnight in their motor-home.

Revisit

I love shooting wildlife – with my camera.

Earlier this year, we holidayed in the North West of Scotland. We saw a lot of red deer, our largest native animal. We saw them in ones or twos on hillsides during the day; and in larger herds on lower ground, where the grazing was sweet, in the evenings. And I hoped to get some decent photos.

To be honest, I was disappointed with the images I came home with, including this one. But today, for whatever reason, I revisited this photo and cropped it, and I’m much happier with the resulting image (which is worth clicking on, to view larger).


Sometimes we try something, and have to say, that didn’t work out as we’d hoped. And that is good, because we learn from reflecting on what didn’t work out, as well as on what did.

But sometimes we try something and too quickly decide that it didn’t work out as we’d hoped. Which is why it is worth revisiting past experience, with the question: what was there all along that I failed to see at the time?


spirituality , photography , revisiting , church , mission

Connect | Play

The other day I had two coffees with two friends, one in the afternoon the other in the evening.

My afternoon coffee companion raised the subject of Facebook. His view was that this self-named ‘social utility’ would, in the long run, actually work against social connections, being part of a trend that trapped people in a virtual world. He cited anecdotal evidence of a growing number of people who were self-confined to the safety of their own homes, sat in front of their computer, never having to go out and come across, for example, home-less people without access to the virtual world. And he cited first-hand observed evidence of three people he knew who worked in the same building as each other and communicated through the day on Facebook: get off your chair and walk over to each other!!!

The same subject came up with my evening coffee companion. He told me the story of how he ended up with a Facebook account. He had been asked to talk to a group of young adults on engaging in mission within their culture, and he talked about needing to go to the places where people gathered – which, in our world are both physical and virtual – and spend time getting to know them, to understand how they viewed the world, engaging with them. And he cited MySpace as an example.
At the end of his talk, they informed him that they had all moved on from MySpace to Facebook. So he went home and signed up.

Both my friends made valid points. And both made points that are mitigated by other factors we might take into account.


Here are two reasons why Facebook might be A Good Thing: multiple connection, and play.

Another friend of mine has been doing some serious thinking on the subject of friendship recently – how we make friends, and invest in friendships. And one of the things sociologists identify that strengthens our relationships is multiple places of contact. In a ‘traditional’ community, neighbours not only live/d alongside each other, they worked alongside each other, shopped alongside each other, worshipped alongside each other, their children were educated alongside each other…In a transient community, the multiple nature of connections are broken down – and the quality of our relationships suffers as a result.

(I am a transient: my family is about to move to another city for two years, while I am at theological college; we will then move again, to my curacy; and then again…)

This is why teenagers who see each other all day at school (though largely in classrooms where social contact is tightly channelled) get on the phone to each other the moment they get home – having txtd each other on the journey. It might drive their parents insane, but they instinctively recognise that the more the expressions of or contexts for contact, the greater the reinforcement of the relationship. The mobile phone and the Net do not replace physical contact in physical settings; but reinforce – and, indeed, mediate – such contact. And for some of the talk to be serious – the eternal Big Questions of life – there is need for a lot of mindless chatter, or fun. If we represent serious talk by oxygen carried in the bloodstream, fun is both the arteries along which it passes and the red blood cells that carry it along.

Fun is a means of building the trust accounts that allow us to talk about serious things; and a convention that allows us to talk about things that expose ourselves, making us vulnerable, by allowing us to be slightly less vulnerable. And Facebook was created for teenagers – even if ‘us oldies’ are gate-crashing the party…Sending your friend a virtual fish for their virtual fish tank might not change the world in a big way. But who knows what it might lead to?

And frankly, those of us who grew up evangelical could all do with a little more fun in our lives. Andrew – lighten up a little, why don’t you?


If you want to look me up on Facebook, I’m listed as Andrew C. Dowsett.


facebook , social connections , friendship reinforcement , fun

Atheism, And Everything After

I am reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and, alongside it, The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine, by Alister McGrath with Joanna Collicutt McGrath.

I have a problem with Dawkins’ book. My problem is, it is presented in such a way that no-one can question it. If a theist questions it, their points are ‘self-evidently’ invalid, on account of their being a theist. If an atheist questions it, their points are less self-evidently invalid, and so it is just as well that Dawkins is at hand in the preface to the paperback edition to point out the error of their ways. If a theist who informs us that he used to be an atheist (such as Alister McGrath) questions it, then “That is one of the oldest tricks in the book, much favoured by religious apologists from C.S. Lewis to the present day. It serves to establish some sort of street cred up front, and it is amazing how often it works. Look out for it.” [p.13].

Dawkins is unquestionably to be respected as a serious scholar, but this is not the scholarly-but-accessible piece of work that its endorsers claim. Which is a shame, because there is substantive circumstantial evidence to suggest that atheism has intellectual integrity as a worldview, and I would suggest that atheist and theist alike would benefit from a scholarly-but-accessible atheist apologetic.


For what they are worth, here are some of my initial thoughts:

I suspect that one of the reasons why atheists tend to be less vocal about their atheism than ‘faith heads’ (Dawkins’ term) are about their faith is that ‘atheist’ is a negative description – a statement of what we do not believe – and who defines themselves in negative, rather than positive, terms? The current President of the United States of America is not a not-a-Democrat; he is a Republican. When presented with an ethnic monitoring form, I am expected to mark the box saying that I am white (though in truth I have never seen a white man in my life – and I grew up in Scotland, where you would find one if one was to be found), not a box indicating that I am not black (never seen a black man, either). Defining myself in terms of what I am not generally goes without saying.
Is ‘humanist’ the ‘positive’ alternative to the ‘negative’ label atheist?

I suspect that, while there are ‘pure’ polytheists, monotheists, agnostics, and atheists living in the UK today, there is a sizeable percentage of the population who hold a poly-mono-a-theist-agnostic worldview in paradoxical tension; with any given dimension taking front-of-stage at any given time or circumstance. And while such a view is likely to be highly unsatisfactory to both Dawkins and McGrath, it only lacks intellectual integrity if we consider paradox itself to do so. (Which leaves the light-is-both-a-particle-and-a-wave hypothesis in a spot of bother…)


The God Delusion , The Dawkins Delusion

Cutting A Long Story Short

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was a postgraduate in a Department of Biblical Studies. Each week, we had to attend a staff-postgraduate seminar, at which we would listen to someone present a paper, followed by a question-and-answer session, before heading off for lunch in the pub.

On one occasion, a professor gave a paper on the story of Samson (which sprawls over four chapters, Judges 13-16), in which she proposed a particular reading: that this was a story written by men for men, ostensibly as a warning not to allow oneself to show any vulnerability to women, who are inherently not to be trusted; but that the account betrayed that thing which all men fear, castration (Samson’s cut ‘hair’ subconsciously representing cut testicles).

The paper presented, and questions invited, I raised my hand. I had a problem with this particular reading. The problem was, it was presented in such a way that I could not question it. If I dismissed it out of hand, that was ‘evidence’ of my fear of castration. If I wanted to call into question any part of her methodology, it would simply be a ‘disingenuous attempt’ at hiding my fear of castration. If I claimed not to harbour a fear of castration, in that my sense of identity was not primarily located in my ability to father children (massive disappointment though that would have been), that would have been ‘denial’ on my part of my fear of castration. If a female colleague called the reading into question, then she was ‘a fool’ for allowing us men to get off the hook (do they use hooks?)…in short, whatever the paper was, it was not a scholarly paper; because such work must, by definition, be open to questioning. The only thing that had been castrated, I concluded, was the academic process itself.

All eyes in the room were on me: who did this impudent boy think he was, to suggest that the Empress wasn’t wearing any clothes?

Lord Of The Harvest | Crown Of Thorns

In the past I have posted series of images for Advent and Lent, and today I found some that look forward to the harvest festival.

We were walking through the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There is a path that runs right down the hill, along the edge of a wheat field. The sight brought to my mind this story from John’s Gospel:

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find [Jesus] talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labour.”

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.
They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.”
(John 4:27-42)

And then I happened to come across a twist of barbed wire around a fence post. It looked just like a crown of thorns. Against the backdrop of the field waiting to be harvested, it made a particularly striking image.


spirituality , church year , harvest festival , crown of thorns

Green Light

I heard this morning that I have been recommended for training in preparation for ordination.

This is the decision we have been waiting for – and the outcome we have been hoping for while we waited.


Waiting can be hard, especially when you are led to expect a wait of a certain time, and then find that time stretched out longer. But God has been working, while we have been waiting.

For example: yesterday we drove down to Nottingham, where I will be studying at St John’s College. It is a one-hour journey, down the motorway. But following a serious accident, the M1 was closed, and we were forced off into gridlock along alternative routes. The journey took 3 hours and 40 minutes. In a metal and glass box on a hot day.

We’d gone to look at a couple of houses belonging to former students for whom the college acts as a letting agent, and had arranged to meet someone there at 10:30 am. We were very late. And just before we arrived, a former student had come in to college. He had a property to let, one not administered by the college, and was wondering whether they had any new students in need of a house? It is close to the college; and close to the school our children had already been offered places at. It is a great house, in the perfect location.

And if we had arrived when we expected to arrive, we would not have seen the house.

God redeems even the journey from hell.


Next comes more paperwork than I care to think about, at least until after the weekend. Practical details. Thank God for my wife! But right now, the details can wait. We have God’s goodness to enjoy. And celebrate with our friends.


I guess that makes me an ordinand then , church , spirituality , I waited patiently for the Lord

Listening To...

The Cinematic Orchestra’s latest album, Ma Fleur (Ben’s recommendation).

It’s very different to the kind of music I listen to most often. Far fewer words. More piano, less guitar. Electronica. Ambient.

Music that evokes images through music, rather than telling a story through lyrics. That allows the listener to be some kind of co-creator; not just appreciate, or not, the work itself as a completed thing.

I’ve been letting it roll around in my head. Playing it in album order – not on shuffle, mixed up with other things. Giving it time.

I’m enjoying it.

Though I haven’t listened to their earlier albums yet, I like the idea of musicians writing a new score for a pre-existing film.

It seems to me to be a bit like the communal interpretation of the Bible. There’s this pre-existing work, but it comes to us with the invitation to create a new soundtrack; to allow the work to live and speak to a new generation. Not any soundtrack will do: many conceivable soundtracks would be totally out of sync with the images, unsympathetic, jarring. But, on the other hand, more than one sympathetic soundtrack could be imagined. And, indeed, a skilful soundtrack will leave room for further sympathetic interpretation. Because a window needs a frame, but is more about the glass; needs a carpenter, and a glazier, but exists to be looked through.


The Cinematic Orchestra , Ma Fleur

Warm | Cold

Our local high street is so aligned that throughout the day one side is predominantly in the sun, and the other in the shade. And so, because we live in a cool climate, most people by choice walk along the sunny side of the street; only crossing to the noticeably colder side when they have to (and in a hot climate, people will choose to walk along the shady side).

The kinds of shop found on each side of the road reflect this.

On the warm side we find the gift shops and the cafés – businesses that rely on an inviting atmosphere.

On the cold side we find the supermarket, and the takeaways – businesses that rely on the fact that people have to go to them to get what they supply (out of either necessity or convenience).


Gifts shops invite us to give gifts.
That might sound like stating the obvious, but this is a profound invitation, to choose tokens of thanks or appreciation or love; to celebrate birthdays or anniversaries or occasions, or, life.
Gift shops are, themselves, an extravagant gift.

Cafés invite us to make relational time in our day. To press the pause button, and savour the moment, savour company.
The smell of fresh coffee.
The taste of almond croissant.
The tickle of a flake of pastry from your pain au chocolat, left behind on your lip.*
The muted sound of conversations going on around you.
The sight of the world going by as you sit passing time; perhaps another friend to acknowledge with a wave.

Supermarkets dominate provision of a perceived ‘universal need.’
Though there is a growing disquiet over the monopoly that the big chains exert, the ethics involved…a growing rejection, a growing (re)turning to local alternatives.

Takeaways perform a service – in this case, preparing food, and indeed washing up the cooking utensils – on our behalf, so that we don’t have to do it ourselves.


Once upon a time, churches could afford to ‘locate themselves’ on the cold side of the street. Funeral on Friday, wedding on Saturday, 10:30 on Sunday. Today, we need to ‘relocate’ to the warm side.**


*I’m not advocating having two pastries on one visit!
**As it happens, both the local Anglican and the local Methodist church buildings are on the sunny side of the street, in a literal sense. Which is not insignificant, though my point is not primarily literal, and could perhaps be better made use of?


spirituality , cold church , warm church

Just Read...

…Rob Bell’s Sex God: exploring the endless connections between sexuality and spirituality [Zondervan, 2007]. It is very, very, very good.

Bell has three things (at least) going for him (and they are closely related)

He really understands people:
I’m guessing there are various things that feed into this, including a community around him to learn with, and God-given insight. But the stand-out is his overwhelming compassion for people: a total absence of judgmental attitudes, combined with a deep desire that men and women should know the truth that sets you free.

He is a gifted communicator:
A natural story-teller. Random encounters become anecdotes; anecdotes become diagnoses. Words engage at several levels, inviting you to go deeper, further, beyond what made it into the book.
And the stories are accessible, whether you would consider yourself familiar with the Bible/culture/metaphysical questions, or totally unfamiliar: the tone is engaging, not patronising.

He knows the Bible:
Not just the lines on the page, but the spaces between the lines. Not just what is written, but the cultural contexts that inform how what is written was written – why God uses this picture image, rather than another; what that picture unlocks.
It is obvious that Sex God is under-girded by serious scholarship. And yet it is refreshingly readable.


Sexuality is the biggest issue in the life of anyone living in our culture toady.* Rob Bell’s handling of the subject – which is, in effect, a (pastoral and prophetic) handling of peoples lives – is a must read, for anyone with a pulse.

Buy it. Read it. Pass it on. Get it back. Read it again.


*Sure, we live under the shadow of the War on Terror, and global warming, and international trade injustice, but all these things – though they impact our lives, and our lives impact them – are external to us. Sexuality is us, and from the legal system (the UK’s new SOR’s, civil partnerships, proposed developments in embryo research…) to popular culture (glossy magazines, soaps, Hollywood, the music industry, advertising…), and back again, sex is quite simply bigger than anything else.


sexuality , spirituality , Rob Bell , Sex God

Do-Be-Doh!

Last night as I was going to bed, it struck me that there was nothing I had to do tomorrow (that is, today).

I didn’t have to take my daughter to school. I didn’t have to take my son to nursery. I didn’t have to go to work. There was nothing I had to do. And I couldn’t remember the last day I had like that. Days off, and holidays, don’t count: there are always things that have to be done on days off, or on holiday.

Such days are rare, but vitally important. Such days remind us – confront us with the reality – that being is more fundamental than doing.

Because when what we do flows out of knowing, really knowing, who we truly are – dearly loved children of God – then how we do what we do contributes to God’s life-affirming order becoming established where it was not before.

But when our understanding of who we are, our identity, derives from what we do – and how that compares with what other people do – then how we be who we be contributes to the meaning-less chaos becoming established where it was not before.


spirituality , being , doing

TARDIS Tents

Back home again, after a week away at New Wine North, punctuated by three days at my Bishops' Advisory Panel.

Newark Showground was partially flooded, so the carefully planned-out allocation of sites for churches from across the north was somewhat revised, in order to fit all the tents on less than all the space...the result was that our (relatively dry) zone looked like a refugee camp (as opposed to some zones, that looked like paddy fields). With space at a premium, it's as well we had TARDIS tents. Check out the outside and inside shots, above.

Ritual Cleansing?

I came across this today. Someone on our street is obviously having a new bathroom suite installed, and the old one had been ripped out and temporarily left out the front of the house. I particularly like that they left the soap in the basin...

Colour | Style

While I was out at blah, Jo was out at the launch party for two friends of ours who have established a colour and style consultancy. Here are some thoughts expressing why I think this is a wonderful example of incarnational Christian living; and not ‘too incarnational,’ in the sense of ‘indistinguishable from those around us who do not know God; no longer salt and light.’

When God created us, he paid attention to detail, choosing skin tone and eye and hair colour and body shape for each one of us, generating unique combinations from a set number of variables. When, in how we clothe our bodies, we make use of colours and styles that complement our God-given physical nature, a created being gives honour to its Creator. (And, conversely, when we fail to recognise our physical created-ness, we dishonour our Creator.)

When Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about what they will wear, as those who do not know God do, his point is not that what we wear is not important, but that God knows that it is important and he will provide for us.

When Paul writes concerning what women should or should not wear, it seems to me, his points are that Christian women should not dress in ways that would suggest, within the indicators of their culture, that they were prostitutes; or locate their sense of beauty in externals; and not that they should pay no attention to how they dress. (The same principles apply to men.)

What we wear speaks volumes about how we feel about ourselves. When we dress in such a way as to indicate that we do not believe that we are worthy to be anything other than slaves in our Father’s household, I believe this grieves the prodigal Father, who runs out to meet us coming to him with that attitude, and – disregarding it – places a fine robe around our shoulders.

Hudson Taylor encouraged his missionaries to dress as the Chinese, rather than in western clothes, so that how they presented themselves should not be a stumbling block to the gospel. Such an attitude was revolutionary within overseas mission in his day; and waits to be revolutionary in mission on our own doorstep today. When we present ourselves well, we are, quite simply, more approachable.

Specifically concerning our friends’ business, even in the setting-up of it, it has opened doors to lots of relationships, spiralling out from the school playground; and given rise to conversations about self-image, with opportunity to speak of how God sees us, as his beloved children.

This is not ‘Prosperity Gospel’: it is perfectly possible to dress well on a budget, even a tight budget, and with a limited wardrobe (and perfectly possible to run up massive credit card debt on ill-informed choices and look terrible as a result).

This is not ‘buying into’ worldly constructs concerning image, which hold people in bondage to the almighty Market. Rather, it is prophetically speaking freedom to those held captive by such concerns; and restoring the Creator’s rightful place, usurped by the Market.

It is true that at the point where you are first learning which colours/styles complement how God has created you the process can seem to take up a disproportionate and even inappropriate amount of time and focus. But that is true of learning anything. We don’t think that the time and focus needed to learn to drive is inappropriate, taking our thoughts away from God, or witnessing to others (indeed, we may even think in terms of the opportunities for the gospel that might open up through being able to drive, if we are so inclined). Once we are confident, we become unconsciously competent.


I pray that my friends’ venture will flourish, as a tree of healing whose roots go down to a spring of life.


colour , style , incarnational Christianity , spirituality, mission , missional church

Incarnational Peregrini

It was good to have Mark Berry over in Sheffield again yesterday evening. He was at the Sheffield blah, talking about pilgrimage. Thanks for taking the time to come over!

It seems to me that the idea of pilgrimage has fallen out of favour among evangelicals: that it is frowned upon for being either too Catholic or ‘baptised paganism’ [= syncretism = sub-Christian; as opposed to = ‘redeemed, or transformed, culture’…]. Instead, in very recent times, we’ve embraced ‘going on retreat,’ though even that sits uneasily with evangelical activism. One could also argue that pilgrimage was re-invented, at an earlier point, as attending annual Christian conferences. But I say ‘fallen out of favour’ because when I were a lad – which is not too very long ago – one of the Approved Books of evangelicalism was John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, so the idea of pilgrimage, at least as metaphor for spiritual life as journey, is not entirely alien. Within pilgrimage, both literal and metaphorical (and in contrast to retreats, or conferences), the journey is at least as important as the arrival, if not more so.

Anyway, Mark shared some thoughts on pilgrimage, as historical activity (both within and far wider than Christianity), in contemporary form, and as metaphor for life. And it was good.

The thing that struck me most was that he talked both about peregrini and about incarnational Christianity. Whereas there is the expression of pilgrimage which is to make a journey to a particular site (e.g. Stonehenge; Mecca; Lourdes; Walsingham) or along a particular route (e.g. the way to Santiago de Compostella; Canterbury), there is also that tradition where pilgrims set out from home, not knowing where they would end up, or if they would ever see their home again (e.g. the Celtic monks who set sail across the Atlantic, those who survived reaching, among other places, Newfoundland). These ‘peregrini’ literally belonged no-where. In contrast, the idea of incarnational Christianity as it is frequently discussed at present tends to focus on being grounded in a particular culture: focuses more on the fact that Jesus was embedded as a first-century Jew, than on his having no-where to lay his head.

So the question that Mark’s thoughts provoked for me was, how can we be – paradoxically – incarnational peregrini? What does it mean to be grounded within early C21st western culture, while at the same time not having a place to settle? How does being incarnational peregrini help us to be ‘in the world, but not of the world’?

The answer that came to me as I walked home, and talking with Jo when I got there, was that being incarnational peregrini means choosing to embrace the culture in which God has placed us, while choosing to reject the trappings of security that culture places its hope in (those things that put distance between us and poverty, or disease – that make us ‘of the world, but not in it’). For us personally as a family, that is the life we have lived since we sold our house and I left a secure job back in 2005, and we flew to Australia for three months, not knowing what lay beyond, but knowing who lay beyond, and coming to know that that was enough for us. (I’m not saying that home ownership or stable jobs are wrong per se; but while all Christians are called to be incarnational, perhaps we’re not all called to be peregrini.)

Anyway, thanks again to Mark for provoking our thinking, and to the blah crew for hosting the event – it was great to catch up with so many of you.


Mark Berry , Sheffield blah , pilgrimage , spirituality, perigrini , incarnational Christianity

Too Christ-like?

It is great to have Andrew Hamilton back blogging. You’ve been missed, mate. This post, borrowing from Matt Stone [a really helpful little diagram], is worth a look. Hamo’s reflections certainly resonate with my own.


Hamo returns , incarnational Christianity , mission , spirituality, church

Things To Satisfy Curiosity

Today, in the park, after school with my children, I received a complaint – frightfully polite, and very good-natured; but a complaint nonetheless – that it had been over a week since I had posted on my blog. Heaven forbid that I should fail to entertain my (numerically small but demanding) readership!

Elijah took his first steps on Saturday. Woo-hoo! And today, he had his first haircut – the Mohican has been scalped…for now.

I finished working as a disability support worker last Thursday evening; came home, ate my tea, and went out again to meet up with some other members of The Order of Mission – by which time it had completely escaped my mind that I’d just left my job of sixteen months. I don’t think it was a Senior Moment; or that I didn’t care about those I had been supporting; but that it was so very definitely time to move on. Job done. I’m sure that I will take with me transferable experience, but you can only do a role you are doing for meaningful experience, rather than out of your heart’s desire, for so long. I feel like Joseph, released from prison and being made respectable to appear before Pharaoh, his future held in the balance…

I have four more lunchtimes left at school, and then I will be done there too. And that has been a team that I will miss working with: it has been a lot of fun. I know that my working for the school has made a positive difference – not least because there is only one male member of staff, the estates manager – and been appreciated by the people I have been working with. That counts for a lot. The extent of interest in our plans, by staff and by parents in the playground alike, has been touching.

Over the past year-and-a-half I have done low-paid, low-skilled, jobs; almost entirely alongside women; including work with and for people with little education, (seemingly) limited prospects, few aspirations, near horizons. It has been a cross-cultural learning experience. If they do allow this highly-educated middle-class boy to serve as a priest here in South Yorkshire, it will prove invaluable; though I may not always have realised that at the time.

A week today I will be at my Bishops’ Advisory Panel. On the basis of how I fare in a range of exercises over two-and-a-half days; alongside a raft of paperwork submitted by myself, my referees, and the Diocese in advance; a panel of four men and women will decide whether or not to recommend me for ordination. And by early August, we will finally have a decision…

We’d hoped to be at this stage some months ago – while I passionately believe this is God’s call on my life, I can’t presume that the panel will agree; and we’d hoped to have time to find something longer-term by September if they say ‘no’ – but it didn’t work out that way in the end. In the end, it worked out that I’d be at selection conference while the rest of the family were at New Wine North (indeed, I’ll be there each side of my panel), with Jo surrounded by friends (including, it would seem, the parents of half the children I’ve looked after at school this year). So we’ll take that.

Hard though the process has been, we’ve been able to see God’s hand in it; had glimpses of him working behind the scenes in ways we wouldn’t have expected. One of those ways has been in the provision of school places for Susannah (going into Y2) and Noah (going into Reception) in a school in Nottingham – I hope to be studying at St John’s, Nottingham; we hope to move there in August – as well as in the Sheffield school where Susannah is currently in Y1.

Noah has three more days left at nursery, and then, after the summer, he’ll be a schoolboy. He is so ready; really looking forward to that…Susannah is preparing to leave her school behind. I think that will be hard, but at the same time, she’s really looking forward to the new school. Perhaps this is the hardest thing: that we can’t say it is definitely This or it is definitely That – and so we need to be saying goodbye without quite having the freedom to say a Proper goodbye…


the curious journey of a would be ordinand

As Requested...

...by his god-mother, a photo of Noah. I hope it will do - it is a typical pose! More, of Susannah, Noah and Elijah (now free-standing), on my flickr page.

Cry Mercy

Further thoughts on God’s judgement:

The cross:
The crucifixion is a moment of judgement [HT to David Bole]. It is an ironic moment: humanity, represented by the Jewish religious and Roman civic authorities, passes judgement on God, represented by Jesus; while God, represented by Jesus, passes judgement on humanity, also represented by Jesus.
God’s judgement is that all humanity has fallen short, and the required consequence is the death penalty. That’s a stark, and all-encompassing, judgement. But God chooses to take on our penalty in our place. [Now, penal substitution may be problematic for some, implying some sort of monstrous cosmic child-abuse in a Father who allows his Son – even sends his Son – to suffer and die. But it seems to me that such an argument is only possible if we view Jesus as some kind of junior God, or God Jr. From a fully Trinitarian perspective, if Jesus is God, then the cross is God’s sacrificial self-choice – a choice not only made in the safety of heaven, but re-made in the horror of Gethsemane – to which God is entitled.]

Jesus’ return:
Jesus will return, to judge the living and the dead. The crucial question will be, How do we respond to God’s judgement that we fall short, and that he pay the penalty? The choice is to seek to save our own life, and die in the attempt, so losing it; or to die to self, through accepting God’s ruling, and so to live. We find ourselves in our own Gethsemane, wrestling with whether or not we will say, “Not my will, but your will” – which is that none should be lost; which was to die in our place – “be done.” In this sense, we pass judgement on ourselves, and God ratifies our decision. His judgement has already been passed, at the cross.

Mercy triumphs over judgement:
I must confess to being uncomfortable at the idea of God passing or imposing judgement between the two events of Jesus’ crucifixion and his return. At least, I am uncomfortable with the idea of his judgement, as it is usually expressed by people: in terms of loss of [quality of] life – flood, famine, HIV/AIDS…
I think that I am uncomfortable with such an idea because the cross proclaims that God’s judgement on humanity comes to us expressed as mercy. And if his judgement comes to humanity as mercy, how much greater is the coming of his mercy to us!

Mission:
Where, then, does the idea of mercy triumphing over judgement leave the mission of the Church? Not in trying to convert people – for that is, and always has been, the work of the Holy Spirit. Nor in trying to save people from hell – for that is, and always will be, the work of Jesus Christ. But – as has always been the case – in making disciples: people who can live out a life, in this life, that follows after God; through whom judgement might be expressed through mercy, and mercy might be expressed through…love.


divine judgement , divine mercy , church and society , mission

After The Flood

Following the catastrophic flooding across much of central England last week, a number of Anglican bishops, in particular evangelicals, have spoken out to identify the flood as an act of divine judgement on our nation, not only for our failure to steward the environment [which would be harsh, given that there has been a rising ground-swell in environmental responsibility over recent years: why hit out at those who have repented/are repenting?] but also for our acceptance of homosexuals as equal members of society. [hat-tip to Maggi Dawn] While I am sure that there is much about our society that makes God sad – such as our failure to raise physically, emotionally and socially healthy children, for example – I am not convinced that God is responsible for the rise (in both frequency and severity) in flooding across the UK.

We need to go back to the Bible as myth. By myth, I mean a story that transcends its original context in significance, and gives meaning that helps us to make sense of the world in which we live. Myth does not necessarily mean ‘not historical.’ I believe that the biblical creation myth describes a series of historical events [as it happens, I believe it describes a re-creation of a pre-existent creation that has been significantly destroyed in the heavenly rebellion of satan, and God’s defeating him and throwing him down to earth, along with his rebel-angel followers].

It seems to me that the biblical myth presents us with, among other things, the following meaning as we look at the world around us:
God made the world and the mechanisms for life to flourish, and called every element of that inter-dependency ‘good’;
That ‘goodness’ has been compromised by the presence and activity of spiritual beings opposed to God;
Humanity is called to steward the earth, which includes working with God to liberate the rest of creation from the control of demonic powers; this is expressed perfectly in the human Jesus, through whom the creator becomes the created; however, at times we have cooperated, wittingly and unwittingly, with the demonic destruction of creation;
Powerful demonic beings are in particular identified with major cities (e.g. Babylon, Tyre, Ephesus, Rome) and with bodies of water (e.g. the Mediterranean; the Nile; the Red Sea; Lake Galilee). Although flooding is famously identified with God’s judgement in the story of Noah’s Ark, waters breaking over land is most usually identified as demonic destruction, to which God is opposed; while land is seen as a sign of God’s care for humanity, most notably in providing a Promised Land for the people he called-out to be a blessing to all peoples. So God defeats the sea demon Yam; confronts and defeats the god of the river Nile; parts the Red Sea, and the Jordan; so the sea of Galilee is whipped-up against Jesus who is on the way to deliver a multiply demonised man, and Jesus subdues this attack; so Peter, on whom the Church is founded, shares in the divine act of walking on the waters; so there is no sea in heaven;
Out of love for creation, God restrains significant demonic destruction (if not, we would be destroyed); but sometimes removes his restraining hand allowing demonic powers to do their destructive will within limits, in the hope that we might call out to God to be delivered;
We are caught up in a cosmic struggle in which we do not have the luxury of being neutral, and in which ‘natural disasters’ will only increase in frequency until the unknown day and hour when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead, whether that day is imminent or will be delayed for millennia…

Where, then, does this leave us?

There is clearly a physical element to the flooding, and this may be magnified by both human activity that is aggravating rapid climate change and human inactivity to create adequate channels for certain slow-moving rivers;
This event gives rise to the opportunity for us to repent, of believing we are somehow above the rest of creation, and of failing to care for the rest of creation as we should;
The destruction caused by the flooding brings satisfaction to satan, and sadness to God; God may have allowed it to happen, but didn’t send it;
This raises the question, “Why would a God who is supposed to be both good and all-powerful allow this to happen?” to which we can answer, “Out of hope that we might call on him to deliver us, for God works in all circumstances, whether good or ill, to bring good for those who call on him,” for the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, whereas Jesus comes to bring life in its fullness.

There is plenty of scope for a theological response to what has happened here this week, in ways that extend hope, not condemnation. And there is plenty of scope for the Church to get involved in practical ways in the local context, and in the future-strategy debate in the national context. There are plenty of ways in which we might extend the deliverance Jesus brings, both to those who have had their lives washed away and face (perhaps cannot face) re-building, and to the physical landscape.

I am sure that those bishops who have spoken out have done so after serious thought, and genuinely believe what they have said. And I don’t claim that my alternative reading – of both the Bible and events – is Right and that they are Wrong. But I think, for now at least, this is the ground I will stand on, and reach out to others from.


theology , floods , church and society , mission