Monday 30 March 2009

Administrators Anonymous

Hello, my name is Lois, and I am an administrator.

For some time now I have been struggling to controll the irresistable urges I get to organise everything and everyone. Sometimes I just can't avoid giving in to the longings I get, the desires to get out there and write minutes, make lists, create spreadsheets and charts, organise meetings, send emails and generally badger everyone into making decisions.

It makes life difficult: whenever I see sloppy organisation or meetings where the discussion just slips from one topic to another without making decisions...I just want to interrupt and get things done! I know it's not always polite, and can be highly annoying for my friends. I just see that things would be so much easier if only I could do this or that...

Now in many ways being organised and capable of managing others (well, to some extent!) is a good thing. I like knowing what's going on, when I have to do things, where I have to be. And I can cope with people or organisations who aren't as organised as I am.

But I don't like the idea I might annoy people by seeming to usurp their job or imply they're not capable of doing what they're supposed to! So if you're one of those people, sorry. If I've pushed in front of you to organise or take over something that's not really my business, sorry. Hope you don't mind! I can't help it- I do it on compulsion!

Monday 23 March 2009

Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly

I wanted to write a post on a theme which seems to have been hitting me strongly over the last couple of weeks: that of a link between worship, social action and evangelism. Readings from the Old Testament prophets with passages about God's anger towards those who oppress his people, whose worship is rendered meaningless by their actions outside the temple, remind us what God really requires of us. Not all the razzmatazz of bands and PA systems, or censors and vestments. Not a specific form of words, or a certain type of song, or music at all. These are all ways we can engage with God, aids that can lead us to worship.

What is worship? Giving God his rightful place, acknowledging him as Lord over everything, including ourselves, committing ourselves to do his will. It's an attitude, an attitude that says God's will will be our will.

Micah 6 vs 8: He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

I wonder what the attitude of the world would be if the church's first concern was (and was seen to be) to "act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?" It's certainly not the view most people today have of the church. Non-Christians often see the church's claim to be 'right' and to have the 'truth' as arrogant. Society today doesn't look kindly on any group of people which claims to be able to tell others they are wrong. It's an understandable point of view. I don't like being told I'm wrong. But (thinking of my driving lessons) on the other hand, if I was about to do something that put me in danger, I'd hope my instructor would warn me!
You see what I mean? That's not the same as just telling someone they're wrong. It's helping them to become better.

Now some people might find the idea of Christians behaving like this just as unpleasant as confrontational damnation. It has the potential to sound terribly patronising. But that's where I think it relates to the other two sides of my triangle. If our focus is on God, and if our actions bear out the story we tell, everything will seem that bit more believable. Especially because that's no easy way out- no escape from our responsibilities as human beings, no cop-out that it doesn't if everything's a mess now because we'll be rewarded in heaven. It places the emphasis on us to live up to what we say and sing about:
"We must go, live to feed the hungry,
Stand beside the broken, we must go,
Stepping forward, keep us from just singing,
Stir us into action, we must go."*

I think we'd all admit we're a long way from matching up to God's standards. Some people, of course, are closer than others. And everyone uses the gifts God has given them to serve others in different ways: for some people that might be out on the streets giving out sandwiches to the homeless, for others it may be fundraising for third world charities, for others it may be listening to lonely elderly people and helping them with their shopping. But there's something each of us can do, in worship to God, to reflect his love onto the people we meet. Maybe you can give your friends a cup of tea and a listening ear to your friends when they need someone to talk to, maybe you can go on mission to Uganda.

Putting the judgements on Israel for not doing what God requires of them into this context is quite scary. Obviously things have changed- we no longer live under the old covenant, but are fully and eternally forgiven by Jesus' death. But the Israelites couldn't see that they were doing anything wrong. They were presenting the sacrifices required by the law, observing the festivals they were supposed to. But their hearts weren't in it- they had failed to see what it was that God required of them. It wasn't sacrifices, or empty words of repentance. It was changed attitudes and soft hearts that broke when they saw the misery their fellow Israelites were in because of their oppression, and actions that showed their repentance.

It makes me sad that even if individual churches can make progress towards living out this ideal, negative attitudes towards the church and its message will probably still prevail. The church mostly has only itself to blame for this, we've not been the best witnesses ever- probably because for so long the church took it for granted that people would come to it- it didn't ever think about strategies to make itself attractive to outsiders, or ways of retaining the interest of casual attendees. Yet the church has an important message for society today. Just as the prophets called to Israel to return to God, we need to call the church's attention to the poor, the outsiders and the oppressed of society- never more so than in this time of economic hardship and worry for many.

So worship leads us to consider social action, which in turn leads to people understanding and appreciating who God really is, and that he loves them, which leads them to praise and worship him. Through worship we are re-energised and equipped for both social action and evangelism. Of course, if only it was all as neat and simple as that...


* "God of Justice" by Tim Hughes. My church's worship leader Simon Bray has recently written a song on this topic which spells out the link between acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God and not offering an empty sacrifice of praise, and how we have to rely on God to fill us with his Spirit to allow us to carry on his work.

Friday 13 March 2009

My faith

I thought I'd follow up my post on faith and what it is by describing my own faith, and how I came to have it, in the hope it might make the previous post make more sense.

So, where did it all begin? Like so many Christians, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family where my parents had faith and shared it with me from a young age. My father still has the pictures that he drew to amuse me in church when I was only a toddler. Then I moved on to Sunday school (or junior church as we called it) and went through the various age groups until I was about 11, by which point I was the only person in the church between the ages of about 6 and 45. Fed up with just being expected to help the smaller children rather than learning anything myself, I started going into "big church" to sit with my mother (my dad was usually at another of our group of churches preaching).

I think that's when I learnt not to blindly accept everything one is taught (whoever is doing the teaching), but to critically evaluate it against what you already know. Methodist churches have what I think is a very good practice of encouraging (trained) lay people to preach, but some of the local preachers didn't have such a good grasp of the centre of the faith and biblical teaching as perhaps they should have done. I've heard some 20 minute sermons where it's 15 minutes into the talk before God or the Bible was even mentioned! But I did learn, not just from church services but also from reading by myself.

I've always loved reading. As a small child my parents read with me, not just Thomas the Tank Engine and Mog the cat but children's bible story books (I hope I still have them somewhere!) and went through activity books based round bible stories with me. When I got older I read fiction books by Christian authors, and (with periods of not being bothered) used children's bible study notes. What I missed out on was the joy of being with other people my age who shared my beliefs, worshipping and learning with them and being able to share experiences and difficulties. There simply weren't any young people's groups locally. Every summer I went to a holiday club run by a church in Norwich, which gave me a real 'buzz' and a sense of what I was missing the rest of the year. I probably learnt more in a week there than I did the rest of the year at my own church.

All this might sound to some people suspiciously like indoctrination. They'd say that children brought up in this kind of environment can't choose whether or not to be part of a faith. They protest that children shouldn't be forced into something they might otherwise have chosen to reject. I understand their objections, but really don't think they need to worry. Many young people do reject their parents' faith in their teens, either because they decide it's not for them or because once they have the option they just don't care any more. That's a problem the church has to address. And merely taking part in the rituals and routeins of church life doesn't make you a Christian- it's the decision to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour which does that, and that is something between the individual and God, at whatever age the commitment is made.

I made that decision for myself at about the age of eight, as the result of a book I'd been reading (Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St John, a bit old-fashioned but that's not something you realise aged 8!). I think the main thing that influenced me was the idea that God was bigger than all our problems and would be with us all the time and we wouldn't need to be afraid. I just prayed and asked Jesus to "come in" to my life. It wasn't a big deal and I don't remember telling anyone about it at the time, or feeling any different because of the decision. I don't think children find these things as strange or creepy as adults do.

I'd never been a popular child and had experienced a bit of bullying during primary school, but once I'd got to secondary school this got a lot worse. A lot of it was to do with ways in which I was different from other people- I didn't swear, for example,- many of which had something to do with my faith. People I had thought were friends started to either join in the bullying or just ignore it- standing out was dangerous and would have led to them being bullied too. I was hurt by this betrayal, as it seemed, and tended to spend a lot of time by myself. I was lonely, but I knew God was with me and cared about me, even if I didn't understand why my prayers asking for friends and freedom from the bullies weren't answered.

Like many Christians, I often experienced doubts- what if I've got it wrong? What if there is no God, or if I've got the wrong one? When I was fifteen I went on a holiday run by Scripture Union called Harriers. That was the first time in years I had been with other Christians my own age, and I learnt so much and had a great time (and went back for the next six years). It was also the first time that I can say I had an experience of the Holy Spirit. While we were singing the worship song My Jesus, My saviour I suddenly knew that it was true. Jesus was my saviour, he loved me, even though I didn't deserve it. From then on I have had very few doubts about God's existence, because I know he is real. I've felt him at work in my life. Again, it wasn't something to shout about, nothing exciting, but enough to convince me of the reality of God. Not everyone has an experience like that which they can point. And of course my faith in God rests on far more than just one evening's experience.

So there you are. Once I got to uni and joined the Christian Union and St Michael le Belfrey church, my journey of faith changed course and seemed to move up a gear as I learnt a lot about God and began to discover what his plan for me might be. But the really important bit was that by then I had decided that I trusted God. I made the decision, on the basis of hearing about God, that I wanted to know him, to be his friend. So I'd asked him to be part of my life, and he became part of what I was and am. My life would probably have been very different if I hadn't made that decision. But I'm glad I did.

Wednesday 11 March 2009

Faith

Faith is something I seem to write about a lot, but it's something I find it quite hard to define or to explain. So I thought writing a post might help me think about these things and perhaps explain to readers what I mean when I talk about it.

The first thing that comes to mind when I try to think about what faith means is this verse: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." The passage then goes on to give many examples of Old Testament characters who, because of their faith, their trust in God, were able to do difficult things and endure terrible times. The passage was written to encourage Jewish Christians who were facing persecution for their faith, and to encourage them to keep trusting in the God who could sustain them through those hardships.

I've heard faith described as a verb, that it's "not about how much you know, it is about acting on what you know. If you have the tiniest inkling – a mustard seed’s worth of understanding – of God’s power and goodness, act on it, for then everything becomes possible" (from my favourite website, the ever-popular WordLive.)

I like the idea of that. The idea that through trying to believe what we are beginning to understand is true, it becomes possible for us to truly believe it. It sounds so simple. But it isn't. Nor is it the start of the process- it still leaves the question of how we get to the point of recognising and accepting God's power and goodness in the first place.

We can see God at work in others, changing their lives. We can see him, maybe, at work through others involved in helping change the world. We may have an experience- of overwhelming love, of being cared for- which convinces us that God is real. We can study the Bible and become convinced that this God is real. All these things involve us taking the first steps- to look with an open mind, to be willing to see. But they also involve God working in us, drawing our attention to things, showing us himself. Evidence alone is not enough. We need God to step into our world and draw us to himself.

That's the problem, really. We can only conceive of things within our experience. God, a being who is outside human knowledge, outside the universe, outside time, is completely beyond anything we understand. Unless God reaches into our world and touches our lives we cannot know him. Without that knowledge, that breaking-in, the very idea of a God seems ridiculous or meaningless. We can't judge something so far outside our knowledge by our usual standards and tests of what is possible or likely or true. But God loves us. If we want to know him, he reaches into our world and shows himself to us. Then we can begin to know him.

I think the only conclusion I've come to is that I can't fully explain what faith is or how a person acquires it. I wish I could.
Saint Augustine comes close when he (according to the internet) says that "Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." I don't think that fully explains it, though. It's still something of a mystery.

Monday 9 March 2009

Based on the evidence...

Lately the science vs God debate has been getting lots of coverage in the media again, this time because of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. Most coverage still assumes that belief in a God who created the world and belief in science- in this case evolution- are mutually exclusive. I beg to differ on this point.

I use belief here in the sense of "something you base your thinking on." One thing I notice when talking to my friends is that the reasons many of them give (or imply) for not believing is that they cannot see the evidence for God on which to base a belief. I think this attitude comes from the scientific mindset, where a theory (in this case that there is a God) is tested in controlled conditions and the results evaluated to see whether or not they constitute proof that the theory is likely to be true.

The problem with this way of thinking is that, as I've said before, you cannot prove the existence of God with scientific or logical evidence. This seems to be the problem that so many people come up against (including, it appears, David Attenborough). There's also a problem that as a historian I know only too well- what counts as 'evidence?' How do you know that your evidence is reliable? Evidence is a tricky thing- something we consider proven today may be overturned completely in the future because of the discovery of a new piece of evidence.

The thing is, of all the people I know who have faith, I don't think any would say they believe because of evidence. I don't mean they discount evidence- only that they recognise that the evidence is not, in itself, enough. Evidence from within our experience, from within our world, cannot prove or disprove the existence of something which is totally outside our frame of reference. It can act as a signpost, but a signpost doesn't prove the existence of the town to which it points the way. People who want clear, incontrovertible evidence for the existence of God are looking in the wrong place.

What this doesn't address, of course, is the question of how, then, people come to a belief in God. Something is required to convince, to demonstrate who God is. The answer is different for everyone, but involves God working in and with us to demonstrate this truth, to give us the faith we need to respond to God. More on this another time, perhaps.

I also find it interesting what the writer of this piece says about how faith has transformed communities in Africa- not just the infrastructure built by 'missionaries' but also the changed lives and attitudes. It's refreshing to see that to even a confirmed sceptic the change that faith makes in people's lives is evident, and wonderful to hear it applauded by somebody who you would naturally expect to be suspicious. It's a shame that the difference isn't as evident in Britain today- or at least, if it is, no one's shouting about it.

Tuesday 3 March 2009

Facing the uncertain future

My mother came to visit at the weekend. Whilst I love spending time with her and hearing about the rest of the family, it always (unintentionally) serves to remind me about things I'd prefer not to dwell on. My parents are both fairly elderly, and I know I can't expect them to be around forever. It's even possible that I, being without other ties, might find myself in a position where I have to look after and take responsibility for them.

It reminds me of something I am afraid of. In a few years I'm likely to have to face being alone in the world, without people who I can call on for back up if everything goes wrong. The rest of my family are scattered around the country, but none live near me, and they all have their own families (spouses, children) and own priorities, so I'm not that close to any of them.

I have friends whom I love and trust, but I know only too well that once people are separated by distance or gain other priorities like careers or partners, it's easy to drift apart. Communication, even in the current digital age, has to be a two-way thing, and I know some of my closest friends struggle with that even when they're only away for a few weeks. I've often struggle with making friends, and I've had so many 'friends' who it's turned out don't really care, or who haven't kept in contact once they moved away. I am so grateful for those who do listen and are there when I need someone. And who I can be there for- the reciprocal side of friendship.

There's a general apprehension of the impermanence of my current situation. My current job, while (hopefully) stable is not something I want to do for any longer than I have to (mainly for financial reasons). I need to find somewhere to live (and people to live with) from the summer, and that's made more complicated by the fact that I don't earn much and that many of my friends (and potential housemates) are uncertain of their own futures.

I wouldn't describe my attitude towards the future as fear, or even as worry (most of the time!) although there are some pretty daunting challenges to face up to. I know that I can rely on God, I trust that whatever happens is part of his plan- even though I don't understand how- and that even if it seems rubbish good will come of it. I wouldn't want to be without that certainty. And part of me says that God is always with me, whatever happens, so I don't need to worry about being alone. But while I know that's true, it doesn't stop me wishing. God created us for relationships- with friends, most of all with him- and he frequently used friends to do his work in comforting and helping us.

It's a selfish want, of course, but I do wish, sometimes, that I could have the security of knowing that there will always be someone- a friend, a partner; whatever, just someone- who I can go to when I'm in trouble, who I can rely on to be there when I need them. Because yes, I'm afraid that in a few years' time there will be no one left who can say they love me.