Why, God? Trust.

I wrote earlier about some of my thoughts on suffering and why it happens.  It's such a big topic that even two posts doesn't do it justice.  But here's some more thoughts.

How do you explain natural disasters, things that just 'happen?'  Are they the result of choices too?  How?  Earthquakes and volcanoes, floods and hurricanes are all the result of living on a dynamic world- plate tectonics and weather are essential for life to exist.  But if God is all powerful, why did he design a world like this, with what you might consider a built-in flaw?  Couldn't he have done it some other way?

Then there's the idea that the world has to include bad things and suffering for us to know what is good, to know right and wrong - that there has to be bad for there to be good.  I suppose there is some merit in that, but it doesn't really answer the question.  Why would anyone design a world like that, if they cared about the people in it?  

So the biggest question is still why, if God cares about the world, he allows suffering to happen?  I think possibly the only answer is what we can learn from what God does about suffering.  He, as Jesus, came to Earth as a baby born to a poor family.  He went into the desert to suffer hunger and thirst.  He was criticised by the authorities, betrayed by his friend, beaten and mocked and finally killed in an incredibly cruel manner.  No one can say that God hasn't shared our sufferings.

I don't agree with the view of a God who just makes the world, winds the 'clockwork,'sets it running and sits back to watch.  The God I believe in didn't.  He stepped in to deal with the problem of suffering.  Couldn't he have done it another way, that didn't involve suffering himself?  I don't know.  But he chose to do it that way, to suffer with us, as one of us.

So the real answer to the question is that I don't know exactly why there has to be suffering.  But I trust that if there is suffering in the world, it must be there for a reason, even if it's not one I can understand.  And I don't believe that God is cruel and enjoys watching our suffering.  Otherwise why would he give the life of his own son, who he says he loves, to try to sort the problem out?

The answer I give is that I trust God.  Not blind, unthinking trust, I think about it a lot.  Why do I trust God?  Because I believe he is trustworthy, from my own experience and that of others, and from the Bible.*  So my response to suffering is similar to that of the clergyman mentioned in the BBC article: to pray.  To tell God that I don't understand, and to ask for his reassurance.  And to ask for him to intervene in the world to alleviate the suffering.

As a footnote to this, see this WordLive session on the last plague on the Egyptians.

*To go into further detail on this would be opening up a whole other can of worms.  Later!

Why, God? Choices.

The terrible, disastrous earthquake in Haiti is much on people's minds at the moment.  And inevitably, when confronted with a situation like this the question of suffering arises again.  Why, people ask Christians, why does this God who you say is all powerful and loving, allow that to happen?  If he's all powerful he could stop it, if he was loving he'd want to stop it, so why doesn't he?  

The short and most honest answer is, we don't know.  We can come up with answers, but they all seem to leave me feeling not completely satisfied.  The BBC published an article where a philosopher addresses the arguments.  I think it's actually a decent summary of the arguments.  While I don't agree with his views on some of them, I think it's a good statement of how many people feel, and useful for the rest of us to understand that.  

I do believe in an all loving, all powerful, all knowing God.  But I do sometimes find that hard to reconcile with the world around us.  As well as the Haitian earthquake, several people I know are having to cope with the illness or death of family members at the moment.  I can understand that idea that suffering is often the result of people's choices- that someone who chooses to smoke might suffer ill health as a result, for example- but what about the people around them who suffer because of their choice, having to deal with their illness and perhaps being ill themselves as a result of passive smoke?  And then how do you explain natural disasters, things that just 'happen?' 

First there's the question of people's choices causing suffering.  It's a very simplistic view, echoed in Old Testament ideas (for example Job's friends assume he's having a bad time because he's sinned) but it's clear that it's not always the reason for suffering (Job hasn't sinned).  Those people who say whole nations are to blame for a natural disaster because of a supposed event in their past are on very dangerous ground and should probably keep their mouths firmly shut.  

That's not to say it's always wrong, though.  As in the example of the smoker above, our choices do have an effect on our lives.  Some actions bring their own consequence- like, for example, choosing to mess around on an icy path in shoes with no grip.  If you fall over and hurt yourself, that's probably your own fault.  If you make someone else fall over, that's your fault too, caused by your choice, even if they don't deserve it.

But, people ask, couldn't God have made people who didn't choose to do the wrong thing sometimes?  Well no, I don't think he could.  God made people to love him.  You can't force someone to love you, you can only invite it.  So they had to have a choice- to love God, to know him, to obey his will, or not.  If not, then they often end up hurting themselves and others, because the world is designed to work God's way.  And the road isn't smooth for those people who do love God and try to obey him- we make mistakes, other people trip us up because they are not going God's way.  Humanity's choice on a daily basis not to follow God means we all suffer.  

People are not good or bad.  They're just people, who sometimes do bad things and sometimes do good things, for many reasons.  I don't think you need to be godly to be a good, moral person.  As a wise old woman* said: "It's which way you face that matters."  It's our ability to choose that makes us human.  Without that we wouldn't be what we were made to be- people who choose to love God.

That's some of my thinking.  More later.

*Granny Weatherwax in Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad.  

Advent 09- CU

For the next few days my advent posts on Good Things are going to be on events or organisations that have had a big effect on me at different times in my life.  The first of these is probably going to prove to be a bit controversial: the Christian Union (CU) at York Uni.

Now I'm far from saying that the CU is a perfect organisation.  It certainly isn't, like all groups of people on earth it has faults!  Also, I'm talking here about the UYCU of the time I was at uni (2003-2006).  It had already started to change- as it should, as the membership changes- before I left and I believe it had continued to change even more since then.

But for all its' problems, I learnt a lot while I was in the CU.  I came to uni at 18 with huge gaps in my knowledge of God that CU helped to fill in- both from good speakers at main meetings* and from small group Bible studies.  These were perhaps the best bits of CU as far as I was concerned (see tomorrow's post for more).  Perhaps the biggest thing I learnt from CU was some indication of how I could use the gifts I had been given in the service of God.  I was utterly shocked to be selected as the General Secretary, and very much doubted that I could do the job.  But thanks to God's support I did, and learnt a lot from it, even though at times it was very, VERY frustrating.  There were committee decisions I didn't quite agree with, I felt that I was inadequate and inferior to the others on the committee, I felt that the CU- or at least some of its' members- had their priorities wrong.

But behind all of that was a lot of people who loved God and wanted to do what they felt he was calling them to.  They may have been held back by issues they didn't understand, or by prejudice, or by fear or by genuine different interpretations.  But there was a lot of good, as well as the bad.  That was why I stayed part of the CU, and tried to do what I could to make it better.  Others have succeeded where I failed.  But I think God recognises the good even in mistakes and failures, and can bring good out of them.  Even from the mistakes, I learnt a lot about God's people, and I learnt to trust God and rely on him to get me through things I didn't think I could do.  That's why I still call the CU one of my Good Things.


*Note: not all main meeting speakers were good.  I mean that the ones that were helped me.

PS  I believe that this is also my 100th post on this blog.  Yay!  If there was a way of sharing cake with you via the internet, I would.

How not to be cynical

It's struck me several times over the last few days what a cynical world we live in at the moment. The media delight in finding scandal and bringing down any institution that once commanded respect: the church, parliament, the police, banks. Now the media tell us that we can't even trust the media! This article by the most cynical of cynics, Charlie Brooker, just about sums it up (yes I know- or at least hope- that he's exaggerating for comic effect, but it still paints a pretty bleak picture of the world.)

What really gets me when I read this kind of thing is the comments people make in the discussion below. I hope they're exaggerating too. But they convey the idea of a world in which we can't trust anything or anyone, where everything is bad and we can't expect better, where there is no hope that we or anyone or anything else can make a difference. It's a very fatalistic viewpoint, and very depressing too. It diminishes the role of the individual in the world and effectively absolves individuals of responsibility of their actions- what else could they do, in such a messed up world?

Well if that's the best people think of the world, if there's no hope of anything better, I don't know why they don't just stop panicking about swine flu or [insert current disease scare here] and wait for it to reach them, or fill their pockets with cash and go for a walk through a drug-infested, gang-ridden inner city and wait for someone to stab or shoot them.

The world is a mess. We know that. But that doesn't mean that we should give up on it. Besides the stories of war and deceit, abuse and pain there are stories of hope and joy. The young man who was recently found alive after two weeks in the Australian wilds, after most people had given up hope, for example. We can't ignore all the terrible things that go on- and we shouldn't- but neither can we say "oh well, the world's a mess, but there's nothing I can do about it except make sure I live as comfortable a life as possible." People can make a difference.

Last Wednesday my cell group were looking at the passage in Philippians 4 where Christians are told to "rejoice in the Lord always." Someone pointed out that some Christians take this to ridiculous extremes, thinking that they should cry "Hallelujah!" when they bang their head! But without falling into this trap, we thought about how we can 'rejoice' when the world is in such a mess.

The point is, I suppose, that there is still someone we can trust in this downfallen world, and that's God. Human institutions, even the church can mess up, but God doesn't. We can rejoice in that. When Paul wrote that we should rejoice, he was under house arrest, chained to a Roman soldier, awaiting probable execution. Elsewhere he writes about all he has suffered: beatings, constant travel, hunger, thirst, midnight escapes. And yet he has learnt to be 'content in any and every situation." He knew what he was talking about. And he hasn't lost his faith in people either- his letters are full of commendations and expressions of love and thanks to his friends.

Perhaps we can take a hint from that. We can't ignore the fact that many things in the world are not as they should be. But it doesn't mean we should give up hope, or turn into cynical, fatalistic people who don't think we can make things any better so don't try. We can't restore the world to how it was supposed to be. Only God can do that. But he calls us to help in his plan for restoring the world, and humanity, and to rejoice in how great that plan is.

Is your God strong?

Another post inspired by WordLive coming up (if you've not looked at this site, I think you should. And not just because I'm part of the organisation which runs it!)

The article suggests that "For some people, the main question concerning the Christian message isn’t ‘Is your God real?’ but ‘Is your God strong?’" Can he help them, what can he do for them to make him worth following? Can you see what he's doing, what effect does he have? In other words, the question is not "is it true?" but "does it work?" Truth, in our postmodern age, doesn't seem to count for much- it's often implied that it's not possible to know what is true.

As Christians we believe that God is the truth, and I don't want to detract from that. But if truth isn't what people are searching for then perhaps we need to look at other ways of explaining God's greatness. Perhaps we need to be showing that God does 'work,' that he is strong.

I'm not sure exactly what. Perhaps it's up to us as Christians to show how God is real to us, how he is at work in our lives, what he's doing for us. That's where our personal stories, our testimonies, can be very helpful. They may not be as spectacular or impressive as the former gangsters or drug dealers who have found new hope through Christ and had their whole lives changed. But simple, everyday stories- an answered prayer, perhaps a healing, perhaps just explaining that the reason you're doing something is that you feel it's what God wants- are in some ways more likely to connect with ordinary people. These stories show that God is interested in our lives and cares about us- a way in for people to realise that God loves them.

But there's a snag...God doesn't always do what we want. To quote C.S. Lewis: "he's not a tame Lion." It doesn't always seem that he's answered our prayers, sometimes it's hard to see how he might be working in the situation we're in. So how can we say to people that he is strong, that he can help them? And how do we make sure we're presenting the whole gospel- including the less pleasant bits we perhaps wish weren't true, about the consequences of rejecting God's love?

I think we have to be honest. We need to show people that God loves them- that rather than judgement being a negative thing, he has rescued them from that if they choose to trust him. I think it can be hard for people to grasp the idea that God- not some remote Being but a God who cares about individuals- loves them. I find it hard sometimes. But once we trust that he loves us, and has our best interestes at heart, we can trust that even if things are tough or it seems that he's not answering our prayers, sooner or later things will be worked out in the best way possible- best perhaps not from our point of view but from God's. Once we are sure of God's love for us, then we can trust him with anything- with everything. It's not always easy- I know that- but we can.

Don't Panic!

Things we haven't all died of yet:
vCJD
SARS
The Millennium Bug (ok, our computers haven't died, but you know what I mean)
Mobile phones
Bird Flu
Snow
Swine Flu

Obviously that doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful, or take precautions where it's appropriate. To be honest, the things we're being told to do to avoid swine flu (use a tissue, wash your hands) are things that should be basic hygiene anyway. But don't panic! Panic is probably the best thing we could do to make things worse. And so far, for those of us safely in Britain, the actual spread of the virus doesn't warrant it.

It reminds me of something said recently about Matthew 6: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?" Jesus isn't saying "don't think about the future or take responsibility for planning for it." He's saying that we need to trust God and not ourselves. We're not to panic, because if God is the focus of our life, and where we put our energy and values, then everything else falls into perspective from that. Get the big thing right, and the rest will follow. It's not easy to remember, especially when your instincts are telling you to panic, but in the long run it's better than living a life constantly anxious and afraid of what might happen.

It's something I haven't quite managed to get my head round yet. In some areas I think I may be getting there. Some of the time. Being unemployed and working voluntarily for the church helped there! It's somehow easier to rely on faith when there isn't anything else anyway! But in other ways I still struggle- for example, I worry a lot about other people, and I'm not sure how trust and faith work in that situation. One day it'll make sense. At least, I hope so!

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.

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.

A warm heart, a cool head, and me feeling useless again..

On Sunday night at church Jim, the preacher, spoke about some very similar issues to those I did in my last post: the shrinking of the church. He talked about some of the ways the church has tried to halt this, but concluded, somewhat gloomily, that although these had slowed the decline they had not stopped it.

This certainly wasn't all he talked about, but it was what stood out to me, and let me breathe a sigh of relief. It's not just me that feels like that, as if almost everything we do seems to be pointless, so much effort for so little 'harvest'. It's something I often find myself feeling down about- indeed, earlier that day I'd been worrying about it. Because however much I go on in my writings about evangelism being an integral part of our daily lives, about the way we live, about our character and the way we behave towards others, the terrible truth always lurks in the shadows, bugging me. I can't ignore it.

I've never seen anyone come to faith. Not just in the sense of being there at the time, but of being involved in the process at all. No one I know that isn't already a Christian even seems to be interested. Some friends I've prayed for for three, four, even five years without seeing any kind of change take place. And it can get me down, thinking how much they're missing out on, and make me feel like a failure, as if it's my fault, that I'm doing something wrong or am not doing something I should be. Even when I was helping run the Alpha course, one of the more successful ways of introducing Christianity to people, no one in either of my groups came to faith. (I should point out that people in other groups on the course did.) Some who had already made commitments increased their knowledge and understanding, others who hadn't also learnt things which made them think. But comparing my personal record (and I know one shouldn't really) to other people I know, it seems rather pathetic. What right have I got to say or write all this stuff when, even trying to put it into practice, I seem to be a pretty ineffective witness?

Of course, we don't know what effect our words or actions may have at some point in the future, but I find it hard to believe I can have made that much impression on people. The most I can claim is to have perhaps demonstrated to my friends that Christians are humans too, even if we are a bit odd at times! So the prudent course would be for me to shut up, to stop writing or talking about the subject. But I can't. It's a subject I feel strongly about. If it wasn't so important I wouldn't feel so bad that the people I care about aren't interested.

Jim the preacher went on to talk about how Moses spent a long time in the desert of Midian before embarking on his mission to free the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. Although he had wanted to help the Israelites earlier, his passionate killing of the Egyptian slave driver only led to him having to flee the country (see Exodus 2 v11-25). Jim's point was that we have to balance our passion with knowledge and understanding- of God's will, God's word and of other people. We need, as he said, a warm heart and a cool head. And also we need to be patient and wait for what God might be teaching us when it seems like we're getting nowhere, doing nothing useful. As Moses had to go through a period of learning (and calming down!) so sometimes God can be teaching us something- even if we don't have a clue what!- when it feels like nothing's happening. Maybe that's what's happening to me at the moment.

Question: what connects cow dung, siege rations and prostitutes?

Bit of a rush of posts this week! I must be bored or something...

Last night at the theology course I'm doing we were looking at Ezekiel. We'd already looked at some of the other prophets and I was struck by their obedience to God, even when asked to do things that must have made other people think they were mad- eg Hosea was told to marry a prostitute and call his children "not loved" and "not my children" while Ezekiel had to lie on one side before a model of Jerusalem and eat only siege rations, cooked on cow dung. And God seems to have caused (or at least used) personal tradgedy in their lives and relationships as a way of getting his message across to the people of Israel, for example Ezekiel's wife dies at the time of the fall of Jerusalem and Hosea's wife leaves him. I find that hard to understand. Being obedient to God is never an easy task at the best of times, but for him to put his prophets through that...I don't understand completly. Couldn't he have created a world where it wasn't necessary? I suppose that's where our free will come into it- the people wouldn't listen, so they needed the demonstration of what would happen to them, so God had to use the people who were obedient to him as that demonstration. But it's still not easy to accept.
I wonder at the prophets' obedience, and wonder too if I'd be as willing to be obedient. No wonder some, like Elijah, had crises of confidence, and were close to giving up or that others, like Jeremiah, tried to get out of their calling. But you can't run away from God- I know that only too well. And the amazing things that the prophets did- bringing drought, bringing rain, demonstrating God's power to a reluctant people, prophesying what was going to happen, writing the wonderful if enigmatic books that make up a major part of the Old Testament were only possible because the prophets were willing to obey God, whatever the cost. There was nothing special about the men (and women) who became prophets. What made them able to do all these things was that they trusted God and were willing to obey him. "The Spirit of the Lord" was with them.
So if we today trust God and are willing to obey him, what can we expect to happen? Our life, like theirs, won't be easy; we may be called on to make fools of ourselves or to suffer, although I would say that this is more likely to be a result of trying to live God's way in a world that doesn't want to know than God bringing trouble on us. Like the prophets, our faith may slip from time to time, we may not think we are worthy or capable of doing what we have been called to do, but God will equip us, as he equipped them, with his Spirit. In the end, the prophets achieved some great things, because they were willing to be obedient. If we obey God, I believe we can to.