Broken

It seems to me that there is a lot that is broken at the moment.

Our world seems very broken, in terms of the environmental challenges and changes we are witnessing, the endless terror and violence, the asylum seekers and refugees, the hunger and homelessness, our messed up politics, our strained international and intra-national relations and so on and on.

These are worrying times.

And not just the world; the church seems to me to be very broken. There have always been fault lines between denominations and within denominations, but now these fault lines seem to be lying in different places than before; they cut across the traditional denominational distinctions and increasingly seem also to be deviating from the theological tensions which once seemed to be a major cause of division.

It is very natural that when things are broken we want to fix them. But sometimes our attempts to ‘fix’ things ends up worse than what we consider to be broken. (I invite you to think of examples in contemporary international affairs, politics and church matters!)

Of course, part of the problem is that humans are all broken too. Traditionally Christians have agreed on that and called it ‘sin’ (or ‘original sin’). The whole of the world is broken (‘fallen’ to use traditional language).

Now it is not my intention to get into a sterile theological discussion over terms and concepts related to ‘sin’, ‘The Fall’, ‘original sin’, ‘redemption’ and so on. Personally I can affirm the significance of all of these concepts without any difficulty and – for that matter – without resorting to fundamentalism to describe my thinking on these matters.

Nor do I want any of that to stand in opposition to an affirmation of ‘original blessing’ and the essential goodness and beauty of humanity and human beings. I very much believe that we are made in the image of God, although we far from perfectly reflect that image.

I could go on to discuss what I think redemption and salvation mean. But I am not going to do that.

I want to be a little more personal.

I am simply going to say that I have once again become acutely aware of how broken I am, in so many ways.

I am grateful that my health is nothing like as bad as it has sometimes been, but neither is it great at the moment. I am going through a bit of a rough patch in terms of my MS, with energy reserves very low and one or two slightly worrying wee physical symptoms.

And I am going through a spiritually tough patch too, inasmuch as it feels like I have been in a dry desert for a long, long time.

And (perhaps because of the above, at least to some extent) I also feel very flawed and inadequate in so many areas of my life...too many to mention. (now, don’t get me wrong... I am not in any ‘slough of despond’ nor am I denying the good things I may have achieved...). So, don’t panic and don’t rush round to comfort me. It is not a crisis! (And if it ever happens that a crisis comes then I will seek out help and support if required).

My thought is simply that I (we?) seem to always want to fix things when they seem broken... especially if I feel I have broken them!

But I do not think I can ‘fix’ many of the things that feel broken for me at the moment.

And so, once more, I am pushed back onto the grace of God... grace alone.

And perhaps that is no bad thing. 

Travelling and Thinking

As befits one who has self-identified as a ‘Suitcase Sojourner’ I have been travelling a bit of late.

Indeed, since I last posted on my blog (way too long ago I fear!) I have not only been shuttling between home (Lennoxtown) and parish (Perthshire) but have frequently also been in our second home (Edinburgh) have visited various other parts of mainland Scotland (and sneaked just out of Scotland to Berwick upon Tweed on two occasions) journeyed to the South East of England, have been in Shetland several times and have also managed to be in Athens!

Most of these journeys have involved a fair bit of talking and reflection (and a little reading too).

Athens was remarkable. It was the first time that we had been there (although we had visited Greece previously).  This is not the place to enthuse about the people, the food or even the Acropolis! But, in relation to this post, I want to say how struck I was by the ancient Agora and the Areopagus. Confused? Then look them up!

What led me to reflective silence when visiting these was that the Apostle Paul had walked the ‘streets’ of the Agora (see Acts 17 vs 17 – ‘market place’ = ‘Agora’) and had preached at the Areopagus (see Acts 17 vs 19ff). All of which in itself would be cause enough to pause and ponder.... walking in the footsteps of Paul!

But it also occurred to me that here was a man of conviction and faith seeking to communicate the Good News of Jesus in a largely hostile environment.

Once again I was reminded that ‘Christendom’ and the experience of generations, up to and including my own, of a dominant Christian culture was utterly foreign to the New Testament Christians.

It seems to me that this is a reality with which we need to reacquaint ourselves. I have been struck by this in my ongoing and happy engagement as Interim Minister in Perthshire, and also in my journeys as part of a team of Interim Minsters to the beautiful Shetland Isles.

Things have changed and are changing. We cannot simply lament the changes. We need to find new ways of being church for the future.

Some years ago I gave further thought to this in an article which was written in response to a Ministries Council Report and was published in the journal ‘Theology in Scotland’. If you are interested you can read it here https://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/TIS/article/view/70/611

In brief, my conclusion is that we need to quickly die to the Christendom model of church and realise that we are becoming a fragile, vulnerable, marginalised church... just as was the church in New Testament times.

I think that only once we grasp that will we be able to become the kind of church that God may be calling us to be.

Fear for the Future

It seems that our world is faced with so many uncertainties. Recent and potential political changes not to mention constitutional uncertainties have been added into the mix of the resurgence of Russian power and the terror of Isis. And somewhere in all that mix are the threats from North Korea which seem more difficult to laugh off with every passing month.

But, for me, there is a feature of our modern Western European democracy which has caused me greater concern than even the aforementioned. For years I have worried about it and now – with everything else that is happening – I am becoming ever more fearful.

It is the fact that Western European democracies have by and large ditched religious faith. Now, those of you not of a faith oriented persuasion might sigh and shake your head and think that ‘he would say that’. But this is not me seeking to be an apologist for personal faith or Christian beliefs – at least, not this time!

It is a genuine concern that our society has embarked on an unprecedented experiment. With a few limited, short-lived and far from encouraging exceptions (the Soviet Union under Stalin, Pol Pot’s regime... any others? Nazi Germany is somewhat more complicated, although no more encouraging!) almost every human society has sought (or at least claimed) to live in recognition of a belief that there was a greater ‘Other’ (or others) to whom human beings and society had some kind of responsibility and accountability. Now I know that I am opening myself up to the usual, well-worn, tired and oft-repeated attacks on religion and how ‘all wars were started by religion’ (eh... no, not even most!) that religious societies have exploited, oppressed and abused (yes, this has been true) and so on.

My point is not to defend institutional religious expressions (which can be frankly ridiculous), the behaviour of societies that acknowledge the Divine (for sometimes that behaviour has been indefensible) or the hypocrisy of many who own religious faith (guilty as charged!).  Although that said, it is a little concerning that the dissuaders fail to mention (or worse, misrepresent!) the role of religion and faith in the history and development of art, literature, science, mathematics, education, social care, medicine, charitable endeavour and so on... funny that!

But, I digress!

My fear is really that we have embarked upon a huge experiment. In the words of Charles Murray (author of ‘The Bell Curve’ and with whom I do not agree on many things, but on this I do!) ‘.. [Europe is} trying a unique social experiment, running societies with an absence of God, and it [will] most likely not work’.

Well, we’ll see... but we may see way too late!

I recall an older and wiser (and very knowledgeable and deeply intelligent) person saying to me some 20 years ago... ‘it remains to be seen whether Western democracy can survive slipping its moorings from Christianity’.  

I am certainly not arguing for a return to Christendom. I am not convinced it was such a good idea in the first place! I am not here speaking out of a concern for the future of the church, but more out of a concern for the future of the liberal, democratic society to which Christianity gave birth.

Confronting our drivenness

Yesterday three quite separate and apparently random occurrences caused me to reflect upon why so many of us are so ‘driven’.

In the morning I had been reading from Mark chapter 1 and was struck (not for the first time) by the way in which Jesus got up early, before it was light, to get some time to be on his own to pray (vs 35ff). I remembered the title of a book I read some years ago by Bill Hybels ‘Too busy not to pray’.

However, I was also struck by the fact that Jesus seems to have been trying to escape the crowd, the demands and the pressures (see vs 36 & 37).

None of us can go on and on giving. We need time apart. Time to be on our own; time to be with God; time with those closest to us (and elsewhere in the Gospels we find Jesus drawing his disciples aside for such times).

Later in the day I was visiting in the hospital and I bumped into a colleague who was also visiting. We got chatting and again there arose this whole issue of work pressures, time off, spending time with family and so on. We reflected on how we both were guilty of allowing the demands of ministry to determine our priorities, and that other things (and not least marriage and family!) could suffer as a result.

As I drove back from the hospital I thought a bit about both my morning reading and this conversation. Why are we like this?

Is it a response to the needs of others? If so, why are we not better at responding to the needs of our nearest and dearest?!?

Is it because we feel that this busyness reflects the fact that we have been called by God to serve him in a particular way? If so, then why are we not better at following the pattern of Jesus by whom we have been called and whom we claim to follow, who drew apart to be alone, to escape the crowds, to pray, to be with those closest to him?

Or is it in fact because we are at some unconscious (or is it really that unconscious?) level meeting our own needs? Our need to ‘matter’, our need to be loved and appreciated by others, our need to be of value, our need to justify ourselves by our busyness, our need to assuage our guilt? If any of these is the case (and I fear that several of them may be the case for many of us!) then somewhere and somehow our theology has gone sadly awry. And who suffers? Well, we do... our spiritual, social and personal well-being is compromised. Our family and married life also suffers, and that is utterly tragic. Are our vows at marriage and the baptism of our children somehow secondary to our ordination vows?!? But in the end our ministry suffers too, as do those to whom we minister.

I said that there were three things yesterday that struck me. What was the third? In the evening I opened the newspaper and late on came across an article (I read it in a different paper, but a version of it appears here http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/why-four-hour-working-days-might-be-just-as-effective-as-working-9-5-a3436766.html ) which claimed that to work long hours is often to work inefficiently and that we could in fact get more done by working less! I rather liked one of the assertions in the article ‘meetings should never be longer than 40 minutes long’!  The article was headed ‘How to do a full day’s work in only four hours’, although that was not quite the claim actually made in the article nor in the book to which it was referring. Nonetheless, the points in the article did make me reflect further.

Why are we so driven? Why are we so wedded to the notion that long hours means efficient, fruitful or faithful work? Whose needs are we really seeking to meet? What would really please the God who rested after creating, who commanded a Sabbath rest for humanity and whose Son sought solitude and space?