What Do I Want?

"Very simply- I want honesty". I want our behaviour to reflect our hearts. I want people to be risky enough to say what they're really thinking. I want people to be brave enough to embrace and confront their doubt. I want people's stories of faith to reflect their true journey and not some embellished version that we might find more encouraging.

I want to be the kind of Christian that acts as consistently in front of my computer as at work, in the street, with my girlfriend, in Church. Very simply- I want honesty. I want to belong to a community of honesty. Sometimes I see glimpses of this in the Church. Other times I see crowds of masked 'Christianese'; people who know what the right thing to do is, the right thing to say.

I was talking with a friend recently whose going through a bit of a crisis of faith. Part of me thinks that the situations he finds himself in haven't helped his faith. But sometimes I wonder how much room there was for him to be brutal, vulnerable and honest in the Church.

If the Church is a community of believers, living together, sharing everything, how does it get to the point when people say things that surprise us, express doubt, question the 'orthodox'. For my faith, without the opportunity to question even some of the most basic assumptions, to confront doubt, to be candid about what I believe, I know I would have left by now. I can't hack the front of Christianity, I can't pretend I'm excited and passionate when sometimes I'm not.

Very simply- I want honesty. The title and opening line of this blog, I steal from a very influential thinker: Soren Kierkegaard, who wrote an article in 1855 on the same topic. He was frustrated by the Danish Church, the official "Christianity" and the comfortableness of its members. He refused to call himself "Christian", because to him, "Christianity" didn't reflect what Jesus taught, what the New Testament spoke about.

I wonder how Kierkegaard would have fared in the 21st Century British Church. Whilst we may have rediscovered some of the core of what Christ is about in some ways (compared to the Church in his time), in other ways we still desperately lack honesty. And in some ways, we fail to question the core of what Jesus is about. We are sometimes scared of asking basic questions, it is often easier to 'present' ourselves as coherent and together than to be ourselves in front of others. I am often frustrated this.

Perhaps you don't agree. Perhaps you think it's good that the Church isn't too over-personal and frank It might get a bit messy if we have to listen to what everyone actually thinks instead of the official line. It might be discouraging to hear skeptics voice their opinions at risk of stopping others coming to belief. It might make people who are firm in their faith begin to doubt.

 But I do wonder if we're risking honesty at a high price. I wonder if people like my mate might have firmer foundations when the hard times come if they were encouraged to wrestle with doubt more, if they were forced to say what they really thought about things.

Very simply- I want honesty. I am exploring what that means, and perhaps it starts with myself, it starts with you- being prepared to be honest with people. Being prepared to paint our journey of faith as a messy, difficult, glorious, doubting, tiring, but rewarding story. Being able to tell people our struggles, being able to share our doubts with others. It starts with us modelling honesty, and creating a culture of it. I wonder sometimes if a culture of honesty requires a complete upheaval of the structure of 'Church'. But I'm optimistic that we might make this 'Church' thing work somehow.

Don't Ask Me Why

I've just watched Laura Marling in the Minster Chapter House. The Chapter house was built in 1286. It is an absolutely stunning piece of architecture; a round, finely carved stone room with a domed roof and intricate stained glass (look at it here). A woman one month older than myself stood for 50 minutes and plucked a stringed piece of wood whilst singing down a microphone. And honestly it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced. Hard to explain why though.

There was something deeply spiritual about that experience that I found fascinating. It's incredible how just sounds, just bricks can create something so special. I was just fixated by her performance, by the beauty of her song-writing, by how her voice echoed round the room, the skill of her playing. I was stuck to my chair, almost trance like. And I suddenly thought; the human being is incredible. Music is incredible. And I don't understand it. It makes no sense that mere sounds can make me feel like this.

But people have been doing it for centuries. Every time I hear 'don't think twice it's alright' by Bob Dylan or 'Clare de lune' by Debussy it sends shivers down my spine. I don't know if other people experience this phenomenon, but I can only describe it by saying that it moves my soul. I don't necessarily mean that in a metaphysical way, but what I mean is that there is something totally beyond me in those moments, there is something I cannot reduce down to just electrical impulses and neurons firing (in actual fact, it is likely that this is the cause of the phenomenon, but this is not to say it can be reduced down to this level.)

I re-watched the film American Beauty a couple of weeks ago. There is a guy in that film who is fixated by beauty. There is a scene in the film when he films a carrier bag flying around in the wind for fifteen minutes, he claims it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. I'm not convinced personally, but he makes a good point when he says:

"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in. "

And that's precisely how I felt as I watched Laura Marling sing to 200 people in a small room in an ancient building. It was one of those moments I wanted to capture and revisit.  There is something so beautiful about the universe, so beautiful about the human mind, about music, I have to ask why. I have to seek something beautiful, there has to be something creative behind the fabric of the Universe. Not in a way I can ever prove, or in a way that won't seem foolish if you're already sceptical, but in that moment in time, in those snapshots of beauty, I could not doubt that there was a God, I could not doubt his presence.

In a world full of pain and suffering, there is beauty. In a world where death looms round every corner, there is hope. As Paul puts it in Romans 8- creation is under bondage, but it is crying to be released, it will be brought to beauty and glory. In those moments, I understand this, I understand what it means to see beauty in the universe, to see hope. And whilst we live in this broken world, it is so important to get those glimpses of beauty. To stop and see the sunset, to meditate on the beauty of a piece of music, to get lost in a moment.

Call me soppy, pretentious, naive- I don't particularly care. But I believe, in the infamous words of the philosopher Samwise Gamge, 'that there's some good in the world and it's worth fighting for.' 

Unfinished Sympathy

I don't know if you usually read my blog or not. But I'm fascinated with the phenomenon of faith; why and how we believe. I wanted to try something different. I reckon all too often we keep busy, we don't often strip back belief to the core. And some of the time we forget why we ever believed. But I'm interested. Why do you believe what you believe?

This blog isn't finished. That's because you're going to finish it. Please, if you've read this far, leave a comment below. It won't take you very long. Please don't leave this page until you've written, I'm interested in what you have to say.

What I want you to do is to start your comment with: "I am a Christian because" or "I am not a Christian because" and finish the sentence. If you don't know the answer please post that. Please don't attempt to respond or argue with any other comment, just write your own.

Please post your comment anonymously, it will be more fun. Be as honest as you can, no one will know who you are. At some point I'll write my own response. But I guess you won't really know which one is mine.

Please pass this on to as many people as possible. The more responses we get, the more interesting this could be.

I reckon by the time we're finished we'll have quite an interesting blog read....

Rebellion

I went to a conference on Friday full of world class speakers on global leadership. There was a guy that really stood out to me called Seth Godin. He spoke about the need to innovate, do be creative, to do something for the first time. Our culture is changing before our eyes, Godin claims we are entering the death of the industrial age. We used to live in an age where the people that owned the means of production controlled the world- the factory owners, the publishers. Today the means of production is the small humble laptop. Until relatively recently, I would have had to get this published for anyone to notice it. But now anyone, anywhere can get their voice heard. Godin claims we are entering the age of the artist, what will get noticed, what will make a difference is those people that are doing things that no one else is doing, not those doing what everyone else is doing.

That is pretty counter cultural, we've become so institutionalized, we're so used to doing what we're told, that it takes a pretty strong will to act against it. The thing is, there is no map anymore. There is no right way of doing things. There is no right way of being unique, of being an artist. It's an open plain field to create the future. I don't know if that excites me or scares me silly.

The  question is, if Godin is right, if we're on the brink of a new revolution- of recreating society, where is the room for the Church? To put it bluntly, the Church needs to adapt or die. Church has reflected the culture for the last two thousand years. Godin describes the Church in recent times of being in the business of "teaching people to fit in so we can ignore them". That has pretty much been the message of society too- buy nike, buy coca cola, be like everybody else. Creativity has been squashed. Everyone has become ordinary.

There is opportunity like no other to stand out. To be heard. To think differently. But it involves risks. It involves thinking outside of the box, being controversial. "Everyone has seen brown cows. If we just make more brown cows, no one will notice it, everyone is making brown cows. We need to make purple cows". As I see it the Church has tried to reinvent itself- it has tried fresh expressions. And sometimes it's paid off, sometimes it's achieved fresh, relevant Church which isn't compromising on the truth. But I still think we're making brown cows- we're taking the model of the "talk, worship song sandwich" and putting it in a pub, putting it around tables, putting it on the beach. Is this the only way to proclaim truth, is this the only way of making purple cows? Surely it can't be.

I was talking to a Church leader at the conference with a dying congregation of 25 eighty year olds, who weren't interested in doing things differently, being radical, being missional. And he was so fustrated about how to make a difference. He also told me about a pancake event he put on when he gave away 400 free pancakes to people in the community. I asked him if any of them came to Church, he told me they hadn't. I wonder, what would it take for his pancake event to be 'Church'. In some ways, it was more Church than his preaching the lectionary and singing 4 hymns to 25 stubborn old ladies- it was missional, it was serving the community. If he kept giving away pancakes every week, and then found some way of sharing truth, whether it was by conversations, by media, or maybe even preaching- he would have himself a thriving Church. But we need to dare to be.

We need to dare to fail with the Church. We need to dare to be challenged. It is pretty obvious that the Church is dying in a lot of places. I think the reason for this is primarily stubbornness. "The world needs to change and not us. We're doing things the 'right' way." The truth is- the Church needs innovators desperately. But no one is going to pick you. Stop waiting to be picked. Step up, pick yourself and dare to do something no one has done. Dare to be radical. There is a new time dawning and it needs new leaders. Are you going to sit back and watch others lead, or are you going to dare to put yourself on the line? 

Leaders Of The Free World

I quite wanted an early night on Tuesday night. Turns out I ended up talking about free will with my new housemates until pretty late. I've done quite a lot of that since I've been in York; I wrote my final essay of my degree on the subject. After wrestling with the concept of free will for three years, in the end I became satisfied that free will is only really the presence of a felt choice; it's an illusion of sorts (at least compared to what we might usually think it is).

Christians get pretty worked up and frustrated when it comes to free will. It's not surprising if they want to believe in a creator who is both powerful and knowledgeable and who also intervenes in the course of human history. Free will looks like pretty slim pickings if this is the case; if God knew and created the world exactly as it was, then he surely knew exactly the consequences of his creation, which happen to include every choice I make. A lot of Paul's writing in the New Testament talks about us being 'predestined' and 'elect' by God. That bothers people.

I have a few observations about free will that I've come to accept over the last few years.

The first thing is that no one is in a particularly good position. Whether you're a theist or an atheist, free will is difficult to account for. It's not only God that makes free will difficult, the physical world poses some issues as well. The physical world is a world of causes; all physical events are caused by previous physical events. So if all there are is physical things (which I assume most atheists would want to say), then the laws of nature and the past dictate perfectly the contents of the future. It doesn't look like there's much room for free will there either; your actions are just the consequences of a physical system of causes and effects.

So if you want to maintain that there is 'free will' in the strong sense, you must deny that free agents are part of the physical system of events. And even then, you must also deny that there is a God who knows and controls the universe. As far as I know, there aren't many people whose philosophy of human beings and of the universe would allow free will in this strong sense. No one is in a particularly good position to argue for free will in this strong sense of being 'totally uncaused'. Even if we did come to the conclusion that in actual fact human actions were uncaused, it strikes me as a kind of freedom that I don't really want- actions are merely the consequences of randomness if they are uncaused.

The second thing I've noticed, is that we aren't always on the same page when it comes to talking about free will. When we talk about free will, we usually mean it in this strong sense of being 'uncaused'. But actually we aren't very clear on what we really mean by free will most of the time. I think, if pushed most people would be happy with the kind of free will I endorse. I came to the conclusion that all that we can mean by free will is the feeling of choice. And that is quite enough. It's quite enough for me to decide what I'm going to do next Tuesday, it's quite enough for me to choose what I want for my lunch. It's quite enough for me to choose to follow Jesus. It's my intention that matters rather than what caused it. I could never really know what caused my action after all.

The third thing is that at times we all have to hold in tension that our actions are both caused and free. Sometimes this doesn't make much sense when we try to reconcile it. But maybe we shouldn't try and reconcile it at all. I wonder if the problem is one of perspective. Metaphysically speaking my actions are caused; in other words- zoom out to the level of looking at the universe as a whole, on that level everything causes everything else; the future is just a part of the track that the train of the universe hasn't got onto yet. On that level we're caused. But free will is not something which we can discover on that level at all. Actually free will is something which occurs on a very everyday level; we need to zoom in a lot to get to me at 7 O'clock on a Monday morning choosing which one of my housemates' cereals to steal; I'm perfectly free to choose any of them. Free Will is an everyday thing, it is something that occurs at the level of consciousness and human existence, and not at the metaphysical level. I agree that there is still some sort of tension there, but it's one I'm happy to hold.

The fourth thing I think that is important to think about from a Christian perspective is that at times we have been guilty of constructing human theories around Scripture. When Paul speaks about the things God prepared for us in advance to do, or when he speaks about Christ preordaining our salvation, he firstly and foremost makes a pastoral point. The purpose of most of the New Testament, which is where we get a lot  of our theology on free will from, is primarily to encourage and build the Church. It is to build up leaders and fix people's eyes back onto Jesus. It is a great encouragement when we feel like we are worthless, or that we aren't good enough, to know that actually God has chosen us to be a part of his plans. Of course there are theological consequences of this. But I wonder if it's sometimes risky to take these letters of encouragement, and then take poetic lines from the Psalms, which are beautiful pieces of poetry written to glorify God, and couple them together to make complex metaphysical points about our free will. I'm not saying that these ideas are not there in the Bible, I just sometimes wonder if we're danger of skewing the purpose of some texts in order to build a nice, solid humanly understandable systematic theology which ties all the ends together.

The last thing, and perhaps the most important thing I've observed about free will is that it makes little difference. The causal state of my being makes little difference to which cereal I want tomorrow morning. You see the thing is that tomorrow morning the Calvanist, the humanist, the determinist, the libertarian, the Christian and atheist will all live their lives with perfectly free will. What I mean by that is that as soon as we put down the books, as soon as we stop discussing and debating the level of free will of the human being, we discover that free will is unavoidable. It is right there in front of us as Sartre might say- it is at the heart of our being. On a basic, everyday level, whatever you think about free will has little bearing on what you actually do and how you actually behave. I mean this as an encouragement; sometimes free will is actually not worth worrying about too much, it does not alter how you live, it does not come into play at an everyday level really. I guess we'll never really know how free we are, and it strikes me that we ought to not let it mess with us too much, we ought not to let it cripple us. I don't think anyone actually knows at the end of the day.

I'm free on any sort of level that matters. I find it difficult to dispute that. It's pretty obvious to us that we are free, we're free to choose almost all the time. It's what we do with our freedom that's important, it's how we choose and what we do with our lives.