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....

I've Got Soul But I'm Not a Soldier

Does our philosophy of mind effect the way we view Christianity? Ask that question to about 99% of Christians and I think you'll get a negative response. But I'm convinced that it really does matter what we think about mind, body, soul, spirits. Our ontology (the study of what things exist) impacts our theology, or at least it should.

What do you think a 'soul' is? When Jesus says: “be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body”? or “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and lose his own soul?”, what is he speaking of. Ask the majority of people to define soul and I reckon the response would largely refer to an immaterial substance which inhabits our physical body, a 'thing' or an 'entity' which dwells in the human being. Whether or not they believe in such a substance is irrelevant.

This definition of the ontology of human existence is usually called 'Dualism'. Descartes famously argues for the existence of our ego 'I think, I exist' and that this was the only thing we could not doubt the existence of. He condenses the fundamental of human existence to a spirit, a mysterious, invisible, non physical thing which inhabits a broken, imperfect, physical body. Descartes makes a sharp divide between physical and non-physical, between mind and matter. Minds are the souls of human beings, they think, they believe, they have thoughts and memories and dreams, they exist in a non-physical sense. Souls inhabit physical, temporal, divisible matter. The problem with Substance Dualism as an interpretation of the word 'soul' in scripture, is that I don't think it is entirely coherent.

To do this subject real justice, I would need to spend years and years researching, studying and I could probably write pretty lengthy book on the subject. Maybe one day. But I just want to challenge you that the notion of soul & body that we often speak of is not very coherent and not actually all that biblical.

It's pretty obvious to me that I am a physical thing. Spear me through the brain, and chances are you will change my personality, my memories, my temperament. Whilst there might be still so much we don't know about neuroscience, it seems pretty obvious that I am being who is wholly physical. When I'm my physical body is tired, it effects my mood. When I ingest alcohol it seemingly makes changes in my 'soul'. The brain and the 'soul' might not be completely reducible into the same thing, but it seems pretty obvious that they're pretty intimately connected.

And this seems to fit with the Bible's dichotomy of man. It says in Genesis that God formed Adam from “the dust of the ground”. It says later when God kicks them out from the garden: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. Human beings are made out of dust. I'm not convinced that this perfect creation that God made in his image was only the spiritual inhabitant of an imperfect body. He made man physical. He made man with physical hands, legs and brains. He didn't make man and then place him in a vessel.

This also seems to fit with the notion of the resurrection. Jesus walked the earth a physical man. He died a physical death. He rose again physical; he ate fish with his followers. To eat I'm pretty sure you need a physical mouth and a physical stomach. Granted, there was something 'beyond physical' about Jesus' resurrection; he seemed to appear different but recognisable, he could pass through walls. He was different, but he was still physical.

Why do we think that our destiny is any different. The New Testement teaches that we will one day be resurrected. It talks about Jesus being the 'first fruit' of the resurrection to come. And we know that Jesus was resurrected physically. In fact the whole of 1 Corinthians 15 is a chapter which is all about why the resurrection is a physical, real thing. Paul says “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.” It is essential we focus our hope on the hope of resurrection. But the whole concept of resurrection is about coming back, returning, it's not about departing physicality, but about perfecting it. Jesus became more than physical because he became a perfected version of God's creation. And we too, have the same hope of resurrection. Resurrection as a physical reality, the chance to enter into true physicality.

So what then do we mean by soul? Tom Wright argues that what the New Testament writers would have understood as the 'soul' is the concept of selfhood. Our identity, our personality, our character. Does this imply anything non-physical? Does this imply a sharp divide between 'physical' and 'mental'. I don't think it does. Actually those aspects of my being seem to be deeply routed in the physical.

Human beings are deeply spiritual beings. We love, we feel, we pray, we encounter God. We do all of these things in a very physical way. Spirituality is so tightly part of the physical, that it seems impossible to make any sort of divide between spiritual and 'physical'. We are dust creatures, breathed into by the breath of a God. But I don't think God calls us to hate the physical and embrace the non-physical at all. In fact we need to learn to embrace our physicality as a part of spirituality; if we are tired, this effects our faith. If we encounter God at all, we surely encounter him as a part of our physical being.

You might think this makes no difference to anything. A lot of technical nonsense that has no bearing on faith. I would sincerely beg to differ. We preach a hope which is centred on physical resurrection, we live in a beautiful physically created universe which the creator God made. And ultimately we are dust creatures, the physical is not a shell that we will one day shed. But something glorious which will one day be perfected. I could write so much more on this. But I think that will do for now.

Any Day Now

Sometimes I'm not very passionate about Jesus, sometimes I go along with it without really feeling it very much. Sometimes I feel the pressure to fit a certain mold, to be a certain person and I just run away from it. Of late I feel like I haven't invested much time in 'relationship with God'. Sometimes I'm not even sure if I understand what it means. I feel a bit like one day soon I'll get a bit more passionate, that I'll get 'better' at this. But generally I'm apathetic about faith.

I don't really understand why I'm apathetic. I think probably it's a bit of a vicious cycle- The less time I spend investing in my faith I end up less passionate. If only I were more passionate I might spend some more time doing it.

But in all honesty, some of time I feel I've heard it all before, that nothing can really excite me or inspire me. That's not true at all, firstly because I don't know it all; my knowledge of the bible is poor, my time spent in prayer is dismal. And secondly things do inspire me, things do move me if I give them the chance. But a lot of the time there's this shell which comes out when I enter Christiandom. From the outside I look impenetrable, impressive, Christian. On the inside I'm skeptical, apathetic and selfish. I might be able to sing that I surrender my all to Jesus, I don't really mean it. Not usually. I might be able to respond well when someone asks me what I think. But I've had a lot of practice.

I've known about Jesus, that my sins are forgiven for as long as can remember. I've known that God loves me before I knew that water is H2O. I find it difficult to be surprised by these things, because I don't really know what my life would be like without them. I totally take for granted the grace of God, the peace of his presence, the impact he has on my life. I really do envy converts who have come to Jesus and turned away from their old life. I find it hard to sing "I once was lost but now I'm found", because I don't really feel that at the age of four (or however old I was) that I really was lost. And consequently I find it hard to get excited about being found. It's not that I don't think I've ever sinned, but more that I don't feel particularly like I have an 'old life' to turn away from.

Bringing people up with bedtime stories of Jesus and teaching them of grace and prayer and the love of God is brilliant. I imagine that I will want to do the same if I ever I have a family. But sadly I also think it's responsible for the huge amount of people that shield themselves to God in later life. "I've heard it all before" "My family are all Christians" "I used to believe in all that nonsense" are sure ways of stopping the truth and power of God ever effecting your life. Sadly, it also fills Churches with thousands of apathetic people who believe but are utterly apathetic. People who build shells around them that look and behave exactly like they should, but don't really care. For them Church is what they do on Sundays, it's where their community is. But ask them to die for it and they'd be the first out of the door.

How do we reach the generation of Christians that don't get excited about this, who build a Christian shell that never really reaches down to the core of their being? If the Church started to be persecuted in the West, then I'm pretty sure we'd kill out apathy. But it isn't. Apathy is like a bacteria that is so difficult to attack but which grows and grows alongside genuine, passionate Christianity. I don't really know what the answer is. But apathy has the danger of holding back something which is life changing, risky, passionate, dangerous and exciting.

We need to start getting vulnerable about faith, about what we really think. About what we really struggle with. I want to be the person who is consistent to the core, that is as passionate on a Sunday afternoon as I am on a Monday morning. I want to break down the shell, and I don't want to be apathetic. I don't really know how to do it though.

Believe

I'm finding it difficult to believe recently.

Jesus doesn't offer us a theory or a proof to be grappled with and criticised. But I have a tendency to think like that. Probably something to do with studying philosophy for the last five years. The problem I find with philosophy is that it does not offer us a firm foundation to anchor ourselves on- I can spend three months debating, reading and thinking about the best model of consciousness- but my conclusion doesn't seem to have any bearing on my actual life. Outside of the philosophy classroom determinists, libertarians, sceptics, realists, logical positivists, empiricists- they all act the same. There's huge differences in their arguments and their perspectives, but it doesn't alter how they spend their Saturday afternoon or their bank balance. At least in my experience philosophy rarely has any bearing on my actual life, yet it makes some strong and demanding claims. On every level of life, soceity, medicine, science, art, perception- it has something to say. Somehow I find it difficult to ever really apply. As a philosopher I'm an ardent supporter of common sense realism, anti-scepticism, compatibilism and monotheism. None of these things change or have any effect on how I live.

Jesus claims that he comes to bring life, and life to the full. Jesus doesn't offer us a doctrine to leave in the classroom, a theory to grapple with and then get busy living. Unless belief infiltrates every aspect of who you are- how you spend your Saturday afternoon, what you do with your money, how you think, how you act- then it's not true what Jesus says.

The Church in the UK has been dormant for the last century in some cases, and despite being a 'Christian country', we're on the whole a nation of apathetic non-believing agnostics. Partly I think, because we're have been fascinated with Christianity as a concept- as basis for our laws, as a basis for state, as a concept. But Jesus doesn't give you that option. That's not Christianity.

I'm struggling to believe because I'm stubborn, because I'm lazy, because I don't allow Jesus to radicalize my very existence, to transform everything I have. It's easier to think of this is a concept to be grappled with, as an argument to be won. But let me ask you, do you really believe? Do you really believe that a God made you in his image and sent himself as a human to die? Do you really believe that the world will be restored and reconciled with its creator, and that you'll be resurrected into a perfect eternity? I'm sorry but if you really believed that, you'd do more; it wouldn't be something to be grappled with, something to prove or disprove- it would be something that would radically upset my me-centered universe.

I'm the sort of person that can't pretend very well. I don't do the whole 'Christian' thing very well I don't think. If I look like I'm not engaging with 'church', I'm probably not. If I look like I'm ready to give my life for this, I probably am.

I'm trying to challenge myself to go beyond belief. Belief is a philosophers game that can be argued for and against eternally but eventually makes little difference. I'm striving to be Christ like at the core. That's really difficult.