To Build a Home

As I sit in my office (or glorified spare room) studying the theory of the atonement and how best we are to understand Christ's sacrifice on the cross for the satisfaction of sin, I am struck by a stark revelation: a deeper understanding will not necessarily bring about about a deeper devotion. That is not to say that a deeper understanding is worthless, but rather truth without faith is not very much at all.

I read a great example of this in Kiekegaard's journals: understanding without devotion is like renting a house and filling it with possessions and furniture but being left standing there without a beloved to share life with. Christianity is not something to be believed but something to be lived. Ultimately a quest for more and more knowledge will be an unsatisfied one; according to the Kierkegaardian there is a limit to reason, and a limit to understanding. Unless we are prepared to make the leap into living we are left with an empty house built with solid understandable bricks but no-one to share it with.

This resonates with me. When I read through the life of Jesus and his teachings, although to some extent his project is one of truth and understanding, his teachings are ultimately of a practical nature, his aim is to urge people to live more fully not to know more. He doesn't give us a nice tidy doctrine in which to do this with. He asks confusing questions, he spits in people's eyes, he flips orthodoxy on its head. Any attempt to tie Jesus' teachings into a neatly understood system seem entirely to miss the point- he is urging you to live in fullness of God.

According to Kierkgeaard our sense of human reason is tainted by the condition of sin. Our distance from God makes Christianity seem repulsive at times. It is only in living in faith that we can fully embrace Christianity. Yet the temptation I have is to desire everything to be neat, for my knowledge to be complete, for my theology to be orthodox and my understanding of God to be much richer than anyone else's. If Kierkgeeard is right however, then I am deeply lacking if I do not live it. If the doctrine of the atonement is no more to me than just another philosophical argument, if it makes no difference to how I speak to my wife, how I spend my money and what I do tomorrow, then it is futile.

"What good would it do me to be able to explain the meaning of Christianity if it had no deeper significance for me and for my life;- what good would it be to me if the truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognised her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion?" S. Kierkegaard's Journals, August 1 1835

That isn't to say we ought to abandon reason altogether- Kierkgegaard doesn't endorse irrationalism as some have supposed, but he merely recognises the limits of reason. What if Truth were not something that could be discovered by looking at more evidence, what if Truth were not something we could prove, what if Truth were a person? If this is the case, it seems that Kierkegaard is right, what we need is not a reasonable understanding but a complete devotion.

The Seldom Seen Kid

This weekend I spent two hours in the pouring rain watching Elbow play to 10,000 people next to a very large telescope. The lead singer, Guy Garvey, is a bit of an icon of mine. I don't know whether it is his northern charm and wit, his ability to write stunningly beautiful lyrics or his ability to make a whole field of people laugh despite the torrential downpour, but there is something instantly attractive about Guy Garvey. He somehow manages to make bird watching cool (again?), to design a real ale for his band and to bring a grown man to tears as well as being possibly the coolest man alive.

The thing is, when Guy Garvey recommends music, I can't help but listen to it. I like to model myself on him. There is an archetypal 'Elbow fan' that enjoys good beer, gigs and anything northern. And that's what I aim for. Guy Garvey is hardly short of disciples.

As I read about the need to re-embody Christ as a Church (in Alan Hirsch's Re-Jesus), I am struck that the concept of discipleship is hardly alien to our culture. It is hardly alien to myself. I have an Elbow hip flask, I even proposed to my fiance with an Elbow song playing in the background. We see disciples everywhere. Bieberians, Beyonceians, Cockaynians, our culture is littered with followers. And what they do is simple- they attempt to embody the thing that they follow. They dress like them, speak like them, act like them, model their style on them.

Following Guy Garvey is simple- you listen to the music he recommends, you drink beer, you act northern, you tune into his radio show every Sunday night. Yet we make following Jesus this really weird thing. It couldn't be simpler.

Hirsch & Frost say put it like this:

"Faith...is more like the supreme gamble in which we stake our lives upon a conviction. It can't be reduced to belief in a set of propositions. It is a profoundly existential act in which we are fully and personally involved"

Christianity is in essence lived out. It is the thing that impacts your every day, your decisions at a micro level. It cannot merely be a belief in an abstract system which gifts you a magic ticket to paradise. If we fail to grasp this we will struggle to ever understand the concept of discipleship. What you do matters- and our call as followers of Jesus is to do what he would do; to embody Christ in our culture and situations. The sad truth is, that we seldom see all out true disciples of Christ amongst us.

You can study all the complex theology you like, you can be expert on Scripture, you can remodel and replant the Church a million times, you can write excellent worship music (well probably not), you can speak the most eloquent prayers imaginable but unless you embody Christ in your daily actions it is pointless.
 

Jesus calls us to 'make disciples'- in other words 'people who follow'. As I write this, I think of how lacking I am in areas of my life. How little discipline I have, how little I seek to bless the poor and needy, how little I attempt to embody Christ in my every day existence. Just opening up the beginning of Matthew and reading the sermon on the mount inspires me to live so much better than I do. It strikes me that if we are to 'make people who follow', a good place to start is with ourselves.

The need to re-discover Jesus and the values he stands for couldn't be greater. The need to become embodiers of Jesus couldn't be greater. We aren't lacking clever ideas and complex institutions- we are lacking this one single thought: Jesus Christ has the power to radically change everything in his path, if only we are prepared to allow him.

Nobodys Fault But Mine

I was speaking on Sunday at G2 about Jesus' command of 'do not worry- seek first the kingdom of God'. I reckon I'm a much better writer than nautural public speaker- and so my speaking largely comes out of something I've written carefully and deliberately. I rarely go off piste when I'm speaking on a topic. But as I prepared in the hour before the meeting, I felt really strongly that I should fit something in that I hadn't planned to say at all. So midway through speaking, I casually slipped in:

"You do not have to be anything , you do not have to do anything- do you know that?"

You could have easily missed it. And in fact, most people probably didn't think about the significance of that question. But I could talk for hours about that alone. Tonight, as I lay in the bath reading (it is the place of most creative and spiritual revelations) I was struck again by the potency of this. The book I was reading about leadership, claims that our development, our leadership, is down primarily to what we put into it. Self leadership is one of the biggest skills a leader needs to learn. But we have the tendancy to blame everyone else for our lack of success or movement in life; circumstances, lack of input, negativity, opposition, people. But at the end of the day, the responsibility for what you get from today lies solely with yourself. 

I am reminded of a very famous scene that Sartre paints in 'Being and Nothingness' of a waiter who plays the part of a waiter perfectly. He is a little too eager, his smile perfect, he moves around the restaurant effortlessly; he has become in his own mind: 'a waiter'. Sartre accuses the waiter of living in 'bad faith'; he denies his own freedom and his own existence by reducing himself only to a 'waiter' as if it were an object; as if he were only a waiter as a rock is a rock. The truth of his existence and his consciousness cannot be reduced to this at all. The human condition lies much deeper than that of rocks and chairs. The waiter denies his fundemental freedom to exist, to be conscious.

And it's true in my own life as I stop and look back. For the past 2 months, I have become a little bitter and fustrated with certain things, I have become a little lacking in passion. And I have blamed the lack of a holiday or any time off, I have blamed a lack of time, a lack of input, too many hours at work, too much to do. I'm sure all of these factors have contributed to my situation. But the truth of the matter is that I have been living in bad faith; denying my own responsibility in my life. I have reduced my self and become an object influenced by causes and effects. It is to deny a fundemental truth about myself. It is time to face myself as responsible for the content and state of my own life.

How about you?

Do you know that we choose what we have? Always. We choose the life that we adhere to? Always. I can often be so fustrated even by my personal morality restricting what I can and can't do. But the truth of the matter is; I am free, I choose. I choose my actions, I choose to adhere to a system of ethics. I choose to get up and go to work instead of lying in and lying about it. I choose to approach my relationships the way I do, as fustrating as it can be. I choose to hardly ever have a day off. I choose be lazy, I choose my state of being. I choose my bitterness and lack of passion.

You don't have to go to work tomorrow, you don't have to stay in your marriage, you don't have to diet, you don't have to go running, you don't have to finish your degree or hand in that essay on Friday. You don't have to adhere to a system of morality. If you wanted to, you could sell all your stuff and move to Kenya tomorrow. You choose. Always.

That is not to say that those things go without consequence or influence, but ultimately you choose. And it is not to say that sometimes choices are restriced, and sometimes difficult. But the more you recognise that you always have a choice, the more you realise that only you are responsible for where you are, what you do, and what you make of life.

Tomorrow, you'll probably choose to get out of bed; what will you make of it?

Familiar Ground

The man Jesus Christ who existed more than two thousand years ago has had a significant impact both on the culture of his time, and on every subsequent generation since. He has been called a lot of things- a great teacher, a prophet, a heretic, a revolutionary, a messiah. Who do you say he is?

The Jews had waited for centuries for their saviour, their king, to rescue them, to rule them. They expected a hero to come along; save the day, overthrow the Romans and sort everything out. 

 He was hailed as a king as a baby by some travelling star gazers.As he entered into Jerusalem on the last week of his life, people put their cloaks on the road, they cheered, and they hailed him as the one who had come to rescue them. 

But Jesus was never the king they expected.  He wasn't wealthy- he lived in poverty, he didn't ride into battle- he rode a donkey, he didn't overthrow the Roman Empire- he was murdered by them.  He upset the religious leaders; he spoke against the status quo.

And if the same Jesus was around today, the truth is that he probably wouldn't fit in that well with most Christians. I doubt you'd see him at Soul Survivor or Kewsick Convention (that doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with either of these) 

The Church has been stooped in tradition for centuries. Even now, we make Jesus into something we want him to be. He fits in our little box. But Jesus is not what you expect. We make it all about our salvation, we make it about feeding our own conscience. The thing is- we rarely dare to approach Jesus without any pretense. 

He’s not what you expect if you’ve heard a little bit about him. He's not what you expect if you've been trying to follow him for years. He's not what you expect if you've studied theology. The man Jesus has the ability to surprise me, sometimes shock me, confuse me and destroy my way of thinking. The more I read of his life and teachings, the more he fascinates me, the more he challenges me.

  

The theologian Tom Wright puts it like this:

"Jesus- the Jesus we might discover if we really looked- is larger, more disturbing, more urgent than we - had ever imagined...We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety, the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience, and Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience and ultimate happiness are important, but not nearly as important as Jesus himself”

Who is the real Jesus? What did he stand for? How can I be a person who lives to find out the answers to these questions? 

Love Underlined

"It is LOVE that believes in the Resurrection." Wittgenstein

I am struck as I write this how over complicated I like to make things, with how much depth I like to think about the concept of faith and the purpose of the Church. I think it is vital that we do this. But I am aware right now how simple the truth of Christianity is.

All of the theology that evolves out of the last two thousand years is so vast that I can't even dream of getting my head around it. The number of concepts even in Paul's writings in the New Testament might take me the rest of my life to try and comprehend fully. But it's not the point. I don't mean that it isn't important- but it isn't necessary to the basic truth of Christianity.

The beauty of the Christian Church is that there is no division between a world renown Biology specialist and a simple, uneducated Christian. They are both children of God, and are both welcomed into his Church. Rich, poor, intelligent, stupid, young, old, wrong, right. The reason that this is possible is because the truth of Christianity is overwhelmingly simple. And it is this: faith, and love.

I think of two of Jesus' earliest followers: Thomas and Peter. They represent these concepts of faith and love perfectly. When confronted with a resurrected Jesus their responses are very different. Thomas, like any good historian, philosopher or scientist wants evidence. He demands to see the holes and the marks of the crucifixion. And Jesus' grants him his request. Thomas is confronted with the evidence of the resurrection and he has faith.

While we lack what was available to Thomas today, we are hardly lacking in evidence. We are left to explain how the Christian Church evolved out of the life of this man Jesus who was recorded in history. We are left with four independent accounts of his life, death and resurrection which require a response. They are not easy to dismiss as works of fiction or wishful thinking. They require faith. Like Thomas; when presented with the resurrected Jesus, we have a choice.

But as I think about faith more and more, I am dissatisfied to think about it as a purely objective belief in a historical proposition. Faith in Jesus unlike my belief that Dinosaurs existed requires a complete change in my being. If true, then it requires an upheaval of my entire world view. It is Peter's response to the resurrection that typifies this.

After the death of Jesus, it is recorded that Peter denies Jesus three times. The person that he devoted himself so fully to over the past three years he totally rejects. When he meets Jesus again, risen from the dead, Jesus' first response is not one of evidence but a question: "Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me?". Peter is confronted with the resurrected person of Jesus on a deeply personal level.

 And I believe that today the person of Christ asks the same question: "Do you love me?". The basic truth of Christianity is that it requires not only faith, not only a belief in an event, but a total submission to it. It is not a belief based on feeling or subjectivity, but neither is it one based on hard cold fact- it must go beyond that. It is a leap beyond the simple belief in the resurrection. "Do you love me?" is a world shattering, life changing question. It is a question I am still trying to answer. But it is breathtakingly simple.

Shine a Light

I think often we have this idea as Christians that people look at us and see in us something they want. That just being around us is enough to make them realise that we’re ‘distinctive’, that there’s something different about us that they want for their lives and then they become Christians. I’ve heard this idea preached about and talked about so many times. But honestly, I’m not sure how true it is. Firstly, it doesn’t obviously work; if it did then there wouldn’t be as many people that were close to us that weren’t Christians. Surely they would have ‘seen the light’ by now. But as far as I can see, I’ve got plenty of non-Christian friends who are quite happy with their lives, and don’t particularly want what I’ve got. They’re quite happy for me to believe what I believe but they don’t want it. Should my job be to convince them that they need to change?

Jesus says that we’re called to be ‘light of the world’, that we should be distinctive and shine goodness where there is darkness, to show people the glory of the kingdom of God. My worry is that we’ve not got something the world wants anymore. What does the world see in Christian living that it wants? Often I think it sees only frigid, self denying, uptight, sexually frustrated hypocrites. That’s not to say that this is always the case, I think that there are genuine ‘lights’ out there. But I’m not one of them. It’s a little ignorant of us to assume that if our friends were all a little more like us and believed what we did that they would be better off. I think if we have the idea that just by being a Christian we’re a ‘light’ into their lives, we’re mistaken. Of course it could be that the world just can’t realise how much it needs what we’ve got. I’ve often heard the idea that we’re somehow ‘deep down’ happier and more content in a way that a non-Christian can never be. But I know plenty of miserable, grumpy Christians and plenty of genuine contented non-Christians. So what is it that I’ve got that makes me so ‘distinctive’; that makes me ‘light in the darkness’?

God’s promise to Abraham and his descendents was:

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

I think this still is the promise God makes to us today. That because of the blessings he pours on us, that we can be a blessing to this world. The Jews had something that everyone wanted; victory assured in battle, security from their enemies. Today I think the perception of Christianity is that it’s all about moderation and abstinence. We become Christians and believe in God so that we can ‘go to heaven’ when we die, then we live our lives not having sex until we’re married, not getting drunk, not swearing and living by a bunch of out dated moral rules. Basically having less fun than everyone else but not being much different other than that. I think it’s summed up quite well in a Laura Marling lyric: “I sold my soul to Jesus and since then I’ve had no fun”. Rather than looking at Christians and thinking that they’re missing out on something I think most people think that it’s us that are somehow missing out.

If we’re no different to our friends who don’t know Jesus, then this isn’t really surprising. If the difference is that I go to Church on a Sunday, read my bible every day, drink a little less and don’t have sex then I don’t think we really understand ‘distinctiveness’. This isn’t something that the world wants to pursue. And to be honest, I don’t really blame them. If this is the only difference, then how am I in a position to tell someone they should live differently? When Jesus is talking about Salt & Light, I don’t think this is what he meant. The light of the world is not watered down, easy comfortable Christian living. It isn’t living like everyone else with a ‘secret guide’ telling us how to do it better than everyone else. Sometimes we have the tendency to think that Christian living is about living how others live but with our own built in sat-nav telling us what to do next.

If we don’t start seeking real kingdom transformation in our lives then we’re in danger of losing all relevance to this generation of people who are happy with what they’ve got. How can we expect people to change, how can we expect that we will be a blessing if we’ve got nothing to give? The kingdom of God is not an ‘ad-on’ to our lives, an enhancement to what we’re already doing, it is radical transformation. It is denying yourself to seek God's kingdom. Until I can see transformation in my life, I don’t expect anyone to notice what I’ve got, and why should they?

I think the imagery of ‘light’ is quite significant in what Jesus says. If we spend all of our time in comfortable Christianity it’s no wonder we’re not particularly distinctive. Try lighting a candle and putting it outside in the middle of summer. That’s not distinctive. Being ‘light’ requires us to shine in darkness. If we don’t seek darkness, it’s pretty difficult to know how light we’re shining. The whole idea of ‘blessed to be a blessing’ is that we become real change seekers. Not waiting for people notice what we’ve got, but taking light to the darkness. We should become the people that say ‘it’s not right that there are people are sleeping on our streets while we’re sleeping in beds’, ‘it’s not right that people are being trafficked in our cities’, ‘it’s not right that people die of curable diseases every day’. I long to be more radical in my living, to really seek kingdom change, but at the moment I live shining comfortably in the light.

Think of the darkest place you know. The place where there is a real absence of God, where people are just longing for change but can’t get it. Be light there. That’s distinctive. I long to live like this, but honestly most of the time I’m either crippled by doubt or fear. But this is what I think distinctive living really looks like. I want the world to look at me and see a change seeker, a justice seeker, a blessing, a light. At the moment I don’t think it’s any wonder that people don’t want what I’ve got.

The idea that people see something in me that they want can be a real catalyst to laziness, a motivation to stop seeking kingdom change, and just living comfortably among people hoping that they will notice. This is not what I want for my life.