Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

Desperately procrastinating from writing what I hope will end up being more regular blog entries, I stumbled across a provocative little gem. After making about the third espresso of the day I sat down to read the BBC news feed for the fourth or fifth time and found an article titled: "Can Religion tell us more than Science". The joys of going to an afternoon Church.

It started promising and interesting. John Gray maintains that the New Atheists have kind of missed the point when showing religion to be an inadequate scientific thesis. Which I agree with. But the main opinion of his text I fundamentally disagree with. The crux of his position is summed up in the last sentence of the piece:
"What we believe doesn't in the end matter very much. What matters is how we live."

Religion, he maintains, is all about behaviour and not particularly about belief at all: "Practice - ritual, meditation, a way of life - is what counts. What practitioners believe is secondary, if it matters at all."

It got me thinking- is that really true? I realise that some of my thoughts on faith might come across a little bit that way. I think that faith is absurd and rationally inexplicable, I don't feel particularly like new atheism has much threat to my faith. But surely what we believe is vital, its central to how we act. Otherwise our actions, our behaviour might be fulfilling and enjoyable on one level but surely they're ridiculously inconsistent. I don't quite understand how we might believe without it moving us to action. It is beyond me.

Consistency is probably one of the things I value most in a person and one of the things that I think might be lacking in a lot of modern Christians. I find it troubling that someone's indifference and agnosticism towards a deity might lead them to attend worship devoted to one every week. But it scares me. This attitude towards faith is only increasing. And honestly I find it totally and utterly at odds to the teachings of Christ. It makes no sense to say "what matters is how we live", inferring that to follow Christ's teachings is somehow valuable in its own right. The idea of following the teachings of Christ without any faith, without any belief is one that I think Christ would have found utterly ludicrous. You only need to pick the New Testament up and read it (which surely is contained in the notion of religious practice) to find that belief matters.

Matthew 22:36-40. "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Love God, love people. That is the heart of Christianity. It escapes me how I ought to love something or some being that I don't believe in. It escapes me that my devotion and practice of daily devoting my life to Christ might be an empty gesture. It is actually pretty offensive. It is only from belief that true behaviour can stem. Sartre calls this notion 'bad faith', the idea that we pretend that we are only objects like trees and rocks. He describes a waiter who 'plays the part of a waiter', he is so wrapped up in 'being a waiter', he denies that there is any choice, any belief involved. This notion is at the heart of Sartre's account of morality.

And that strikes me as the heart of the problem of the dying Church of the UK: Apathy and inconsistency Thousands of people acting and living out the 'Christian life' in Bad Faith. Ticking the 'I go to Church' box on their conscience. They are Christians as objects, they live their lives in complete bad faith. But they never let the radical words of Jesus transform them, never let worship escape the box they put it in. They don't allow their minds to be transformed. And most of them don't have a clue what they believe.

I believe that faith can change your life. That Christ can change your life. I believe that. We might see new atheism and passionate unbelievers as a barrier to this. I don't. Dawkins might be quite an angry, influential speaker and commentator on modern religion. But at least he's consistent. At least he acts on what he believes. To be honest, good on him. And I hope that he wakes people out of apathy. Out of the lie that what you believe doesn't matter. Because it does.

Christianity needs to learn to do the same. To wake people up who are sleeping in their Churches. Who are filling pews, who have been 'living' without belief in complete bad faith. Consistency is so important at the heart of modern radical Christian living. We need to be people who are brutally consistent. If we believe that Christ's promises are true, we need to live them in our lives. If we don't, if we are feeling doubtful and far from God, why go through the motions? We need to not to sing "In Christ alone my hope is found" when we don't really believe a word of it. We need to not preach that Jesus has changed our lives if we don't think that he has. We need to learn how to be consistent. Communities of people who believe what we believe and act what we believe. There is a lie that says that putting a brave face on, of acting like everyone else is acting is the right thing to do. It is a lie that belief doesn't matter. And it is dangerous to live in bad faith. This is what Jesus says about it:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"

I find that terrifying. That is a stark warning against apathy, bad faith and inconsistency and it is one we need to take a little more seriously than we do.

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.