Jigsaw Falling Into Place

When my friend became a Christian she said one of the reasons she felt prepared to commit to faith is that she was amazed she could be a 'hand of God' on this earth. I think there's really a beauty in that sentiment. Although it might be a testimony that some might claim doesn't encapsulate her forgiveness and redemption- to me it echoes one of the key things about 'gospel' and about Christ that often we overlook.

I've written it before, and I will write it again, I will preach it, I will talk to you about it, I will think about it; you are part of something bigger than yourself. 'Salvation', whatever that means, whatever that looks like, has to be a placing of a jigsaw piece into a glorious tapestry. The whole point of 'salvation', of forgiveness, or redemption is: The Church.

Whatever you think about that word, whatever connotations, however boring 'Church meetings' are, however screwed up the institution is; it is the light of the world. I'm personally frustrated daily by how the Church functions; by its hypocrisy and short-sitedness. But I'm optimistic that the Church is worth fighting for, that it can stand for something, that it can bring hope. And like my friend, I'm so amazed that I can be a foot or a mouth or an ear of Christ on the earth.

The 'body' language is borrowed from Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:

"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many."

The imagery is very deliberate I think. Paul could easily have used another piece of imagery; we are the 'ship' of Christ, some of us masts, some of us sails and so on. But I think that kind of misses the point. Elsewhere Paul tells us we were 'raised with Christ' (Colossians 3v1). The Church, (or if you don't like that word- the body of those that have come into faith) are today the very embodiment of Jesus. The word body is so important- because at the resurrection something beautiful was birthed; not only the bodily resurrected Christ, but another body- the hope to the hopeless, the kingdom of God, the community of faith, the body of Christ. And done right, I really believe it has something to offer.

Sadly, it is often pretty bad at this. But that's not necessarily the point. A part of entering into faith, and a vital component of 'gospel' is that we become part of something. In the same way that there is no point in saving a jigsaw piece from isolation unless we place it on the puzzle, there is no point being 'saved' if we are then not put in the puzzle of Christs' body. The Church's focus is often on 'getting people in', on evangelism. But the sad thing is that all to often what happens when we only do this is that although people come in they just fall out the other side.

And this is why I'm so frustrated by the 21st Century mentality that 'Church' is that thing you attend on a Sunday. No! I'm so frustrated that it's often led by professional Christians and attended by 'regular folk'. No! The Church cannot be constrained by four walls, by a one hour slot, by how it is defined. The Church must learn to outgrow its meetings. It must learnt to allow 'communal time together' on a Sunday to simply be an overflow of its community and not the sum of it.

I will spend my life trying to seek what this might look like. To rethink tradition when we need to, and to hold onto it when appropriate. But in an age of frustration with culture and society, where consumerism is starting to look like it might not have all the answers; I believe that we have something to offer. And I for one am proud to be a part of something glorious, but by myself I can't achieve it.

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.