Man of Thought

"Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought." Henrich Heine 

A card with this quotation written on stands proudly on my desk next to the picture of my wife. It was given to me five years ago before I embarked on the beginning of my University education. As I eagerly await to begin another three years of Philosophy, it has become somewhat of a mantra for me.

In today's world it seems increasingly the case that the 'men of action' are the ones who receive the praise. It is those who get things done that inspire, those who are quick to act, pragmatic and useful to society. And in some capacity, this is understandably fair; it is the men of action, the doers who change things, who make a difference. But for me, it is the men of thought, the writers, the thinkers, the slow movers, who have inspired me, who get my heart racing. And perhaps they are in danger of being overlooked. 

Men of thought have the power to change how people think, to challenge presumptions and question the norm. And more than anything, it is how and what people think that influences what people do. I like to think that thinkers set the tone for how we march, they ask the questions no one else thinks are important. Most importantly, they get to the root of things, they establish the very point and purpose of why we do what we do. 

For me, it has been thinkers who have readjusted how I see my world and my faith. I think of Kierkegaard, Tom Wright, Sartre. These men have made me question realities I took for granted, to ask questions I didn't know were even questions. And ultimately these challenges have affected how I have lived. It was Tom Wright's challenge to me as a 17 year old boy that made me think for the first time about the Kingdom of God as a present reality. This has shaped how I have seen Christianity ever since. It was the words of Sartre, as an undergraduate student that challenged me to see the nothingness of a life without a God, and the constraints we put upon our own freedom. And as a Master's student, it was the words of Kierkegaard that challenged me to see faith as a constant leap, a living, breathing, active thing that is far beyond a doctrine to ascribe to.

As I begin my PhD in a few weeks time, it is this challenge I look to: not to be a useless thinker who sets himself apart from others, who cares about problems that have no bearing on reality, but to be a man of thought who can relate to the world, who can ask meaningful questions of his friends, who can challenge those around him. I believe that thinkers can make a difference, and it is to this task that I am committed to. I don't know how the next few years of my life will pan out, but by the faithfulness and goodness of God I have been given an opportunity to stretch and sharpen my mind, and I intend to do it for his glory. 

Of course Heine's claim is somewhat of a false dichotomy that will rightly annoy some of you. Being a man  of action by no means excludes you from being a man of thought. If you read the books of the New Testament written by Paul, you cannot but be blown away by his structure, the beauty and power of his writing. But Paul is unmistakably a man of action; he not only changes how people think, he tells people to: 'follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.' Paul is a great doer, bringing power and momentum to the good news of Jesus.

Inside the card is written the simple words: 'To Josh, a man of thought and a man of action'. I admit that I by no means live up to this recommendation. But it is this challenge that I strive towards.

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.

I Can't Turn You Loose

I don't know how you perceive Christianity. You might be vehemently opposed to the very thought of it, you might think of it as a useful worldview to learn from and apply to your life. You might accept its claims wholeheartedly or you might be sceptical of the very concept of  God at all. Whatever you say about it, it seems to be something which the world cannot be rid of easily. Despite widespread secularization in the West, I've only ever belonged to Churches that have been growing in number, seeing people changed and challenged by the concept of faith. There is a common opinion presented by the media and by Dawkins and co. that Christianity is a dying superstition that is based on incoherent premises. It doesn't seem to have much effect. Christianity is pretty stubborn. It is pretty ingrained.

On a worldwide scale, Christianity is definitely thriving in Asia and Africa. Seoul, the capital of South Korea reportedly contains 11 of the world's 12 biggest Christian Churches. Despite widespread persecution and scientific 'enlightenment', faith does not just lie down and give up. 

On a personal level, Christianity is something which refuses to die in my life. Despite three years of  studying Philosophy and intense periods of doubt and scepticism, there is something resilient about the Christian belief that no amount of scrutiny seems to be able to destroy. Call it indoctrination if you like, wishful thinking, naivety, stubbornness, but it would take something remarkable to debunk the foundation of faith from my life.

The reason for this, I reckon, is to do with the very nature of faith. Faith is not belief in a set of propositions, but rather a commitment, a 'leap' beyond that. Faith must be lived. The difference between my faith and the countless theories, concepts and ideas I have studied is that faith leaves the classroom, it leaves the books- it can only be realized lived. In his Easter sermon this year, Rowan Williams said the following: 

"We learn and assimilate its truth [the resurrection] by the risk of living it; to those on the edge of it, looking respectfully and wistfully at what it might offer, we can only say, 'you'll learn nothing more by looking; at some point you have to decide whether you want to try to live with it and in it."

Clear and rational arguments will never get you to the point of belief, they will never coerce you into anything. The reason for this is that faith is something lived, not something thought. It is an action. The resurrection of Christ and the New Testament leaves you with binary options- you're either in, or you're out. You're either following the Christ, or you're not.

You might find it fascinating, you might find the teaching of Jesus useful and applicable. You might rank the Bible up there with other great works of moral and religious teaching. But I sincerely believe that it requires more than this. The very essence of faith is that it requires a leap.

This leap is a constant striving; a constant and life long tension- it is the risk of living it. It is the risk of going beyond mere thinking. From the outside it probably appears foolish and irrational, but this doesn't surprise me at all. I don't think Christianity is going anywhere, precisely because I think that when lived, it holds the keys to true life. I can testify to this personally and in lives of many of those closest to me. But it must be lived, belief is not enough.

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.

Basic Space

Sometimes we are in danger of forgetting that the claim "there exists a God" is an extraordinary claim. Especially when we get bogged down in mundaneness of every day life, and every day Christendom we forget how amazing the existence of anything at all really is. 

If you look on my facebook page, and the facebook page of many of my close friends you will see under the tab- 'religion' is the title 'Christian'. That word is very much a part of the fabric of this country and of the world. But the underlying truth statement of that set of beliefs is- there exists a God. There exists a being so unlike human beings that he exists eternally, he created the entire universe, he sees all, he knows all. He is unlike anything we can ever conceive or comprehend. That is a bold claim. 

Yet, somehow I seem to end up in a position of living in which Christianity, spiritual discipline, 'Church' has become mundane and at times lifeless. If I'm honest, it has been a while since I've felt sparked, passionate or fully engaged with the concept of God. But as I sat in a dark room, lying in a bath of luke warm water tonight, it suddenly dawned on me that what I believe, what I have faith in is utterly outrageous. But I believe that it is true. I believe there is something, some being that pre-existed this system, this universe that we now know. 

Somewhere along the line, I have lost my reverence for God. He has become a concept in a shoe-box, an ideology that improves human living that I reach for when I have my 'serious hat' on. But the core claim of Christianity, is not that there is a code of ethics, it's not that there is a way of life which can improve my living, it's not even that I can be saved for eternity- there is a statement that precedes all of that which is this- "God exists". When you strip away all of the teachings of Christ, all of the spiritual disciplines I strive for, when you strip away the Bible, the existence of human beings, the existence of the universe, we are left with God. A being, a power, a person. The question is- do I really believe that. Do I really believe in him, in his existence? 

I cannot begin to comprehend what that question really even means, but my answer is- yes. Yes, I believe there is something, when everything else is stripped away and I meditate on this fact, I am amazed at God. I am amazed that there exists anything at all. And I am so grateful that I have faith. Basic, simple, powerful faith. 

Tomorrow I will get up. And I will pray a prayer of sheer thankfulness, a prayer that I often pray when I don't know what else to say. "Thank you Lord that there is something rather than nothing. Amen". And I will take that prayer into my day, and revel in the simplicity of existence.

Simple Twist of Fate

"Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause- that it must be lived forward. The more one thinks through this clause, the more one concludes that life in temporality never becomes properly understandable, simply because never at any time does one get perfect repose to take a stance- backward." (Kierkegaard, Early Journal Entries, 1843)

I am struck by these words as I teeter towards my next steps in life. I'll be getting married next September, and at the moment I have no idea what I'll be doing for a job, which city I'll be living in, how I'll earn a living. Kierkegaard is spot on when he says that life must be live forwards, but only understood fully backwards. I feel at the moment a little lost in the prospect of my future. Big decision lie ahead in the next few weeks and months.

I think often the idea of 'calling' and of God's guidance is like this. Looking back, I feel that I was strongly called by God to studying Philosophy, to coming to York, even in starting going out with Ellie. I do believe in guidance in some capacity. It seems relatively easy to look backwards and speak about calling, and God's guidance in situation X.

It is much more difficult to apply this looking forwards. At the moment I don't know if I feel particularly whole heatedly called to a specific path. Sure I feel passionate about the Church, about leadership, about philosophy, thinking, faith, music, coffee. I have passions. But at times I look at my passions and my situations and the future just seems a bit of a blur.  I reckon Kierkegaard was right.

We need to learn to not spend too much time looking backwards. I know that I'm guilty of it; noticing God's presence in places in my life that have past and getting frustrated that he isn't clearer now. The thing is we can never live backwards, we can never take up that perfect stance. That's so frustrating. But I wonder if part of the notion of being a follower of Christ, of living in 'faith' is that it's pretty easy to see where you've gone and not always possible to see where you're going. All I can do is take the next step. And at the moment those feel like particularly small steps. Daily steps.

It's reassuring for me that I have something to follow. And I need to remind myself daily that I'm following. I need to learn to trust. Even looking back over the last few weeks I see where God has moved, and how things have changed. And I need to learn not try and adopt the backward stance, not to kid myself that I was certain of anything. Now it's easy to say that X was the right thing to do. At the time that decision was filled with doubts and questions; it was just a matter of following. It all makes sense now, but life can only be lived forwards.

And so today, as I step another foot forwards, I appreciate the present, I appreciate the cloud of the future. I am thankful for where God has led me so far, and I am excitedly apprehensive about where he will lead me next. And in a way, as annoying as it is, I'm kind of glad life cannot be understood forwards, the excitement of not knowing keeps me edging forwards. 

Marry You

So on Sunday night I proposed to the beautiful Ellie. She did not see it coming. Even though we'd spent all weekend talking about weddings with her family, she was not expecting it as soon as we got back. Some very good friends of mine had set the room of our favorite coffee shop up beautifully with photographs of us both, yellow roses, a bottle of champagne (or cheap M&S cava), our favorite food and coffee and then more candles than you've ever seen in your life. I got down on one knee and asked a woman to spend the rest of her life with me, after a few tears and five minutes or so of euphoria it started to become quite difficult to breathe. Turns out it wasn't overwhelming excitement, but rather quite a lot of toxic smoke. I turned round to see my beautiful wool coat and rucksack full of my favorite clothes and books up in flames.

So you could say that my romantic plans weren't quite executed perfectly. My worldly possessions went up in flames as I made a commitment to spend the rest of my life trying to care for one person.

The ritual of marriage is seen as pretty outdated in our society today- but let me tell you, I fully intend to spend the rest of my life with one woman- give everything I have to making our marriage work, even when it's pretty tough.The bible uses the imagery of marriage quite often to refer to his Church. The 'bride' of Christ (the Church) will one day meet the bridegroom (Christ) and be united for eternity in a new creation. And that in my mind is a pretty good piece of symbolism for belonging to the Church, for having faith.

We need to realise sometimes that committing to God to have faith in Christ and become part of his bride is not always 'feel good', it requires sacrifice. In order to leap fully into following Christ, we have to let go of what we're holding. And sometimes we have to see things we are attached to go up in flames. Sometimes this is our stuff; I think of a rich guy in the Bible who wanted to follow Jesus but couldn't give up his possessions. Sometimes it's our ambition. Jesus even tells us that following him will result in people we love turning against us.

I think too often we over glamorize commitment. I know full well that I will have to give up some of my ambition, some of my money, some of my stuff in order to love Ellie fully and be fully committed to her. I know that sometimes she will do my head in, sometimes I will feel like giving it up. But that's not the point. The point of marriage isn't that I find someone who can make me euphoric for the next sixty years, but I do believe that the sacrifice I make to commit to her will be worth it. And it's the same with faith. We might paint 'conversion' as a glorious thing, and rightly so- but there is a cost of faith, there is a cost of belonging to the Church. Jesus says:

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

I am challenged by those words. Ultimately I know that Jesus is more trustworthy than Ellie is. I know that commitment to him is worth it. But it means letting go of things, letting go of my self centered attitude. Interestingly Jesus claims the two most important things you can do with your life is to "Love God" and "Love others", that is a total reversal of the strongest instruction of culture: "Love yourself". Faith means taking my eyes off myself, letting go of what I'm holding and committing to someone who is worth placing trust in.

I don't pretend that is easy. I have to daily struggle to do that. In a strange way I'm kind of glad my stuff went up in flames, as irritating as it was, it gave me a sense of perspective. Compared to spending the rest of my life with Ellie, a wool coat is nothing. Compared to being a part of the Bride of Christ for eternity, what I have in my hands is nothing. 

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.

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....

Forever Young

After a heated debate about evolution and creationism I once told my housemate "never let me marry Eleanor Matthews". If you know me at all, the irony will not be lost on you. I've now been dating said Eleanor Matthews for nearly ten months. I kind of regret saying that now.

Me and Ellie were brought up in very different traditions of Christianity. These days I prefer to avoid the labels, but if it helps she came from quite a 'Conservative Evangelical' background. My background is typically more 'Charismatic'. Before I got to know people who thought differently to me, I pretty much thought they were wrong. That they didn't have much to offer, and that I did things the 'right way round'. They were loopy conservatives who took the Bible too literally, thought the holy spirit was dead and stood on street corners condemning people to hell.

There's such an arrogance in that. For years, I have sat comfortably in my own opinions, read books by people I agreed with, listened to talks from people that from the same school of thinking as me. And pretty much all that does is confirms your own thinking. It narrows your mind. I had been so caught up in 'Christianity as told by Josh Cockayne' that I had little room for the opinions of a girl with something vastly different to say.

 The problem with that is that you close yourself off to anything valuable that other people, and other schools of thinking have to offer. It's so easy to scoff, to criticise, to pick holes in people's theology. It's easy to say that Conservative Christians are nutjobs and that Charismatics are wet and spineless. It's so easy to spend all of our time squabbling over the right way to do things, and the right way to read this passage. What's difficult, and what I'm trying to learn to do more and more is to recognise the good that people have to offer. To take my head from out of my own bum and allow myself to try learning from people who might be able to teach me something new. It's really hard to break prejudices, opinions that have been lodged for so long. It's hard to see past someone's theology, the way someone reads the Bible and to listen to what they actually have to say.

What I'm not endorsing is unanimous relativism, the thinking that says "everyone is right in their own way". I'm not even saying we shouldn't disagree with people. I just think we could try and understand people a bit better. I know for me, I often judge what someone has to say before they even speak, before I even open the first page of their book. It's valuable to be able to disagree with someone for what they actually have to say. And actually, we might learn something from them. We might actually find they've got a point.

I've learnt a lot since I said "never let me marry Eleanor Matthews". I think we both have. I think I'm still pretty caught up in my own prejudices. I get unreasonably defensive any time I'm challenged. But I think that I'm definitely more open to being taught. At the end of the day, all Conservative Christians are not nutjobs. I still disagree with a lot of what they think, but I have a deep respect for Christians with the consistency to follow through what they believe and what they think God requires of them. I think I can learn a lot from that.

I am wrong quite a lot of the time. I know that. I reckon that most 'breeds', boxes', 'denominations', (whatever you want to call them) of Christianity have flaws in their thinking. I think most of them have plenty wrong with them. I think some are probably closer to 'truth' than others. But importantly, I think we can learn something about God from all of them. The minute that I'm not prepared to listen to what someone else has to say, I've missed out on something vital I could learn from them. At the end of the day, I don't want to be a 'Charismatic Christian', I don't want to be liberal, or evangelical. I want to be able to follow Christ. I don't want to be comfortable in the box I started off in, I don't want to have the same opinions in ten years time as I have now. I want to be in a position to constantly be challenged, be rebuked, be wrong. I want to be in a position to learn from John Piper, Rob Bell, Brian McClaran, John Stott, whoever the next liberal/ conservative pinup boy might be. I'm pretty sure they've all got something to teach me.

I think we'll only gain real maturity in faith when we start to know what we really think about things, what we really believe, when we're able to learn from people who think differently. If we just feed ourselves the same,  unchallenging, belief embedding content we've always heard, then I think there's the risk that we stay forever young in faith; never challenged, never thinking differently. It's quite an impoverished position to be in, because at the end of the day, we deny ourselves some quite profound and life changing perspectives on life and on faith.

When did we become so cut off from each other as Christians that we have made each other the enemy? When did we get so arrogant in our opinions that we denied what others had to say before they even opened their mouths. How did I get to a point where I could dismiss what might just turn out to be my future wife after one theological discussion? I really hope that I am able to stop counting out what God might have to say to me, what he might have in store for me because of my own ignorance and my own prejudices.

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.

Running on Faith

I believe because I can do no other. I wasn't argued into faith, I wasn't persuaded into faith. I became self conscious and I believed. I'm not alone in this. Others can remember the first time they had faith. My mate James for example became a Christian 5 years ago. He was at a festival with me and my friends when he got out of his seat and went to the front to respond and never looked back since. I don't think anyone persuaded or argued him into it. He just got up from his seat and walked into faith. Today he is introducing people to Jesus left right and centre, he is devoting his year to serving God and his Church. It astounds me. All because of that one moment when he leapt into faith.

 Recently I can't get away from the absurdity of faith. Understand me when I say 'absurd'. I don't mean absurd in the sense that we might often hear it. Absurd carries quite a few negative connotations, we might say "The big bang theory is an absurd theory." When we say this we usually mean it's unreasonable or that we disagree with it. When I say that faith is 'absurd that's not quite what I mean. Sartre uses the notion of absurdity to refer to all of existence. Things exist and we are confronted with their existence but there seems to be no meaning behind them. There's some pretty hilariously pretentious pieces (apologies Sartre fanatics) when Sartre talks about being confronted by the absurdity of a tree trunk as a form which confronts his senses but which has no meaning, when we strip away the names we give it, when we experience things as they actually are, we see that they're utterly absurd.

For me that's a pretty good account of faith. I've become increasingly disillusioned with apologetics, with the whole McGrath/ Dawkins spat. It once used to fascinate me, I used to want to be able to argue any atheist into the ground. Now I can't really be bothered. Partly because the arguments don't always convince me, but partly because I think that faith isn't a proposition to be proved at all. Don't get me wrong, there's a use in discussing apologetics if it helps people to see that the Christian faith isn't absolutely bonkers. But it irritates me.

Kierkegaard argued that faith is a paradox, he held that the rational mind cannot ever comprehend God fully or prove that he exists. Faith is all about risk, faith is about leaping into something absurd. I daily leap into the absurd. I choose daily to trust in God. You might have read up to here and think that I'm actually a bit of an idiot. That I've lost a grasp on rationality and am just looking for a way to cling onto some stability that has been indoctrinated in me. Surely that's a possibility, but I don't think it's the truth. You see the thing is we daily leap into the absurd. All of us. None of us can fully understand the universe, the existence of consciousness, life our own existence. When we confront things as they really are, stripped away from all the meaning we bring to them, all we have left is absurdity. Christianity isn't a proposition at all. It's a complete overhaul of my being.

I endorse Christ to you wholeheartedly. I believe that he has redeemed me. That he has set me free from my own self centered universe, I believe that he offers me life eternal. But following Christ is a total worldview. It is a lens that infects every aspect of my existence. It is not something I can be persuaded of in the same way that I can be persuaded that there used to be dinosaurs walking on planet earth. I believe that faith in Christ is the ultimate fulfillment and it brings hope and truth to everything.

But at the same time it's utterly absurd. I cannot tell you why I believe. I believe because I can do no other. I am transformed into faith. That is why I am increasingly frustrated with the limits of rationalism. At some point we all have to leap. That is why Kierkegaard claims that faith is so offensive to rationalism, it threatens the very basis of it. It is a frustrating splinter that cannot be removed, even amidst the tightest argument, there always exists the slightest doubt. I have chosen to leap fully into Christ, and into his promises. I'm not an irrational idiot. But I will constantly fustrate the humanists of this world with my faith. Because faith cannot be eradicated by debate. When we start to enter into the view that rationalism is the only option, faith might diminish, might fade into the background. But I cannot escape the absurd, I cannot shake off faith. It is the most real thing to me.

We need to show faith, we need to model it. That is why I think my friend James leapt into the unknown that day; he saw faith amongst him. I leap every day into what sometimes seems paradoxical and unknown. My hope is that other people will see the power of faith and choose the same. 

Limit to Your Love

I've suddenly realised of late that it's all about love. If it wasn't for love, I would have no faith, the words of the Bible wouldn't move me, the evidence for the existence of God wouldn't convince me. Love is so central to faith, that without it, I think faith is utterly inconceivable.

I've just graduated from three years of studying philosophy; it's been such an interesting, challenging three years. I've read so much, I've been exposed to so many different ways of thinking. I've learnt to think differently, to structure arguments well, to read the densest texts, to pick apart worldviews, ideas and concepts. I honestly think that philosophy is such a useful subject for any human being, the ability to think is vital to a life lived to the full. And philosophy is something that the Church needs to learn how to use; as theism becomes a less and less fashionable intellectual position, we need to be able to show that we believe because it is true, not just because.

But I realised something the other day, I was having a late night whisky with my housemate who also studies philosophy. And I asked him “Do you know anything now that you didn't know when you started? Are you any closer to the truth?”. And I realised, actually philosophy hasn't brought me closer to the truth. I might be able to argue why I'm a naive realist, or why I think scepticism is an incoherent position, but it has little bearing on reality. Don't get me wrong, I think those things are useful to think about, I think reason and argument is so useful to our society, but I'm not sure they bring me closer to truth.

It's hard to explain why I am committed to Jesus, why I have surrendered my life and my will to a deity that seems unknowable at times. It's hard to explain why I can believe in things which I think are genuinely contra to reason and logic, like the doctrine of the trinity or the incarnation. But I do. And I sleep intellectually sound at night. I'm not a deluded fool. I think, I debate, I argue. But I firmly believe there is more to life. I firmly believe that I am created by a loving God. The evidence supports my beliefs; the historical evidence for Jesus the Messiah and his resurrection, the arguments for theism, the change I have seen in the lives of my friends. They're all perfectly reasonable 'reasons' to believe. But it doesn't convince me beyond doubt.

“The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love” 1 John 4:8

I've realised recently that it's all about love. I can't explain love, I can't pin it down, I can't argue for it, I can't argue against it. But honestly, I can't deny it. In my mind, the biggest failure of reductionism and humanism is that it provides a thin vision of humanity. You can tell me that love is a sequence of chemical reactions and releasing of endorphins. But it just doesn't cut it for me. That's such a limit to my experience of love. I don't understand what love is, I don't understand why. If all that exists is this universe, matter, energy and decay, this is all meaningless. There is no love in that world view. But I cannot live without love. It is so undeniable to me. The spirituality of mankind is such a reality to me; the way a piece of music can move me to tears, the way a close friend can hurt me so deeply, the bond between me and my parents, the longing I have for justice. I can't deny that love is central to who I am.

Love moves me to faith. The bible says that God is love. If that's true, it makes so much sense that love is such a tangible reality, but such an irreducible concept. The bible says that everything else in this world will cease, religion will die out. It says that I can be the most moral person, the most intelligent, the most faithful person but if I lack love in my life, it's all pointless.

I know, more than anything else in this life, that love is real. It is inexplicable and it is undeniable. It is all about love. And because I know this, I know God. I know more than any argument could ever show me that there exists something more than what we see, something more than what is reasonably evident. I cannot stop believing until I stop loving.

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.

Switching Off

Last night I got into the bath at about 1am with a nice glass of The Balvenie 12 year old single malt after a long day. The combination of hot water, strong alcohol and reading really helps me switch off. I decided to peruse my bookshelf for an interesting read for the bath. I'm pretty good at starting Christian books but by the time I get to the last 100 pages I can never be bothered to finish them. So I decided to start yet another book. My mate (who I respect philosophically) had recommended me The Reason for God by Tim Keller a while ago so I bought it and never started it. So I sat in the bath and started to read. The introduction is really good.

One thing he said particularly stuck with me: "I urge sceptics to wrestle with the unexamined 'blind faith' on which scepticism is based, and to see how hard it is to justify those beliefs to those who do not share them. I also urge believers to wrestle with their personal and culture's objections to the faith. At the end of each process, even if you remain the sceptic or believer you have been, you will hold you position with both greater clarity and greater humility."

That's really a challenge that I think we need to take to heart if we want to do 'mission', if we want to share faith with those who have doubts. All too often we take a dogmatic line to faith; I have the right answer & anyone's objections must be wrong on these grounds. Or sometimes we don't really engage with people- we construct a straw man opponent; all atheists must be as aggressive and closed minded as Richard Dawkins. In my experience most atheists are well thought out, intelligent people who would love to believe in God if he existed. They just don't think he does.

I think it is easy to be dismissive of doubt and of genuinely well thought out sceptical arguments. But unless we really engage with doubt, unless we understand the perspective of the sceptic and identify with why they believe what they do we can't expect them to really listen to us.

And after all I'm not a blind follower of Jesus Christ- I'm a seeker of truth. I just believe that Jesus Christ offers me a true fulfilment of truth. If something I believe isn't true, I want to root it out. I think it's a real challenge for how we do mission.

Do we believe the truth? And on what grounds? Unless we're prepared to properly engage and understand scepticism and disbelief I think we are in danger of alienating a whole generation of people who just can't believe.

The man who knew too much

There’s always a bit of an awkward momentum when someone asks me what I do. There’s usually one of two responses to telling someone that you’re studying philosophy. Either people don’t really know what philosophy is; maybe they’ve heard of it, perhaps it rings a bell thanks to a famous duet from a singing meerkat and warthog: “it’s our problem free....philosophy”. And even when you explain to them that philosophy is all about studying ideas and asking difficult questions, or perhaps more pretentiously “the pursuit of truth and wisdom”, they still don’t really get it. Or, even more commonly they think it’s a bit of a pointless exercise. My brother for instance tells me that I’m doing a degree in ‘bull***t’. The other group of people understand what philosophy is, find philosophy really interesting, perhaps they’ve dabbled in a little part time philosophy and generally like to take the opportunity to have an interesting conversation with me. It’s fair to say I like meeting the second group of people a little more.

I remember once talking to a woman in my Church back home before I left to go to university. She asked me what I was going to be studying, so I told her. She told me that I should be careful; she’d known someone who went off to study philosophy and ended up coming back without believing in God. “Philosophy is dangerous”, she told me. Apparently there was a chance that I might suffer the same fate if I wasn’t careful. I found this quite amusing; as I saw it, Philosophy was the quest for the truth and if it turned out that Jesus wasn’t really the truth then I didn’t really want to believe in him.

I spent a lot of time in my first year trying to ‘seek the truth’, to get to the bottom of my belief. I doubted a lot and went through a similar process to Descartes of starting at the foundations of my beliefs and working out was actually ‘true’. I’ve got a lot of scraps of paper stashed away into my draw with flow charts of beliefs, I’ve got files on my computer titled “why I believe in God” and “can I really be a Christian?”. Honestly, its great fun, you should try it some time. But it’s not an easy ride. As I wrote in my blog last week, I would really struggle to believe anything very well at all if I hadn’t confronted my doubts, sought answers to my questions.

Needless to say, I’m now more than two years through my philosophy degree and it hasn’t really destroyed what I believe, the woman at my Church wasn’t completely right. But I am a very different Christian today than I was this time two years ago. I think about things very differently, I like to think that my faith is more reasonable than it was.

In a sense the woman was right; philosophy can be dangerous to faith. Before I came to university I was very much a Christian who ‘experienced’ God. I was the guy that would shake ferociously when people prayed for him, when I was meant to be playing keyboard in the worship band I would be so ‘lost in worship’ that my hands spent more time in the air than they did on the keyboard. I had ‘words’ and ‘pictures’ for people all the time, I spoke in tongues. I felt very ‘close’ to God. Some of the time, I’m still that person, but not very often. I’ve lost some of that experiential side of my faith since I’ve questioned it more. Instead of closing myself off and flailing my hands around when they play worship songs at Church, I find myself screening the songs for decent theology. Whenever someone gives me a ‘word’ from God, I am very doubtful that it didn’t come from their own head. It’s fair to say philosophy has changed me and my relationship with God.

It leaves me with two options. If philosophy is the seeking of the truth and some of my beliefs and my behaviour won’t stand up to the scrutiny of investigation then they’re irrational and I should abandon them. Or the other option is that my beliefs are the firm truth and philosophy is somehow defective in getting to the ‘real truth’. Honestly, I think there’s a bit of both going on.

I find it useful to think of a “pendulum of faith". There are two extremes of faith; we can be like I was pre-Philosopher; experiential, swayed by impulses and experiences. Our beliefs are built solely on experience and ‘closeness’ with God. The problem with this is, when our experiences fade, when we fail to be able to experience God like we used to, what is left is just a set of ungrounded, shallow beliefs. If we never take the time to investigate, to know what we believe intellectually, when experience fades (which it usually does), our faith goes with it. I think it’s also really difficult to know the difference between God speaking to us and what is just human ideas if we never take time to question. If every ‘word from God’ that I’ve ever heard is from God, if every spiritual instinct I’ve ever had was God talking to me, then I think God is probably in the business of contradicting himself an awful lot. And when the atheist philosopher comes knocking and tells you that your experiences can be explained psychologically, you are in trouble if you don’t know your faith very well. Like I said, philosophy can be dangerous to faith. Experiential faith is passionate, it feels ‘close’ to God, it can be exciting but ultimately it is without foundation, and often irrational. Because of this it pretty flimsy.

The other end of the pendulum is pure intellectualism. This is the kind of faith that any philosopher would be proud of, the kind of faith I was looking for when I started hacking away at my beliefs when I came to University. This kind of faith has a set of coherent beliefs; it questions everything and doesn’t believe until there are good reasons for belief. There are problems with this as well though. I think ultimately it is a failed project; we cannot ever have proof or certainty in God, we can’t ever have faith without doubting. We will never get to the kind of firm foundation I was looking for by purely intellectual investigation. Even if we do get to a place where we have some kind of ‘rational’ beliefs, God just becomes a ‘concept’, he is nothing more than a set of ideas. Intellectual faith can lack the passion, the drive, the closeness that experiential faith does. No one ever dies for a ‘concept’. I really don’t think that the philosophical concept of God is really in the business of changing the world. It can often just be a selfish pursuit for reasonableness.

I got to a point this summer where I knew that philosophy fell short of truth in some way. I cannot live my life for a ‘concept’ of God; I need to live my life in relationship with God in some way. Sometimes this involves believing things which don’t quite live up to the scrutiny of philosophical investigation. I think perhaps this is where philosophy falls short of truth. I can’t live my life for reason or intellectualism ultimately because I don’t really think it can change the world. But then I find that pure experientialism is blind and dangerous and I can never justify it from a philosophical perspective. So I’m seeking to find a happy medium in my life; to root out irrational false beliefs, to have a reasonable belief, but to seek God every day, to experience him intimately, to be in a relationship with him. It’s a very hard balance to strike.

If I lived for philosophy, for proofs and rationality then the woman from my Church would probably be right, I might stop believing in God. But ultimately I can’t live for philosophy, I think as much as I love to study it; it falls short of real meaning. I think philosophy seeks truth, and it has helped me to get rid of irrationality and falsity in my beliefs. At times it has stopped me worshipping God, stopped me being close to God. But ultimately I want to live for the truth, not for experience. At the same time I don’t think philosophy can really get me the whole way; it can tell me what the phenomenon of love is in a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but it can’t really explain why I feel it. It can explain away my experiences of the Holy Spirit in terms of psychology and social pressure, but it can’t explain how and why these experiences have shaped my life. Philosophy is limited to the facts, to the intellect of faith; and if this is the only grounds on which I believe, then the faith that I now have is irrational and wrong.

However, I do really believe that God exists, that Jesus is bringing about kingdom transformation today, but I cannot believe this by pure intellect alone. Reason falls short of real meaning and ultimately I cannot live for it. My life has meaning in Christ but I need much more than philosophy to achieve this. To me faith is all about finding the balance between believing with my mind; doubting and questioning but still seeking relationship with God in my heart, trying to be obedient to him even when I can’t explain everything. But then again there's always the chance that I'm just wrong....

I’d be interested to know if anyone else struggles with this, how you find the balance between intellect and experience. Looking forward to reading your comments.