some thoughts on N. T. Wright, or, yet another reason why Christianity is in trouble

I feel a rant coming on....

Anyone who has read past posts will know that, though I am a Christian, I freely admit ignorance of many things Christian. More than that, of those things of which I have some knowledge, I class many as superstitious jiggery-pokery by olden times people who have now been elevated to the esteemed level of saints and whose pronouncements have become blessed doctrine.

I've just finished reading, Surprised By Hope, by N. T. Wright. Not to go overboard in telegraphing my response to the book, but, God save us!!!

The delightful portions of the book, and there are many, are those where Bishop Wright formulates cogent statements about our faith and bases those statements on specific teachings within the Bible, and on his direct experiences as a person of faith.

Unfortunately the greater part of the book is made up of diaphanous declarations about Bishop Wrights beliefs, said beliefs supported by little or no reference to the Bible or to other writers who have commented on the bible.

Large parts of this book devolve into what I can only describe as a faith based projections of what the good Bishop hopes for. Nothing wrong with that, but Wright clothes many of his hopes on very selective and non-inclusive biblical quotes while ignoring many other, differing, points of view in the gospels.

Almost as frustrating is Bishop Wright's regular use of pseudo scientific language to cloth the teachings of those who he thinks are wrong. The saddest example is a tedious argument that extends over six pages of the book and which addresses what Wright refers to as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's, evolutionary optimism. This evolutionary optimism, as written of by Bishop Wright, is at times coupled in his writing with pantheism and panentheism, I suppose in order to impress upon the reader that de Chardin's starting point is inherently un-Christian.

As with many modern and supposedly conservative Christians, Bishop Wright has a deep love for the arcana of Revelations and for the Christology of Paul.

Conservative and fundamental in the case of Bishop Wright have little or nothing to do with the life of Jesus as reported in the four gospels. I find this most curious. The life of Jesus was a call to repent and to act in a certain way. Over the greater part of the gospels Jesus is not mucking about in the details of what is to come or how it will come. Repent!!!, he calls, and live your life in this manner.

Another annoying occurrence in this book is Bishop Wright's occasional use of apologetics as rational for a given argument. Apologetic argument is what it is, but has little place in a book that seeks to follow certain strains of exposition in the New Testament and to build, 'proof,' of the positions being tendered.

All of that being said, the latter part of the book was a great pleasure to read and led me in directions of thought that were, and likely will continue to be, illuminating.

I believe

In my previous post I tried to frame the question, what ministry am I called to through my faith.

Having spun my wheels for a couple of days thinking about this, I have come to the thought that my starting point should be, what do I believe, and by extension, what, if anything, does that belief call me to do. Belief and faith being, in some respects, different.

I'm not sure why I haven't had this thought before. We Anglicans live in a very big tent vis a vis beliefs and for many of us there is a certain reticence towards examining the specifics of our beliefs. On an individual basis those beliefs will surely inform the direction in which one is called to service within the community. It seems to me that absent an enunciation of personal belief the individual will have no hook on which to anchor call(s) to ministry. Absent knowing ones belief, any call can lack the point on which to precipitate and instead of growing floats about untethered and might be easily ignored or avoided.

I recall hearing an interview with the Dali Lama at some point in the past where he was asked what he believes. His answer was that it was not important what he believed. I liked that answer. He knows what he believes, one hopes, and clearly his life is informed by his belief, but the living of his life is more important than the details of his belief system.

So...

I have had, and hopefully will continue to have, direct personal experience of God.

I want to say that I know God, but that seems to call for a description of who and what God is and I could not begin to give that description.

Some of those moments when I have experienced God have been sublime and welcome. Most have been, in the moments of their occurrence and beyond, unasked for and unwanted.

All have rocked me, shaken me, overwhelmed me and, in the moments of their occurrence, taken me away from me. Not, most times, a comfortable experience.

All of my experiences of God have been mediated by or cast in the understanding that I have of the Christian tradition. Jesus has been present.

Jesus? I think that Jesus was a man, who our tradition's memories recall God being present in.

The manifestations of that centering are recorded as Jesus radical response to the world within which he lived.

In the manner in which he answered the call of God Jesus lived out God's will, in his time, on this earth.

I believe that in reflecting on the life of Jesus I can find assurance that no harm will come to me if I accept God's call to act within my world.

I believe that studying and discussing the traditions that surround the life of Jesus, and that studying the thoughts of those, over the past two thousand years, who have also studied his life is central to coming to know God.

I do not think that such study is the only way to know God.

While the phrase, what would Jesus do?, has become somewhat hackneyed over the past few years, I think that it forms an important test of the calls to action that are a part of being a Christian striving to be faithful to ones belief.

I believe that Paul captured the essence of God in this world when he wrote, "And now I will show you the most excellent way. ... And now these three remain: faith, hope and charity. But the greatest of these is charity."

I seems to me that this is the heart of things: Micah was right in a general way when he posed and answered the question, "What does the Lord require of me?, Luke's story of the lawyers question followed by the story of the good Samaritan was a prophetic call to action by Jesus and leads me to this writing of Paul as the union of God's call with a pointer towards action.

I am possessed of faith, I live in hope that that faith with grow in the hearts of others and I am called to display God's presence through living the charity (love, grace) that is God in me.

Well, I'm not sure that this has helped me a lot. Until I started to write this I don't think I had ever asked myself, what do I believe. I'll take it as a given that this is a start not an ending. I remain convinced that absent a real sense of where I am I will not find my way forward. I think the way forward is responding to the call that comes from beyond me.

thoughts on church and God's calling

Here I am, half way through a week off. In some ways these four days just past could be called wasted time. I have whiled away a few hours at the local casino, done a bit of shopping, stopped by the farm to look things over, read some and, generally, enjoyed what might best be called unstructured days.

Through it all I have reflected regularly on the question that has occupied me during the last six months of the Diocese of New Westminster's Plan 2018 process and especially throughout the last four months prior to my graduation from the Education for Ministry program at the Parish of St. George. In what manner does God call me to ministry?

The question is deceptively simple, yet at the same time nothing short of exasperating in it's difficulty.

Within our faith community I do many things. I join with our congregation in worship, I serve on Parish council, I mow the lawn at the church and change the sign out front, I occasionally visit folks in the hospital, I give money and offer prayers for those in need and I try to help out as asked in our community. All of this is ministry, but none of it, I suspect, provides the answer to the question; what does the Lord require of me?

Micah enunciated that question so simply in what became chapter six, verse eight, of the book of the bible bearing his name: And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Luke, in his gospel, has a nameless lawyer restate the message, from a source much older than Micah, in Chapter 10:25-27: "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?...Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and Love your neighbour as yourself..." Thereafter followed the story of the Good Samaritan and Jesus injunction to the legal beagle, "Do this and you will live." Hmm, is, "will live," the same as, "inherit eternal life?" I think Jesus's answer might have been similar to those that we give to children wherein we answer their question but leave unstated all of the nuances that will come to them as they grow. Nuances that so often, after time has passed, lead them to realize that their question completely missed the point.

Personally I think that we Christians get far to hung up on this eternal life thing. It is the old, que sera, sera, that people have always had trouble getting their heads around. We are called to live our lives today, fully and in the spirit of Jesus, and surely there is no merit in doing so motivated by the hope, or even, as our prayer book says, in the certainty, of achieving eternal life. Poor old Job figured that one out a long time before Jesus was transformed into Christianity by the powers that be.

One of my persistent anarchic thoughts over the past ten years has been that perhaps the best thing that we could do for our faith would be to tear down all of the churches.

Trumping that thought is the knowledge that for me and for many others the buildings where we worship, and from whence we go out into the world to live the way, are places in which radical transformation of the individual and the collective who gather there to refresh and revitalize themselves so that they can do God's work, occurs.

Over and against that is the thought that so many churches no longer even pretend to fight the reality that they have become clubs for the fortunate ones who, no matter how mean their estate, can claim within their group exclusive ownership of a gift that they do not recognize God bestows upon all, members and non-members.

How did we come to a place where saving souls has become God's directive to us? If I didn't so completely believe that God, manifest in Jesus, extended unconditional grace to all, I would fear that, like the prince in Romeo and Juliet, he would end this tale with the words, all are punished, and consign us to the bleakness and desolation of unending bereavement.

In a very real way I am a habitual Christian. I know Jesus; have encountered him many times in my life. To be honest, my encounters with Christ have seldom been what I would call, hallelujah moments. Like many others, while I seek a calling, I don't really want to be the one called.

I was born into a denomination that has, for me, the comfort of a favorite pair of shoes. They may be a little broken down and not really supportive and less than they could be, but their familiarity trumps their shortcomings.

In a strange way my membership in my Christian denomination protects me from the demands inherent in my encounters with Christ.

So, this is quite circuitous. In what way does God call me to ministry?

I am not sure that I am any closer to an answer than I was when I started to write this piece, but I am feeling a strong urge to head out to the dikes at Pitt Lake, to take a walk, and to pray, so perhaps I am.

old friends

A week off! This is the life. or, perhaps not, as the case may be.

I have been working my way through a new book by Diana Butler Bass titled, A Peoples History of Christianity. Mostly vignettes from the history of the faith juxtaposed with remembrances from her faith journey. Her theme is the great commandment of Jesus and how it has informed Christianity in spite of the structures of the church throughout the ages of the faith. A good, thought provoking and uplifting read.

Over the past few weeks I have found myself reflecting on my persistent failures in relationships with women. I leave out of the category of women my daughters, my mom and various wonderful older folks of the female gender who have graced my life.

It is troubling to me that I seem to approach relationships with women with all of the right intentions and then go quite wrong. Troubling because, like many people I am possessed by a desire for the intimacies, small and large, that clothe two lives shared. Troubling because sharing the journey that I am on with another who is, the one, seems necessary in a way that very much transcends my desire to not be alone. Troubling because underlying my relationship failures there is an elemental failure, a contrary and subversive refusal to trust.

There is that faith hope and charity thing again. Charity cannot be, absent an essential trust. Trust in God, trust in ones self, trust in the other...

Well...in some important way the following memory is at the heart of these reflections.

When I was five, six and seven, we lived in Marville, France. Dad was in the RCAF and we had an apartment in a complex about twelve miles from the base called, Cite Canadienne. Twelve miles was considered a safe distance for the military dependants if the Russians started the third world war. The world was quite naive in those days.

A memory of those days, one that haunted me well into my twenties, was of a terrifying nightmare that I would have, quite regularly, through my preteen years and, less often, during my teens. In the dream, I was in an oppressively dark place. I clearly remember having the sensation of no body. Floating in a smothering darkness. Into this darkness would come the whimpering of a child. Quiet, sometimes accompanied by small sobs and occasionally the words, harshly but quietly spoken, be quiet. In the dream my need to do something, to protect, to comfort, was overwhelming and my inability to do anything, my isolation from who was crying was terrifying. The dream, as they tend to do, would end with me awake and shaking and frightened. And wet. Little boys, this one certainly, tend to pee the bed when frightened.

At some point in my late thirties I spoke to my sister about this dream and about a person I remembered as Stu. Stu was the, probably late teen aged, son of a neighbour, who used to mind my sister and I when our folks had social engagements at the Sargent's Mess on the base or were off to a movie or other night out. Stu, it transpired would make visits to my sisters room when I was safely abed and act out whatever degree of deviance possessed him. Sue would cry. I, separated from her by the space of a sliding wall that divided one room into two, would in my own way, suffer with her.

Not as rare or uncommon a story as it should be. A story that, for me, bred a childhood of nightmares.

I can't help but wonder, looking back over all of these years, if the seeds of my inability to partner completely with women weren't sown on those frightening nights when I listened helplessly to my sister, then nurtured my fears and inadequacies in my dreams, my nightmares.

Wherever Stu is now, if he is still alive, he must be in his late seventies, I forgive him for the harm he caused me and I pray that he has found it in himself to seek forgiveness from those he harmed.

I wonder if I have ever really forgiven myself for my part in this story. I was a small child and I could not have understood what was going on, but I know that I did feel small and useless and though needing desperately to comfort those cries, unable to.

We are all broken people. Faith brings saving grace.