Eternal Life, Quality vs Quantity

Christmas. Jesus. Baby. Manger. Hay. Doting parents. Awestruck shepherds. Nonchalant livestock. It's surely the ultimate divine comedy that God answered Mary and Joseph's frantic prayers for a room in a B&B by providing a parking space for their donkey instead. So who was he, this holy infant so tender and mild? Why did he come? What did his words mean? How should his actions be interpreted?

Probably the most famously used abbreviation of this remarkable life is the one found in John 3:16, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life'. As it happens I've been thinking a lot lately about this eternal life. I'm far from convinced that it is at all synonymous with the much loved idea of 'going to heaven'. ‘Perishing’ has always struck me as being a greengrocer sort of image. We have a fancy silver bowl in our kitchen that frequently contains perishing fruits of various types. Leave them in there long enough and they'll all perish into various forms of fungus and fuzz. None of them have eternal life. You see the things of this world deteriorate. There is a peak of life, energy, vitality (that I passed many moons ago) and beyond this zenith life grows less and less. The words of Jesus quoted in John 3:16 seem to be suggesting that God desires to gift to us, through his son, a state of being with the fear of rot removed, a permanent peak, no morning after the night before.

Related to this, I find that all too often, at mention of the phrase ‘eternal life’, my mind races off into the future searching out to measure the length of that promised infinity. This of course produces nothing but an ‘error’ message in the brain, the concept of eternity is as troubling as it is promising. But what if I were to consider ‘eternal life’ in terms of quality- a fruit of spectacular taste and texture, rather than quantity - a fruit with no best-before date. Do you get me? I think I'm trying to say, what if the linear dimension of time were not my singular reference point, but rather I managed to gain a glimpse into a life being lived in and measured by fullness. And after all, wasn’t the language of fullness used very interchangeably with the language of eternity in the words of Jesus, and later of the Apostles too, most notably Paul?

Anyway, to draw this to a close, suffice to say, this Christmas I’m trying to remember that Jesus came to open the way for me first and foremost into a quality of life, with the quantity of that life finding relevance merely as a shadow finds relevance from a solid object. Is that a bit too philosophical for Christmas Day?

This Little Light

Friday night we held a huge gig at the Manchester Apollo. The place was packed out with teenagers from local high schools, it was a great night. One of the highlights was the 'world premier' playing of Lz7's new pop video. We're hoping to get a million downloads of this in the next few months so go on, give it a click.

Everything Is Spiritual

Binging. That word looks wierd when you spell it out doesn't it? Binge. Come to think of it that's not much of an improvement. Anyway, whatever the word used to describe it, today I may have had a bit too much Rob Bell. Now I know what you're thinking - 'Matt Wilson suggesting you can have too much Rob Bell?' Well no, you'll be pleased to hear that my Rob Bell groupie status is still intact. It's just that I'd taken a break from the spectacled wonder for a little while and now I'm realising again why I liked him so much in the first place.
Everything Is Spiritual is the name of the new DVD Rob has released, an hour and a bit of one man theatre theology produced off the back of his 2007 tour of the same name. I actually bought it because I thought it would be a great way to stretch the minds of some of our gap year trainees. Now having watched it (3 times!) I'm pretty sure it would just go right over their heads. The material in it is just superb - from theology to cosmology, blending observational humour with philosophy, bringing quantum physics to life with doodles and wisecracks... "because we all know how exotic leptons can be right?"
For everyone who worries or wonders about the shallowness or the narrowness of the arguments on both sides of the faith / science divide this really is a feast. For everyone else, well, there's a reason they don't stock this at your local Blockbuster.

Contagious holiness

In contrast to the traditional view that uncleanness was contagious, Jesus regarded holiness as contagious. The physician is not overcome by those who are ill, but rather overcomes their illness. Thus Jesus touches people who have leprosy, or who are unclean or sick or women, without fear of contamination. Jesus is not rendered unclean by the contact; rather, those whom society regarded as defiled are made clean. Holiness, he saw, was not something to be protected; rather, it was God's miraculous power of transformation. God's holiness cannot be soiled; rather, it is a cleansing and healing agent. It does not need to be shut up and quarantined in the temple; it is now, through Jesus' healings and fellowship with the despised and rejected, breaking out into the world to transform it.

Walter Wink, The Powers That be: Theology for a New Millennium

The Hope Dilemma

I'm not much of a telly addict but there are some shows that hook my attention. Top Gear obviously. Heroes has been the recent fave. And a little while ago, Lost, until it moved to Sky. But wahey, my sister bought us the complete Season 3 box set for Chrimbo so now every night Grace and I can get our fix. Last night we watched two in a row (very nearly three!) the second of which had a really fascinating bit of dialogue. Hard-man Sawyer was trying to talk his love interest Kate out of escaping from the cages they're being held in. Kate couldn't understand why he had suddenly become so resigned to his fate.

KATE: Go! Get out of here, run!
SAWYER: You're out of your cage. Why don't you run?! Because me? I ain't running, 'cause there ain't no place to go.
KATE: What are you talking about?
SAWYER: We ain't on our island. We're on another island, like Alcatraz, couple miles off shore. So unless you're a mermaid, or you got a boat, there ain't no point.
KATE: When were you planning on telling me this?
SAWYER: Never.
KATE: Why not?! Why wouldn't you?!
SAWYER: 'Cause I wanted you to believe we had a goddamn chance.

This stood out to me because I've had similar thoughts myself. The circumstances of life can make us feel caged. We yearn for escape and form both personal and collective beliefs about when and how we will get out to a better place. But what if one person finds something out that has serious implications for the hope held onto by another one or many? Should that person share it and shatter the hope, or keep quiet, allowing the fragile but life-giving hope to live on?

God On Mute

The book I've got on the go at the moment is God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer by Pete Greig. I love Pete's outlook on life and faith and as he's an absolutely fantastic writer to boot I'd have probably read whatever he published even if it was called Lard On Toast. But the fact that he's writing about prayer - specifically unanswered prayer - makes me even more hungry to hear what he's got to say. I've heard Pete speak on a few occasions about the process of coming to terms with his wife Samie's brain tumour and his honesty has always been incredibly moving and motivating. That his home life was imploding just as he was being thrust forward as the figurehead of a rampant global prayer movement (24-7 prayer) seems an irony too cruel to bear. So having said all this you might find it a bit strange that I've chosen the following portion to quote, but here goes:
"Outwardly I tried to give an impression of stoic endurance, and there were times when I felt very calm. But I was also scared that Samie might die if I didn't pray enough, or if I didn't have enough faith, or if I didn't fast enough, or if I didn't bind some disembodied principality, or if I didn't repent of some root sin, or if I didn't strap her body on a stretcher bound for Lourdes, or if I didn't agree with Benny Hinn."
When I read those lines, which come after a whole chapter fraught with heart-break, I laughed like I'd not laughed in a long time. It was like a release valve letting out the pressure of my own doubts and fears, which a book like this inevitably leaches to the surface. Here's my point, and the thing above all else that I want to applaud Pete for, laughter is a spiritual gift. To be able to write a book touching on some of the most emotional and sensitive issues people will ever face, and to do so with a gracious, contagious smile is about as close to Jesus as you can get I think.

The Leper Colony

Every now and again you come across a life that is so bright and well defined that it makes your own life seem dim and shapeless. That's how I'm feeling reading Shane Claiborne's biography-of-sorts The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. As a student Shane found his faltering faith awakened in the company of a group of homeless families taking refuge in a derelict cathedral in Philadelphia. Before long his journey had taken him to work alongside Mother Teresa in Calcutta and later to the war-torn streets of Bhagdad. Shane's gracious voice of provocation and challenge is especially poignant in his reflections on his time amidst the lepers of Ghandiji Prem Nevas:
"I learned from the lepers that leprosy is a disease of numbness. The contagion numbs the skin, and the nerves can no longer feel as the body wastes away. In fact, the way it was detected was by rubbing a feather across the skin and if the person could not feel it, they were diagnosed with the illness. To treat it, we would dig out or dissect the scarred tissue until the person could feel again. As I left Calcutta, it occurred to me that I was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again?"
I can relate to that. To me it sounds like a metaphor for the church - a place where those riddled with the leprosy of selfishness find a community in which they can start to feel again. After all, how anyone be a true Christian without the ability to feel?

UPDATE: I was just watching the video to Numb by Linkin Park and noticed for the first time that it's shot in what appears to be a derelict church. Are they on to something? Are they in cahoots with Claiborne!

The Doubt Catcher

I went for a coffee and a chat yesterday with a new buddy, a tutor at one of Manchester's theological colleges. Calling him a buddy might be stretching the truth a bit as this was only the third time we'd met - but the aim of the chat was to get to know each other better, so buddy will do I think. Right off the bat it was clear that we had a fair bit in common and seemed to share similar perspectives on faith, church, leadership, mission and stuff like that. But the revelation that ultimately made me feel a real connection with this guy was when he described a period during his own undergraduate studies in theology when his faith underwent real trial. He described the experience by conjuring an image which I've done my best to capture for you above - let me explain...
There are questions and issues that are strictly out of bounds in most self-respecting evangelical churches. Major themes deftly avoided or cleverly camouflaged range from the Genesis account of creation through to the unlikely dates and authors of various books of the bible, internal scriptural conflicts, dubious Old Testament morality and a whole lot in between! Put simply, if you are curious child, and naughty enough to sneak open that dusty old door with the 'Keep Out' sign, you may be in for the fright of your life. Like me, my buddy had been cocky enough to open that door and step inside. Also like me he'd found that once inside the creeping darkness and loneliness can quickly chill the soul. The language he used was of doubt-laden questions multiplying at an alarming rate until their presence became completely overwhelming. At this point I could really empathise as I recalled my own feelings of claustrophobia when unable to cope with a headful of questions far too big for me. He went on to describe how, in a very pragmatic sort of way, he'd slowly but surely begun to capture these questions one by one in jars, rather like the BFG catches dreams. Eventually, over the course of more than a year, he had them safely shelved. With the air fresh to breathe again he could now examine the infinate varieties one by one, at his own pace. There's always the danger of course that when he reopens a jar the specimen may have died, which is always a terrible shame, because doubts can be really fun as pets - it's only when they're wild they're a nightmare.

Fighting the Fear

...continued from 'Flickering Faith'.

In my last post I drew a comparison between the flickering lighbulb in my kitchen and the flickering of my faith, which started quite unexpectedly about 8 years ago. I use the flickering light image because at an emotional level I've found that my faith doesn't seem to work like a dimmer switch, it doesn't just fade away and then fade back again. It's either there or it isn't - and frustratingly, like the lightbulb in my ceiling, I have no control over it and can't seem to fix it. Or so it seemed in the early stages of this difficult season of my life. Looking back I can see that it wasn't actually that I couldn't have control, I'd just never developed the 'psychological muscles' required to control the primal fear that accompanied the doubts in my mind. Perhaps I need to employ a metaphor here to explain myself more clearly...
Imagine you're travelling in a plane - a private jet! There's just you on board, and the pilot of course. You're enjoying the view, the sunshine, the curve of the earth, generally chilling and taking it easy. Then it starts to get dark. And then it gets turbulent. And the turbulence throws open the cabin door. From your seat you can see inside and to your horror you discover that there's no pilot after all, the plane has been on autopilot. In that split second lighting flashes, there's a deafening sound and the plane plunges into darkness. You panic. You're paralysed as utter terror overwhelms you. The plane starts to lurch and lunge wildly. After what feels like a lifetime you find yourself stumbling around, reaching towards the cabin door. Somehow you manage to find the pilot's seat and you haul yourself in. As your hands grab the controls your arms are almost wrenched out of their sockets - the strength required to gain any sense of stability is more than you've ever needed to call on. Is total oblivion the only certain scenario? How soon will it come? How long can you fight it?
And that, in a nutshell, is what I had to learn to do with my fears of God's non-existence (and the related and more pointed fear - my own eventual non-existence). I needed to learn to fight it, even though at the start I was totally unequal to the task.
...to be continued.

Flickering Faith

We moved out of our flat last weekend and so we're currently shacked up with Grace's mum and dad. Living in the city centre was great but one of the things I won't miss is the flickering spotlight in the ceiling of our old kitchen. After a few years of happily providing light it developed a will of it's own. Sometimes I'd click the switch and it would come on obediently in perfect syncronisation with it's three other siblings. But more often than not it would decide to stay unlit, or it would briefly say hello then turn itself off again. Then back on. For a minute or two. Then off again. I took the thing apart several times but couldn't seem to do anything to fix it.
When I was blogging recently about Britney I divulged some personal details about struggles I've had in my faith journey over the last few years. One of my mystery guests asked to know more about this aspect of my life. The flickering light image came to mind as I considered how I might respond. I'll probably need to post on this theme quite a few times from different perspectives to fully describe what's been going on over the last few years but flickering lights seems like a good place to start.
Some people talk about having a childlike faith (not childish faith) and I really envy that. I've even aspired to it, tried to possess it, but it's proven too illusive. My faith is complicated, it's a compound of ideas, experiences and longings. About eight years ago it switched itself off for the first time, very briefly, for about ten minutes, right in the middle of a time of worship. I remember it vividly - I fell to my knees like someone had punched me in the stomach. Fortunatley it was a fairly expressive worship time and the people around me must've just thought I was enjoying a Holy Spirit moment. I wasn't. I was experiencing a waking nightmare. My head was spinning through space and my heart felt overwhelmed with the nothingness of everything. From deep inside my psyche I remembered and relived the fear I felt one night as a child when the hallucinations of a really high fever had washed over me. That fear is familiar to me now. It walks proudly like a truth as it proclaims with empirical efficiency: There is no God.
...to be continued.

Bald Britney

The sad demise of Ms. Britney Spears has taken another twist, she's gone skinhead. Britney's slide from grace has been story-boarded to us all through the cruel medium of the paparazzi lens - and it's been painful to watch. One of the things I remember about Britney when she first appeared as a pop star was that her kinky school uniform video didn't seem to fit at all with her virginal church-going interview persona. I wondered at the time why the faith she professed appeared to have no impact on the material she produced. Now I find myself wondering what sort of faith Britney had growing up - was it ever personal or only just part of middle-class Mississipi life?

The story of kids from Christian families deserting their faith in their teens and twenties has been acted and re-enacted over and over again. Now that I've become a parent it's becoming more relevant to me as I work through how to bring up my own kid. I've known two different seasons of difficulty in my faith life, the first in my late teens and the second in my late 20s / early 30s. At the age of about 15 I deliberately walked away from my faith, I thought the big wide world looked much more exciting that the strange little community I inhabited at the local church. I was right, it was far more exciting, for a few years. Eventually, having tasted pretty much all the world had to offer I found myself still yearning for something more. I found God again, or he found me, and it quickly became apparent that what I'd known as a kid was only a glimpse of the full life he desires to make available. Strangely, throughout those 6 years, much of which was spent in a drug-fuelled haze, I never stopped believing in God - that came later. From experience I can attest that losing your faith is more painful than the bruises you feel the morning after a street-fight. It's a deeper emptiness than attending the funeral of a friend. It's a blacker hole than a bad LSD trip. How I got there and how I got back is probably too much for one post so I'll tell you more about that another time. All I can say today is that looking back now I'm so glad I didn't have to deal with the consequences of my rebellion and the loss of my faith all at the same time.

I worry that Britney might be having to do that. I feel for her.