Encouragements

This blog would have originally been published in May of 2014. For reasons I can't quite recall - perhaps because it was too personal - it never was, but the reading it now there are things it says which speak to me even six years later, so I publish it now as an artefact, as a memory, as a lesson.

Today marks two weeks since we debuted the Aberdeen Passion 2014 and began an unforgettable and intense two day experience of God's goodness, mercy and love as a diverse family of actors, singers, musicians and production crew. It has been a long two weeks.

Never before, to my recollection, have I experienced such a dramatic shift between an ecstatic high and a melancholic low. I went from the certain, emboldening, relational and joyous experience of God's Kingdom life, to being uncertain, afraid, lonely and sad and as each low day dragged into the next I realised that it wasn't really passing, certainly not in the way I had expected it to.

I was anxious much of the time, desperate to make human connections, especially with those who had had the same great experience and might be feeling something similar. I stayed glued to Facebook, feeding off the short-lived excitement of another comment or like, another photo posted. In between, especially in work, I would be hit by waves of apathy or despair. I relived moments from the play, both on stage and off, and mourned the fact that I was back in the real world, no longer doing something I loved with people I felt a connection to.

I cried. A lot. And a lot more than anyone knew.

And in the midst of this I knew God was with me. At first it was in the kind words of those who saw the Passion and wanted to thank us for our part in it. To a certain extent this was only to be expected, but people were so generous with their praise, it was more than I had truly anticipated.

Then it was in the way that, whilst I was worrying about leading services in my home church - and particularly praying in front of the congregation (something I've spoken about at length) - I had a couple of people telling me how much they enjoyed my prayers (specifically) and found them helpful, something even more have done since I actually led those services last weekend.

And there have been other encouragements too. In a week in which I had, in my desperation to connect, flaunted myself on social media, I never received anything but kind words. The song lyrics I had stuck in my head from the Passion turned out to contain the exact reminders I needed before leading services on Sunday. The sermon that evening was on Hope and Suffering and how, as Christians, we can and should live authentic lives where we do not lie about how we feel (part of the inspiration for this blog). This month's minister's letter was just a long list of encouraging verses. I've had specific verses (Jeremiah 29:11 foremost amongst them) lodged in my head since this began and my bible reading notes have led me through the end of the exodus, reminding me of God's faithfulness and his good plans for us.

I have been surrounded by blessings, from the weather this morning to the smiles on my family's faces when I come home each day. I have fewer reasons to doubt God is with me and on my side than ever before.

And yet I have railed at Him and questioned him. I have called Him cruel and hard. I have tried to cling to Him as to a rock in a storm and, because I was still getting wet, have doubted Him. I have been vain and selfish and inconsiderate of the pain of others. I have been a very poor witness.

These two realities have run alongside each other, each with a claim on me, but one has weakened with time, whilst the other has seemed to strengthen as I have paid it more attention.

I've used the past tense so far, but the truth it is it not yet over. I am still riding a low point, if not as bad a before. I am still prone to bouts of anxiety, or melancholy. I still have moments when I just want to cry. The waves of despair have mostly passed, but they left behind the flotsam dredged from the depths of my own personal abyss. I have always been susceptible to times of mild depression and anxiety is no stranger. These are facets of who I am, of the chemistry of my brain and they will not go away so easily. The aftermath of the Passion had unsettled the balance and I have to deal with that. The point here, however, is that I do not have to do so alone. God has remained by my side throughout, patiently waiting for me to turn to Him, to cry out, even to shout at Him, so that He can put His and around me.

The encouragement is that, far from being distant in our suffering, God is right there with us. And that helps. It is not a miracle cure. Though I belive such is possible, our witness is sometimes the greater in the long term because we've faced pain with God, rather than avoiding it through him, and so we carry on and cling to the one beside us.

People are Stupid; Try Not to Throw Rocks at Them

I want this to be a short post, but I'm not sure how easy that'll be. You see the issue I'm here to discuss is sort about words and how we use them, and, in an effort to use mine carefully, I might end up going on a bit. (I've been known to). But then again, it's not really about words at all, so much as it is about the intentions behind those words and the consideration we put, not only into our use of them, but also into the lives of those we direct them towards, or against.

I've read a lot of things online lately about social justice issues and the way those who fight to conquer them, or even just raise awareness, battle against detractors and, too often, each other. The conversation tends towards the vicious or the dismissive, but it is rarely kind and no matter the consideration of the particular issue being discussed, there is very little consideration for others.

Consider this, for example: the way actress and comedienne Leslie Jones has been criticised for her role in the new Ghostbusters film - a sassy, streetwise transport working who stands in sharp contrast to her three white, super-intelligent scientist counterparts - despite the fact that the film is, otherwise, a sort of feminist Holy Grail with all four of its principal protagonists being female.

Or perhaps you might want to look at the way Zoe Saldana has been treated for her role in the forthcoming biopic about Nina Simone?

Or, for something a little more recent, the response to the massive showing of solidarity in response to the Brussels terror attacks when there has been little to no recognition of similar (often worse) attacks in non-European countries.

Now, don't get me wrong, every single one of these is an example of people highlighting entirely legitimate issues. It is worrying that the one person of colour in the new Ghostbusters is portrayed in such a stereotypical way (although it is also worth pointing out that we haven't seen the film yet, so all such criticism, however justified, should be prepared for the possibility, however small, that the filmmaker's decisions are vindicated). It is worrying that the role of Nina Simone has not been given to a dark-skinned black actress instead of Saldana, who has obviously been chosen as a more marketable proposition. It is worrying that the media and social media response to terror in western European countries is so much greater than similar events in non-European (and especially Muslim) countries.

These are genuine issues, and people are right to highlight them as part of the effort to make the world a better, fairer place in the future. But where, might I ask, is the kindness?

People interested in social justice are very often criticised by more right-winged thinkers for complaining about everything, for coming across as entitled, prudish and against all freedom of expression. Generally, I disagree with this assertion. It is completely right to critique those aspects of our culture that reinforce harmful stereotypes or fail to represent large portions of our population the way they see themselves. Everyone has a right to media representation, to be recognised as being part of this world and the events that happen in it. Sometimes, however, I fear that the critics of 'Social Justice Warriors', as they like to call us, have some fair points to make.

You see, we can't seem to stop fighting each other. Another prime example would be the response to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. No sooner had black actors highlighted the terrible lack of recognition they were receiving at this year's Oscars than every other social justice issue was being raised in counterpoint. Once again, they were all important issues that deserved attention, but they were each being raised as if their pet issue was the only one that really mattered and that everyone else was just being whiny and unreasonable. None of them seemed to see the irony, nor did they appear to understand that all of the issues they were raising were of equal importance. The black community was right to complain. Women were right to complain. The LGBTI community was right to complain. About the only complaint that wasn't valid was the assertion that #OscarsSoWhite was racist to white people, but that's so rarely a legitimate complaint that I don't think anyone (other than the usual half of the internet) was taking Charlotte Rampling seriously anyway.

This is a problem because we're all human. The very thing we're trying to highlight to others, that we're all equal and we all matter and deserve representation, because we are all the same species is the very thing which seems to prevent us from seeing beyond our pet complaints to understand the validity of another's, or to recognise that, just because there's more than one issue doesn't mean that people are wrong to support the one which doesn't happen to be your own. We're all hypocrites and, indeed, our intense, universal desire to call out hypocrisy in others is the single most hypocritical thing about us.

The vitriol launched at the new Ghostbusters was inappropriate, not because it's necessarily right to portray Leslie Jone's character as a stereotype, but because the film should still be celebrated for the issue on which it has made progress.

The attacks against Saldana, including from Simone's own estate, were inappropriate, not because it isn't awful that the film studio chose a lighter-skinned actress, but because Saldana should still be lauded for her success and popularity in spite of the fact that she isn't white.

In these issues people need to learn the different between criticism in the literary sense, which can reveal our sensitivity and concern for particular people groups who we feel are not being represented fairly, and attacks which reveal only the darker side of human nature.

The same is also true of the response to the public outpouring of grief over the Brussels attacks, in that we should not be attacking people for mourning such an event, but instead, we need to hold the media to account for the way it reports world events.

Above all else, however, we just need to learn to be kinder. We need to be kinder in listening to another's point of view, kinder in how we choose to represent others in what we create and kinder in how we deal with social issues that, far from conflicting, are all supposed to be working together to make the world a better place. By all means be angry, but restrain your anger when dealing with other 's who, ultimately, want much the same thing.

And in case you think this is just another self-righteous article about how we all need to be more X or Y, then let me add this: I need to be kinder - much, much kinder.

I was angry when I saw the response to last week's terror attacks. I was furious that people were recolouring their profile pictures and lighting up world monuments to support Belgium when Turkey had just suffered two attacks on a similar scale and hardly a word had been spoken about them. I was ready to rant with the best of them about the hypocrisy of it all, and then I read a friend's status update, also furious, reminding me that she had every right to be in mourning over Brussels. We were both angry and, in a way, we were both right, but her anger was fuelled by the lack of kindness and consideration from people like me.

As should really be no surprise, Jesus has the best to say on this topic when he tells us to love one another. He was certainly not devoid of anger at the wrongs of the world - his spectacular clearing of moneychangers and traders in the Temple courtyard is proof enough of that - and he frequently highlighted hypocrisy in those who argued with him, but he was kind to the most unlikely people and, as the only human ever to hold the real moral high-ground, he sets an example we must struggle and strive to follow. He tells us to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44), and "love your neighbour as yourself" (Mark12:31). The apostle Paul also reminds us that "love is patient, love is kind", "it does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." (1 Corinthians 13:4,5)

If all this sounds impossible to attain, then that's no surprise too. Jesus concluded the first passage I quoted by saying this: "be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) The kind of attitude we need when we seek a fairer, more just world is no less than that of our perfect God himself, but however should we achieve such a lofty goal?

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” 

Matthew 19:23-26

I may be making a case for us all to be kinder, and I truly believe that we need to be, but the Bible makes it clear that this isn't something we can achieve through any merely human teaching, nor through effort of will alone, but only with the help of the Holy Spirit of God.  I look at the world and I look at myself and I am constantly reminded of just how much we need God to achieve anything of worth.  The more secular our morality becomes, the more it will self-destruct as we tear each other apart in our 'righteous' anger.

Yes, people really are stupid, and we're mean, and short-sighted and full of hatred and a thousand other things, but as Jesus himself said, "let any one of you [that's us] who is without sin be the first to throw a stone..." (John 8:7)

Scotland: Success, Sorrow and the Sin that Separates.

So, Scotland has decided.

My fears were unwarranted and the majority chose to vote No and the United Kingdom I call my home will continue to be united, for a while longer at least.  The sense of relief this gave me on Friday morning was greater than I had anticipated, feeling remarkably like a weight lifted from around my shoulders (I guess that's a cliché for a reason) and then leaving me with the overwhelming sense of exhaustion one usually gets after long periods of anxiety.

Consequently, work on Friday was slow, but it lacked the horrible sense of tension which had accompanied the weeks beforehand and so, despite being tired, I was happy.

Then I began to read the statuses and comments from friends on Facebook who had voted the other way (if you're reading this, then you'll most likely know who you are) and my mood changed,  I did not feel guilty - I genuinely believe I voted the right way and do not wish to change my mind at all - but I did feel sad.

It is genuine sorrow I feel for all those who I know and respect and, indeed, care for a great deal, who chose the opposite outcome from myself and were horribly disappointed.  Even though that outcome would have been a nightmare for me, and one which would have left me deeply upset, I cannot respond to their emotional turmoil with smug happiness.  I feel their pain even though it is for the loss of a dream I did not want to see come into reality.  I feel their pain even though, in one tiny part, I helped bring it about.  This is, in short, a bit of a mess.

And it has always been so, although especially in the last few months, weeks and days of the referendum campaign.  Scotland was (and is), for all its pride in its new found democratic engagement, a deeply divided country.  I felt this personally as I saw the very same Yes votes as in the paragraph above declaring their feelings about the hoped-for independence and found myself beginning to brim with suspicion, mistrust, dislike, even... even hatred.

I am not proud of this, of course, and nor did I act upon any of these upwellings of negative emotion, but neither can I deny that they existed, nor that they might reappear if similar circumstances were to arise once more.

I can even rationalise it quite a bit.  Amidst the pre-referendum tension, Yes votes were looking forward,  hopeful and optimistic and often vehemently passionate, towards a future for Scotland I did not feel I could have any part in, one which would, essentially, be expelling me from the country.  And, even though that would be the result of my decision, not theirs, and even though that was not what they were actually voting for (and nor should it have been), that automatically made them a kind of enemy.  When people you know and love, or even strangers on the streets or in the comments threads become the enemy for no other reason than that they have a yes badge on their lapel or in their profile picture, you know something deeply troubling is occurring

And of course I had to keep reminding myself that they were not the enemy, that they were just choosing the path they genuinely believed was right for themselves and their families, or Scotland, or both.  They were given the same choice as I had been, and given the same information and the only difference was that they interpreted it all a different way and if we're all honest none of us knew for certain which interpretation was truly correct.  We just had to make the best of it.

And crucially, to put a theological spin on all this (which is where I'm heading anyway, in case you were in any doubt) neither vote was a sin to cast, at least not that I can see.  For those unfamiliar with the concept of sin, it is primarily defined as that which we do against God, our creator and the one who knows us best.  Sin is a broken relationship, a rebellion and it usually has consequences for our own health and spiritual well-being, or that of those around us.

Neither Yes, nor No was a vote which said something about your relationship to God, to bring shame upon His name, or renounce Him in any way.  Equally, neither Yes, nor No was designed to wilfully hurt another human being.  Though I have read arguments to the contrary, I do not believe that a vote for Yes was driven by rebellion or hatred of the English, neither was a vote for No driven by selfishness and greed.  I am sure that God is equally capable of using an independent Scotland for His glory as He is able to do so with the current United Kingdom.  I do not know what His design in all this was, but since it was not made clear in anyway, we could not be wilfully going against it by voting either way.

So if voting Yes (or No) was not actually sinful, how can anyone justify the automatic enmity which holding the opposing view produced in myself and so very many others on either side of the divide?  We can't, even though we may have felt genuinely under threat from the alternative viewpoint.  That means that the enmity itself was the sin, but there's more to it than that, for we might ask how we could avoid sinning in this way in a world where people inevitably want different and opposing things without any of those things being sinful in themselves.  It just seems terribly unfair.

And of course it is.  That's because the sin is not just within ourselves, responding negatively to those we see as different, but in the world as a whole - the sum of all the sinful desires and temptations we all experience in our lives.  It is sin in the world that creates the situations were we can want different things for the right reasons and put ourselves on opposite sides of the battle in doing so.  It is sin which creates the thousands of differing beliefs we all hold to dearly, whether globally, or even within one religion or school of thought.  It is sin which results in the greed and mismanagement of resources which force people to squabble over food, or oil or land.  It is, of course, sin which creates democratic governments which do not function as advertised and cause inequality, deep divisions of political conscience and the desire to split.

What I am saying, then, is that it is sin which brought about this referendum.  I do not, of course mean that the SNP were sinful in their desire to ensure the referendum took place, or that the desire within so many Scots for independence itself is sinful.  No.  I mean that it is sin which has brought us to this point, which has so tainted the history of the nations of the United Kingdom, so corrupted those who govern it and so embittered the hearts of many on all sides of the debate over the centuries that the referendum and the division it brought into sharp relief was completely inevitable.

For, of course, in a perfect world we wouldn't need national boundaries and separate governments to protect our identities and desires.  In a perfect world the very thought of cutting ourselves off from each other in such a way would seem ludicrous.  In a perfect world our diversity and differences would be so celebrated, so marvelled at, that we would never think it a cause for isolation, separation or relocation.  In a perfect world there would be no need for ideas like nationalism or unionism, because they would be one and the same thing.

That is why I'm sad even though I got what I wanted.  I'm sad that it had to come to this, that my friends should be upset by my happy turn of events.

But I am also joyful, because, whilst the world isn't perfect, I already have my true nationality, my true citizenship, in a place which is, and so do many of those friends.  Whilst we might disagree on many things, including the details of our faith from time to time, we are united by the one who took sin upon Himself to save us from it and who will, one day, sweep all nations and their pretensions to glory out of the way, to make way for a true kingdom - not of some kind of ethnic purity, as some would see it, nor a dull place where everyone is the same and isn't allowed to think for themselves, but where the diversity that the King Himself created can be celebrated and enjoyed and can complement and balance and just work, in the way the world today never could, no matter how idealistic we might be in changing it, or how well-intentioned our efforts to prevent change.

So, I thank God that He has the solution to sin and sorrow and pray that he will comfort you and transform you in yours and that one day we might meet up as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and never be divided by our differences again.

After the Passion (A Psalm)

The last few days have been very tough, for all the reasons listed in my previous blog and more.  I have felt cold and empty when I should have felt joy, and lonely, even when there have been many people around me (and people who love me very much right beside me).

Last night, in the midst of all this I felt the desire to write a Psalm.  I have never tried before, nor have I really wanted to, but I started it right then and worked on it again this morning.  It is probably still a work in progress, but I wanted to share it, for, in writing when feeling low and in focussing on God as I did so - in crying out to Him and praising Him - I find my heart very much lightened.  I hope it might be a blessing to others also.

One final thing.  Psalms have a tendency to be melodramatic and, it has to be said, so do I.  That tendency has got a lot worse this week - leaving me feeling guilty every time I express myself - but here, in the context of a Psalm, it seems only a magnification, not a distortion.  I hope you read it as such.

Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul?

My enemies outnumber my friends.
They are locusts stripping my fields,
They are an army of ghosts sent to haunt me.
Their helmets shine like gold,
Their raiment like the sun at noon,
But they hide faces pocked with decay,
Their flesh is the flesh of the grave:
To rally to their call is to die.

Why have you let them come to me, oh Lord?
Why, when victory seemed so close at hand,
When I basked in the glow of your triumph,
Was it snatched away, so cruelly?

For I have seen your Holy city, Lord,
I have tasted the wine of Zion,

And drank with the family you had given me.

The air was cool and sweet,
Like honey on my lips,
Like nectar on the tongue.
Your people welcomed me
With olive branches and laurels,
With fruit and fragrant wine.
We sang and danced and rejoiced together.
My cup was overflowing with joy.

But it did not last, Lord.
Like a dream, it vanished in the morning,
Like a fox it ran with the dawn
And I was left alone.

Alone, I face this army in the desert.

Was it merely a mirage?
Did my mind deceive me?
Or are these ghosts the deception,
Sent to waylay me on my pilgrimage?

For I am not alone.

Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul,
When the one who holds the banquet
Walks beside me?

The Lord will be my shield.
He will be my armour and my sword.
His word will be the light to guide me,
The path which I must follow.

We march for home,
For the city on the hill,
Where the banquet yet awaits
And the doors are thrown wide
For the return of her Princes.

I will sing to the Lord,
And put aside the vanity that haunts me.
For the triumph was yours, oh my God,
The tears,
The sweat,
The blood,
But I rejoiced in the gift
And not in the giver.

[Selah]

It was not a dream,
For I have not yet awoken.
The city was not a mirage,
For the desert is the lie.

You have prepared a place for me,
Oh Lord, my God,
And though phantoms assail me,
Though I am faithless and weak,
You will not give it to another.

Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul?
For the Lord is my rock and my salvation
And I will sing,
Though worlds collapse around me
And tears wear gullies in my cheeks.

I will sing.

Resurrection Day!

This is, hopefully, just going to be a short post.  I have post-Easter lunch dishes to do and should really get some proper rest and a cup of tea before long as well.  I am, however, emotional, a little overwrought and just kind of desperate to keep connecting to something that has passed and so I can't be held fully responsible for the length this post reaches...

Easter has come and that means Lent is over.  I can return to Fiction.  I no longer have to deny myself the way I have for the last month and a bit.  This is fantastic news in many ways, and yet, apart from reading a chapter of a story a friend is writing (and cruelly posted just after I had started my Lent - kidding!) I haven't really availed myself of the opportunity.  I doubt this has anything to do with piety.  It's mostly because the day has been busy enough with things of its own, and it's also because I'm in a really weird place emotionally

I'll tell you the story.

So, a little over six months ago I committed to joining the Aberdeen Passion 2014.  I've mentioned this before.  In that six month period, as well as having ups and downs in 'the real world' with the arrival of a beautiful baby girl, the departure of a much loved cat, and a fair degree of uncertainty over what I should be doing with my life, I bonded with my fellow cast-members (some again, some for the first time), grew into a part I wasn't, in many ways suited for, and fell in love, once again, with acting out the events of that first Holy week.

And then came Lent.  I started this blog and set aside something that meant a lot to me in order to take up things I knew needed to mean more.  I learned a lot, I changed a little and all the while there was this new family who were (some of them at least) following that journey alongside me.  They weren't the only ones, nor were they the most important family in my life by any means - but they were welcoming and accepting in a way those you weren't actually raised by, or with (or married to) rarely are and I saw them more and more often as the weeks went by.

And then there was last week.  A sudden, final, furious burst of activity to get the Passion play finessed and ready for the stage: the final rehearsal in our old rehearsal space on Palm Sunday, the technical rehearsal in the venue on Thursday night, the full dress rehearsal on Friday afternoon and then, one after the other, with only one night's sleep in the middle, the three performances.  What a ride!  What a rush!  What an incredible experience to share with these wonderful people I had come to love - without even really knowing many of them.  And it was all to the glory of God... and yeah, we had a bit of the glory too.  How could we not with people telling us after each performance how great they thought the whole thing was, how moved they were, how one actress had set them off crying, how another actor had really made them think about that character in a new way.  It was a profoundly intense... and in a sense, profoundly intimate experience to share.

And then it was all over.

It had to end, of course.  Today's Easter Sunday and we wouldn't want to perform it again on such an important day.  We have our own families to spend time with and share the joy of Jesus' resurrection all over again.  And we carry on in the blessed afterglow of all that we've experienced too - such an amazing high, such wonderful new insights into God's love for us, such potential in the friendships we have made!

But there's a hole there now.  For a while life was sparkling and strange and just so unbelievably fresh, that to return to life afterwards, especially knowing that work - that world of dreary normality, where I don't really even know who I am any more - is just around the corner.

I've had my ups and downs all day: celebrating Easter, and yet mourning the Aberdeen Passion - because that's what this is... it's grief.  Grief at the loss of a one-off experience.  Grief at the separation of relationships.  Grief at the ending of a dream.

But this isn't the end.  If there's one thing I've been reminded of time and time again this weekend it is that that Easter Sunday nearly two thousand years ago was not the end!  It wasn't the end then and just because we've finished one way of telling about it, it's not the end now.  The same saviour we crucified on stage, the one our characters hugged with joy at the end - He was actually present with us the whole time we were performing.  We could tell.  We could feel Him strengthening us.  We were encouraged by Him when things got difficult.  It was He who brought us all together and it is in His nail-scarred hands that all those relationships and experiences rest.

This isn't just the day when we celebrate Jesus' resurrection.  This is our resurrection day too.  If we believe in Him then we died with Him and were raised with Him.  My life is constantly being renewed in Jesus Christ!

So, I may be struggling a bit just now, but I know that my life was not that one play, and nor was my experience of its glorious subject, my Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ, the man who was God, who bore the sins of the world, who is the one and only way to the Father and the gateway to eternal life - He is with me now and He knows the plans he has for me, for all of us.  I can't wait to see where He takes me next.

God bless you all and may you all have a Happy Easter!

Passion

We're into the final week of Lent.

It's hard to believe that Easter is so nearly upon us.  I think of what it felt like to begin this journey and I wonder if I'm the same now as when I began, or if there has been some transformation, however small - an evidence for the Spirit.  I incline towards the maudlin, the pensive, the contemplative.  Easter can do that, but I go through these cycles, these whirlpools of excitement and disappointment, of hope and despair, of intent and disavowal.  I get lost, sometimes, in the maze of my own complex, as if it were something real, a place of some significance, not merely a matter of perspective.

There'll be time to examine what I have, or haven't learned from this journey.  There'll be time to look deep at what I am left carrying on the other side of Easter - something precious, something worn but functional, or a piece of burnt-out wreckage.  There'll be time for the big debrief, but I gave you this little piece of my often messed-up mind just now because it sets the scene for what I'm about to talk about, which is, as John Cleese once said, 'something completely different'.  Or...?

One thing I have mentioned Ad Infinitum on Facebook, but have breathed (typed) not a word of on this blog so far, is that at 7.30pm on Good Friday, I'll be joining a crowd of other Christians (and some Non-Christians) on stage at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre for the second Aberdeen Passion: One Hope.

This is a big deal in itself, but bigger still for me, I will have the wonderful privilege and the grave responsibility of playing Peter.  This is the biggest role I have ever played on stage.

To put this in perspective, here is a potted history of my life in theatre:

When I was five I joined my first Christmas play - the Magic Garden - in the role of.... one of the trees.  I had no lines.

My second Christmas performance was to be as a reindeer, one of the ones at the back.  Again, no lines.

A later play gave me the opportunity to play Joseph - the Holy Grail of schoolboy nativity roles.  I ended up a choral shepherd in this musical version, however, on account of the fact that I couldn't actually sing high enough for the role...

In my penultimate year in Primary School, I got to play the father of St. Patrick in a mimed play about the Saint.  I mimed a version of St. Patrick's Breastplate, then was chased around the stage for a minute before being stabbed to death and not involved in the rest of the performance.

Apart from these primary school performances (I was also an advisor to Aethelred the Unready in a P7 play, which, despite being the biggest role I'd had up to that point, I can barely remember) my acting career has consisted mainly of Scripture Union Holiday Club dramas, playing singing caretakers, mad Italian chefs and slimy alien villains.

I was in the last Aberdeen Passion, One Life Given back in 2012, but even then I was a two-line Pharisee abs a one-line Angel. That experience was part of what drew me back to the Passion, but nothing I've done before has really prepared me for this. I'll come back to that - in fact there's a lot I want to say about the experience and it might not all add up to one neat, coherent narrative, I'm afraid, so I'm just going to ask you to bear with me and take what you can from my musings.

Firstly playing this role has made me look at Peter in a way I never have before. To me Peter has always been the bold, reckless caricature he is often portrayed as. A man of great faith and little time for thinking things through before hand. I say caricature, but that's not too deny that he had those traits. They are clearly to be seen in the texts of the gospels, after all. But, even so, actually playing the man on stage has forced me to look for more depth than I have usually been presented with in my previous encounters with his story.

Some of this had to do with my own weaknesses as an actor. I am not a bold person. I am not especially reckless. My faith has always been weak and, whilst the essence of acting is appearing that which you are not, I find it hard to portray a man who was, in many ways, my opposite. So I had to find some part of Peter I could identify with, a fragment of my own personality within him: the seed from which my portrayal of him could sprout. I think I found it quite early on in rehearsals.

Asked to talk a bit about our characters, I found myself latching on to the fact that Peter is, in fact, a man of some not inconsiderable contradictions. He walked on water with Jesus, was the first to recognise him as the Messiah (by the Spirit), proclaimed loudly how he would die for him; yet Peter was also the one whose faith failed him on the lake, so that he began to sink, who constantly told Jesus that the things the Son of Man predicted about his death and resurrection were 'not so' and who denied even knowing him three times to save his own skin.

The word 'passion' originally meant only 'the suffering of Christ on the cross', so it is right and proper that we use it in reference to the Easter story, but led me flip that about a bit just now by using it in its modern sense to describe the contradiction of Peter: Peter's passion for Jesus was matched only by his inability to follow through.

Taking a moment to look at that in my own life, I have often struggled with the idea of being a 'passionate' Christian, indeed, I have struggled with the concept of passion in many areas of my life.  For one who so easily gets lost in his own internal, emotional landscape, I can often seem cold and whilst I do get fired up about things, they are usually the things that don't really matter, as if it is easier to commit oneself to the frivolous than to the deeper things of life.  I have prayed for passion in my life almost as much as I have prayed for faith, and it is still something I am not always comfortable with.  One friend once told me that I was the British person she knew, and perhaps this was part of what she was alluding to?

Passion was clearly not a problem for Peter, however.  From his fervent attempts to please Jesus to his vehement denial, Peter was a man for whom strong emotion was no stranger, but how to balance these polar opposite moments in his life?  Having looked to see a way in which I could play him, with my more reserved demeanour and shyness, it seemed to me that he was actually a man riddled with insecurity.  What follows is my interpretation.  It may not be correct, but I think it is still illuminating for our own lives as Christians.

Peter is taken from a humble life as a Galilean fisherman to become one of the principle players in the most important event of human history, and, somewhere along the journey, the impact of that must have hit him.  He did, after all, get given the revelation that Jesus was the Messiah, so he was in no doubt that he had entered an exalted circle.  His only reason for being there?  Why, that would be Jesus himself.  Jesus was Peter's passport to lead him out of obscurity and into history.

So Peter clings to Jesus.

He loves him, yes - that's clear from his actions - but there is also a sense in which his image of Jesus is what is holding him, allowing him to reconcile his new circumstances with his old - his privileged position with the unschooled man he knows himself to be.  Jesus is everything to him, but his idea of who Jesus is is not completely correct and wont be until after the resurrection - in fact he'll still have plenty to learn about who Jesus really is for the rest of his life, just like the rest of us.  Peter is holding onto an idea of the Messiah which does not match up to what Jesus ultimately goes on to do.  It is obvious from his rebukes to Jesus every time the master tells him that he must die.  It's obvious from the way he responds to the appearance of Moses and Elijah during the transfiguration.  Peter has glued his insecure identity to a distorted image.

So, when Jesus is arrested, Peter's world starts to crumble.  This bold, courageous man, is left alone and terrified.  He follows Jesus at a distance, because Jesus - or at least his idea of who Jesus is - is all he has to hold his identity in place, but faced with the very real threat of being implicated with him and suffering severe punishment for being one of his followers, he buckles.  His idea of who he is and who he was cannot cope with the pressure put upon it by circumstances that, as far as he is concerned, make no sense whatsoever.  His vision of reality is falling apart, and, passionately, he denies having any connection to his master, his friend - his idol.

As I said before, I am not bold and courageous in most things and I certainly lack Peter's walk-on-water faith, even at my best.  What I can relate to, however, (and many others would be with me) is insecurity.  I've been over this before - I wrote a whole post on it - but being able to see and understand the problem, and even seeing the solution in the form of God's good grace, does not make it simply vanish.  I am still an inherently insecure person the vast majority of the time, and so I can relate to this in Peter.  I can relate to his uncertainty about who he really is, why he is being used by God the way he is and how he should follow through when things get rough.

So, this is my hook for playing him: Peter the bold who crumbles when his Master is taken from him, because his identity was hanging on who he thought Jesus was, rather than who Jesus was revealing himself to be all the time.  My Peter is somewhat stripped down, thought that's not to say simplified, necessarily, but I've focussed on this aspect of his character over some of the more traditional elements.  There is still some bravado, some rushed, thoughtless action - I can't change the story, even if I wanted to - but my performance hangs on Peter's internal life, the emotional landscape he, perhaps, doesn't really understand, the thoughts he holds onto and those he cannot yet grasp.

I don't know how much of that will show on stage, but I hope it will inform all that does.  In the end it is the best that I can do.  I'm simply not a good enough actor to portray Peter any other way.  I can only do my best with the talents God has given me and hope that, by his Spirit it is enough.  I know, also, that I'm not at the centre of this play.   The Passion is not about Peter, but he is one of our roads in to understanding it and so I take the role very seriously, praying that God will use it to reveal something of Himself to the audience this weekend.

And that brings be to the other thing I want to examine, just very briefly. I mentioned praying for faith, and have pointed out on numerous occasions that I am not bold - I lack confidence in myself and can be very shy.  So why, you might ask, are you acting on stage at all?

It's a very good question.  I was plagued by stage fright when I was younger - I remember once imagining myself having heart attack on stage at a school prize giving event and seeing my (somewhat rotund, and rather posh) headmaster looming over me to say "Get off the stage, George, you're blocking the procedure" - and even this weekend past standing up in front of my church to give an announcement was utterly terrifying, but here's a funny thing.  The last time I was involved in the Aberdeen Passion I was not really nervous at all.  There are still a few more days until the first performance and I do have a very strong sense of just how much bigger my part is this time around than last, but even so I'm still not really nervous.

Some of it is probably just because of how well and often we've rehearsed.  I cannot doubt that I know my lines and what I need to do with them.  Some of it is likely because of the great team of people I have the privilege of working with - the Passion family as we call it, because, in so many ways, that is what we have become and I treasure the time we get to spend together working on these productions.  But, there is more to it - of that I'm sure.

If there is a miracle hidden within my testimony, it is this: God has transformed me from a timid, socially awkward youth into a timid, socially awkward man - who can do whatever He asks of me, even in front of an audience, when He wills it to be so.  Praise the Lord, because without him I'd be hiding in cupboard somewhere right now!

Imagine

Another week, another blog and, once again, I think I find myself with nothing new to say, when a post begins to form in my mind. This time it's on the back of having just finished three books: A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology by Alister E. McGrath, A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis and then back to McGrath with Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth. Three very different books, all of which left me with plenty to think about and which (along with my previous read on meditation) have had me wondering about the role of imagination in the Christian faith. I hope to explore that question a bit later on.

But first: the books! McGrath's Fine-Tuned Universe is a book about looking at Natural Theology (traditionally what we can learn about God from what He has revealed of Himself through nature) in a new way. McGrath calls for an approach where we no longer seek to prove God's existence using Natural Theology, but whereby we recognise the way in which Nature reflects or 'resonates' with a Christian, Trinitarian worldview. We don't look to nature to prove God, whom we believe in through Scripture and personal experience, but we see that Christianity may offer the best explanation for what is observed in Nature. He examines the theological implications of this and then looks at some relatively recent developments in cosmology, physics and evolutionary biology which, he argues, can be seen in this light.

As a whole it is an approach which really appeals to me, indeed, though I might never have verbalised it as such, or been able to explain it very clearly, it is much the way I have always approached nature, but McGrath solidifies it, grounds it in science and uses Augustine's doctrine of creation as a way of suggesting how our growing understanding of the life, the cosmos and the emergent, stratified nature of reality can be reflected theologically.

It is fascinating stuff. I did have a couple of problems with the book, however. The first was that it spey inconclusive. McGrath intended it to be the start (or very nearly the start) of a theological and scientific conversation, so it sort of leaves all its ideas hanging, waiting to see who picks them up. Another issue is that it doesn't have a huge amount of scriptural grounding. This is common in Natural Theology in general and whilst it's clear the 'Trinitarian worldview' McGrath is talking about is scripturally based, he doesn't actually demonstrate this very often. It also results in the single most frustrating aspect of the book, which is his exploration of Augustine's doctrine of creation, which Augustine based, not only on Genesis, but also on a verse in Ecclesiasticus, one of the apocryphal texts not recognised as authoritative by the majority of the (protestant) church. Whilst the Apocrypha is another issue entirely from the one the book was about, McGrath fails to mention this as an issue at all, which seems a little incomplete.

Aside from these (mostly) niggles, however, it is an excellent book and one well worth reading of you have an interest in the places where theology and science meet and wish to expand your imaginative understanding of the Universe. More on that in a bit...

A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis is a very different kind of book. It is a short diary by the great writer and Christian apologist, written in the days, weeks, months after the death of his wife from cancer. It is astonishingly honest, angry and moving, yet also clear, with a precision of thought and analysis rarely seen in such moments. Through it Lewis appears to understand more about his grief, his humanity, and, above all else, God.  It's a book which, as soon as you start reading it, you realise must be important in some way and, indeed, I would recommend that everyone does.  It is phenomenally well-written, brutally honest and yet so well-thought out by the end.  I don't think I can review it further without repeating myself again.

Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth, is a very different book from A Fine-Tuned Universe and yet McGrath's particular style and some familiar arguments manage to rise to the surface as you read it.  Much like the former book, it feels rather inconclusive, but what you do get is a very good overview of some of the major heresies of the classical 'patristic' era and some sound criticism of a number of theories on how heresy orginates and whether what we know as Christian orthodoxy has any right to be so. In doing so it challenges some traditional Christian views, such as the idea that heresy always originates outside the church, but at the same time post-modern approaches are also shown to be indefensible. Heresy is not a liberating alternative to a repressive orthodoxy, but the spiritual equivalent of an evolutionary dead end in the exploration of the best way to express Christian belief.

One finishes the book with a profound sense that Christian orthodoxy is to be defended (if continually developed), not only because it is the best model of life and faith for the Christian, but because it is also the most intellectually coherent, satisfying and exciting vision of Christianity. McGrath finishes with a call for theologians and practising Christians alike to exercise their intellects and imagination in presenting this truth to the world, which has been led to believe quite the opposite for a number of social, cultural and historical reasons.

McGrath's approach to theology is one of intellectual excitement, rather than spiritual development, but from reading his works (and listening to him) I'm reasonably sure of his saving faith in Jesus Christ. His very academic approach is a function of both his personality (which is similar to my own in at least this respect) and the context within which he works, but his appeal to the Christian imagination at the end is one which I think we all need to engage with, which brings me to the meat of this post...

Imagination.  The one thing all three books above have in common, aside from the fact that I chose to read them (and simply because they were there, on my bookshelf, rather than because of any other particular agenda), is that they each make appeals to the human imagination in the way they look at our Faith and the world around us.  McGrath calls for the use of the Christian imagination in how we look at and respond to the natural world and the sciences which explore it, as well as in how we look at our theological orthodoxy and relate it to the world.  Lewis demonstrates the power the imagination has to deceive us in our understanding of both God and those we love, but equally that it can be transformed by our faith to help us know God and others more clearly.

I have touched on this topic before, of course, in my defence of fiction and it's ability to be used as an explanatory, analogical, allegorical and inspiring tool for exploring the ideas of life and faith, but that's not all the imagination is used for and so this is a look at the Christian imagination as whole and why we should spend more time developing it within our fellowships.

Imagination is frowned upon by a number of Christians and this is seen to be something mirrored outside of the Church as well.  Imagination is something children have, an element of play.  It is not something which a mature adult should spend much time worrying about.  I commented on this attitude before, citing C. S. Lewis' response to such thinking.  This time I shall quote him more fully:

Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

But as I said, there is more the the human imagination that its power to create and be absorbed in complete fictions.  The imagination is also a very necessary part of our rationality.  We do not simply use our imaginations to think of things that are not, we also need to use it to explore ideas that are, but which we cannot perceive with our usual range of physical senses.  The best example of this can be seen in the modern sciences, which are often exploring elements of the natural world which can be observed and recorded using various pieces of technology - things which most assuredly do exist - and yet things which the human eye cannot see, the ear cannot hear, the fingers cannot touch and manipulate, and so on.  Scientists, however some might baulk at such a suggestion (though I'm sure most would not) must use their imaginations if they are to understand such phenomena better, determining how they work and how they relate to other such phenomena.

Equally, Philosophy and Theology have engaged with the human imagination for thousands of years, exploring concepts which are real, but not tangible, which can be conceived of, but not seen.  The idea that the imagination is a fanciful, even shameful thing, seems to be a more recent one, tied together with the increase in fantasy fiction since the nineteenth century and, before that, to the puritan reaction against fiction full stop.

So what does it mean for Christians to use their imaginations?  I cannot claim to have a comprehensive doctrine to hand, nor can I cite much in the way of Scripture to help develop one.  All I can say is that Christians need to use their imaginations to see the connections between what they believe and the reality they see, as well as to expand those notions to see how they relate to what others believe and how best to share that testimony with them.  This can, of course, involve our creative gifts, given to us by God to exercise for his glory, but it can just as easily be used in how we explain our faith at a purely theological, spiritual or experiential level.

Romans 12 verse 2 says this:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will his - his good, perfect and pleasing will.

Paul is talking about a spiritual transformation which enables us to see the world in a profoundly Christian way, but just because it is a spiritual process does not mean it does not have physical applications. Seeing the world itself is one such application, how we think about the world and how we process our understanding of it are similarly physio-chemical processes in the brain.  The spiritual and the physical are not - as the Greek metaphysical worldview taught - completely separate realms, but interacting realities.  Our spiritual transformation affects us physically.  What Paul is speaking about, then, involves a transformation of our thinking minds - our rationality and our imaginations.  McGrath mentions this several times when proposing his new approach to Natural theology, suggesting that the Christian vision of reality is a transformed one and one which allows us to see the world in a certain way.  That doesn't just extend to the natural sciences, but to all areas of life and ultimately even to how we view our faith itself.

So, I'm not suggesting we need to invent theologies or visions of God to pass on to others, but we must use all of our minds as much as all of our hearts, strength and souls when we love God and the transformed Christian imagination is very much a part of that process.  We should not stifle it, but within the guidance of scripture and the Spirit, let it help us explore and express our beliefs and the wonderful deeds and personality of our gracious God.

Until next time, then, go well!

Insecurity [Grace] Identity

Another week of Lent, another blog. I thought, in fact, that I had run out of things to say and, since I have not yet finished the book I'm currently reading, I didn't even have a review I could muster to fill this (admittedly irregular) posting schedule. As always seems to be the case at the moment, however, something occured to me - I would suggest 'was given to me', but I don't want to claim any authority I do not have - and I realised I have another post in me after all.

But first, the usual update: no fiction consumed, several more sermons listened to, prayerfulness increasing (ish), a greater knowledge of God's presence gained , an increasing eagerness to talk about faith and issues surrounding it growing within me... This isn't to say, however, that it has been easy, or that I haven't struggled with the temptation to break my Lent, or skip a bible reading opportunity; nor is it to say that all those positive fruit seen above abound every moment, or even every day. Sometimes this feels very stale. Sometimes God still feels distant. Sometimes I just don't care as I should. This is, sadly, normal for humans. It shouldn't be, but then that's why we need God's grace, which brings me neatly to my topic for today - or it will be seen to have done, by the time I have reached my conclusion, because we'll start, as we almost always do, not with grace, but with a moment of human weakness.

I'm part of a group of young men in my church who are working together, under the oversight of our Minister, to learn and to improve our preaching skills, or rather, handling the Bible in a number of different, public ministries. Part of this has involved doing a three week stint of leading the morning services - welcoming everyone, introducing hymns, praying and generally aiding in bringing the congregation worshipfully before God.

I have not yet done this, ostensibly because of the birth of my daughter and the time commitment having a small baby entails. One morning this week, however, when the minister mentioned it to me and noted that it might be difficult to find a block for me with my Sunday School commitments, I let slip the real reason: "Also, it's terrifying!" I said.

Now, standing up on front of people is always going to pretty scary, I understand, but as I contemplated this afterwards, I realised it wasn't primarily stage fright I was suffering from, but a much deeper insecurity about church leadership. I don't feel like I'm qualified to lead a congregation of Christians in anything. Now, putting aside for a moment the relevance of a concept like qualification with regard to Christian ministry, why do I feel this way?

I think there are a number of factors involved, and if you'll forgive me going on about myself like this (I'm the only person I know will enough to use so an example, after all), these are the ones I think are the biggest issues:

1) I'm acutely aware that I don't come from a Christian background and, despite the fact that I became a Christian when I was only eleven, I didn't really get heavily involved in a church community until I moved to Aberdeen to go to university. Even though that was over eleven years ago now, I still feel rather new at this.

2) I have a somewhat more liberal approach to faith and politics than many of my brothers and sisters in the congregation. I'm still very much an evangelical, and newspapers would happily label me as a conservative Christian, but I believe that the church should not legislate the lives of non-Christians and so take a back seat at times in some of the more controversial debates of the day.

3) I have a scientific background. Even before I became a Christian, I thought myself to be a kind of scientist and used that as an excuse not to listen to what my Christian friends were trying to tell me about God. Once I was on the other side, however, whole other issues came up, most notably the ongoing Creation vs. Evolution debate, which hit me hard, and left me feeling rather lonely, during the evolutionary biology parts of my Zoology degree. I have since reconciled science and the Bible to my satisfaction (mostly), but I still feel a sense of separation from many I worship with when I wonder how they'd feel about my position on these issues.

4) I am a geek. I love sci-fi and fantasy, video games, graphic novels, and so on. I've kinda touched on this before and it might not sound like much of a barrier, but in my mind, knowing that I don't share the secular interests of most of the rest of my fellowship further adds to my sense of myself as 'outsider'.

Ignore, at this stage, whether or not I might be right about any of this and just imagine how I might then feel to lead any group of Christians in worship, prayer, or studying the word of God and you begin to see what kind of terror it is that I've been experiencing.

But if you're one of the people who have been shouting at the screen by this stage you'll already see why I need a radical change in my perception of the situation. All of the above presupposes several things:

1) That all kinds of spiritual leadership require qualifications beyond a saving faith in the triune God. Yes, there are helpful theological qualifications and there are gifts and talents bestowed and developed in the believer by God, but if He sends you, then you go. Many biblical figures questioned their fitness to be leaders when God called them (Moses is the typical example) but God didn't call them because of their fitness, He called them because He knew what He would do with them and that it was good.

2) That personality traits, political views, scientific understanding, matters of conscience, hobby choices, intelligence quotient, imagination or lack thereof and any number of other supposed identity markers matter in the the grand schemes of the Kingdom of God. Yes, we're all individuals, and yes what makes us different is both part of God's gloriously diverse creation and a cause of no small amounts of frustration and strife between believers, but neither the believer, nor the church, acquires its identity from any of these things.

Our identity is found in our trinitarian God: God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, our Saviour and the Holy Spirit, our comforter, counsellor and advocate. The Church is united to each other and to Christ and that means we can put aside our differences in his presence when they would threaten to separate us.

3) That it really matters what others think of me. Given the above two points, I need to keep reminding myself that though others opinion of me can affect my witness and leadership, it should certainly not hinder my attempts at it, especially within the church. I do not present myself, but point to God. If someone doesn't like the way I do that, or some other facet of my being, all I can do is keep pointing to God. "Don't look at me, " I must shout, "look at Him!"

And this brings me back to the start of all this, the thing that holds all those points together, and which should be foremost in our minds when we deal with other believers. God's good grace. It is by grace that we are saved to be united with Christ as part of His Church, by grace we are called to serve and by grace given the gifts to carry out that calling. There is nothing of us in that save what God gave us in the first place, for we are His creatures, His children.

And we must try to treat other believers with that same loving grace, knowing that it is at work in them as in us and whatever our pasts, personalities, politics or pastimes, we would not even be in the Church without the grace of God. There but for the grace of God go I, after all.

And so to my terror. It is wrong. It is a sign of a lack of trust in God, of an insecure worldly way of thinking that has no place in a life lived in Christ. I must put it behind me and step up to the calling that has been made, to the increase of God's glory and the diminution of the self. I know what I need to do, I just pray for the courage and commitment and, above all else, the grace - all from God - to carry it out.

Until next time, go well.

The FAILblog

Failure. There's a word that's sure to dampen your day. Even with the humorous connotations associated with the word FAIL these days (such as that promoted by the site referenced in my title), phrases like "You failed" and "You're a failure" hurt. They hurt a lot.

We don't like to fail and we don't like to think about, or talk about failure unless it is someone else's. Then it becomes a piece of tragic drama we can watch unfold in fascinated sympathy, or a mean-spirited comedy designed to make ourselves feel better.

But we all fail, whether we'll admit it willingly or not (and of course we might be magnanimous enough to admit it generally, yet never specifically) and so failure is an important part of human experience. I'm here today to talk about my failure and to explain why it is so important to recognise and yet so ultimately irrelevant (from the right perspective).

What is my failure? I broke my Lent this weekend past.

There are two common attitudes to such an admission. The first is to say, 'oh well, it doesn't really matter' and to either give up or to carry on as if nothing had happened.  The second attitude is to treat it as something very, very serious, to beat oneself up about it, get depressed and then to either give up, feeling a failure, or to carry on with the sense of tarnished accomplishment.  Both of these attitudes are wrong and I will explain why shortly, but firstly, how and why did I break my Lent?

I was away over the weekend visiting family.  It was the first opportunity for us to take our daughter over to Northern Ireland to see my side of the family.  For me, going back over to Northern Ireland is a little like an act of mental time travel.  I return, not only to where I am from, but also, in some senses, to what I was like.  You see my family do not live in a manner particularly similar to the way I live now, in a number of ways, and, though I love them all dearly, they are (mostly) not Christian.

So, when I visit my parents, I can expect the television to be on most of the day.  When I visit my brother, I can expect there to be a film playing on his (enormous) screen.  It is a world filled with distractions of the kind this Lent is supposed to be an escape from, and whilst much of what was on TV at my parents was the usual daytime assortment of house auctions and holiday horrors, there were also soap operas, hours of them (and I don't even like them) and the temptation to watch that which I enjoy.

I actually broke my Lent several ways, and whilst I can list the reasons for all of it (TV on all the time, not wanting to be anti-social by leaving the room, unable to focus on theology/bible because of distractions, etc.) these are, at best, just excuses designed to hide the more basic truth - I am a sinner, and, if given enough opportunity, I will turn away from God.  It wasn't my family's fault, in anyway - what they were doing was not wrong - it was all mine.  This is perhaps best summed up in my attitude to my quiet times over the weekend, which hardly happened at all.  Why?  Because I didn't want to do them when other people were around, because, I suppose, I was a little bit ashamed of it in front of non-Christian family members.

To put this in perspective, for those of you who are not Christian yourselves, imagine a situation where a friend who you care about a great deal suddenly starts ignoring you in public and you realise that it's because they are with their family.  You understand that they are ashamed of you, or their relationship with you, or something about you and they don't want their family to see.  How hurt would you be?  How angry?  We do this to God all the time, in a thousand different ways, by not loving Him as we ought, not obeying Him as we ought, by side-lining Him, focussing on things less important than Him, by thinking that spending a few minutes every Sunday offering lip-service to Him is going to be enough to get us into Heaven - completely ignoring any aspect of relationship, or response to the things He has done for us.

How would you feel, if you were Him? Putting ourselves in God's shoes (so to speak) is a very good way of dismissing the rubbish attitude that God is there just to make us feel better, or that, 'if there is a God, He should just let us all get on with it'. People never stop to consider how God feels, because, I suppose, it never occurs to them that he might feel anything at all. 

Well, God is hurt by His wayward creation, because He still loves us, and wants the best for us, which is Him.  Our desire to do our own thing, turning away from Him deliberately, or out of neglect, is the very essence of Sin - the ultimate failure - and it's what keeps us from being complete humans, with a right relationship with our Maker, and the rest of creation. It's for that reason that we cannot just dismiss our failures, no matter how small - they are killing us! But, of course, this is not the end of the story. 

The Christian gospel begins with human rebellion against God, but it ends with a sacrifice made by God to atone for that sin - Jesus, the Christ, crucified by the Jews and the Romans in first century Palestine - and a risen, conquering hero who has defeated sin and death and to whom we may be united in spirit. That means our failures, our sin, can be forgiven, because God looks on the Christian and sees Christ. We are adopted by the Father of all creation and let off because the punishment that should have been ours has already been dealt and upon one who is utterly innocent, utterly perfect. 

What does this mean for our response to failure as Christians, then? Firstly we admit it, confessing our sin before God. Secondly we repent, turning away from the wrong things we have done with all the sincerity we can muster (God knows we're pretty rubbish at this too - it's notable that Jesus, who was without any sin, still undertook John's baptism of repentance at the start of His ministry, once again doing for us that which we can never do as we ought). Thirdly we ask for forgiveness and accept it as a free gift from God. Finally we respond in love - and that means loving obedience -  to our heavenly Father. 

In the case of my broken Lent, that means carrying on with what I set out to do initially, putting aside distractions and earnestly seeking God. How is that different from the two 'carrying on's I listed at the start? Well it's all about the attitude of the heart. I don't treat my failure as if it didn't matter, because it does - it's a rebellion against the Father who loves me and who sent his Son to die for me - but neither do I beat myself up about it. God has forgiven me in His infinite grace and mercy and wants me to move on and serve Him. To wallow in misery, self pity or self loathing, would only be to sin again, ignoring all that Christ has achieved for me! 

So, I returned home and returned to the pattern I had set out at the start and I bask in God's good grace and his inexpressible - inconceivable - love for me, returning just a fragment of that love - never enough, but striving to be more. 

Until next time, go well and God bless. 

Meditations on the Abyss

Having spoken about what Lent is, why I wanted to do something different for it this year, why I have chosen to give up what I have given up (and taken up that which I have taken up) as well as including a brief defense of fiction in general and my own personal exhortation for Christians to engage with it more on a number of levels, I find (and you may find this shocking) that I have run out of things to say for the time being. Since blogging more is kind of part of this Lent challenge (if you want to call it that), however, I can't just give up there, at the first hurdle, anymore than I can give in the moment I find myself bored and in want of a well-written story!

So, in an effort to keep the ball rolling here I am again, but fear not, this is not just a place holder for something more meaningful. No. What follows will be a brief report on this Lent so far (as seems de rigeur), then there will be a book review (non-fiction, obviously) and finally some thoughts related to the topic of that book. Hopefully it will be helpful and/or encouraging for someone other than myself.

So, how has Lent gone so far? At the time of writing this update, we are at the end of week one and, as far as 'achieving goals' is concerned I have not broken my Lenten commitments. What has happened, in fact, is that I have expanded them, boldly(?) cutting out more distractions that I wasn't sure I could remove at the start. (Then again perhaps I am merely adding further boundaries to this personal Law like some kind of modern-day Pharisee, who knows?) I am now watching no fictional television at all (which pretty much means no TV) and have committed to playing no video games either until Easter. The reasons for this are that, especially in the case of TV, it felt like only half a commitment, which is no commitment at all, and I found that, in the more difficult moments of restless silence, I was tempted to turn to that which I hadn't given up to replace that which I had, and not to God, very much defeating the object of Lent.

So, it's all out until Easter, but what about the 'insteads', the things taken up? With more time in the morning I find I can listen to a sermon whilst I feed my daughter, then spend some time in prayer and meditation on Scripture after some breakfast (as an empty stomach is a terrible distraction in itself ). This is remarkable for me, who has always found it difficult to make time for these things, at least partly out of a lack of desire. Now it can still be tough (falling asleep mid meditation is a risk) but the time is there and I can feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit to make use of it.

It helps, also, that an encouraging friend gave me a book of prayers and devotions ('A silence and A Shouting' by Eddie Askew) to work through, which I then follow up with a fragment of Psalm 139 (actually the first passage used in that book) to mediate on slowly.

This is difficult, but I am persevering, the latter especially in response to having finished reading John Jefferson Davis' 'Meditation and Communion with God: Contemplating the Scriptures in an Age of Distraction', which was both a challenge and a wonderful encouragement. It begins by setting out the case for 'rediscovering' biblical Christian meditation in this post-modern age and follows with a reasonably detailed and easy to follow theology of meditation, focusing on the ideas of the Kingdom of God being 'already' (but also 'not yet') here, our union with Christ and a focus on Trinitarian thinking. This was all brilliant stuff, and it really helps to focus your thinking, so the fact that only the last chapter deals with the practical element is easy to forgive.

At this point any Non-Christian readers may be asking something like "Christian meditation? But, isn't it a Buddhist thing?" or assume I've gone all new age, complete with incense and pictures of Angels everywhere. It is not and I have not, so I'll now do my best to explain.

Meditating on the Scriptures has been part of Jewish and Christian worship and spiritual living for thousands of years. It involves the slow, careful, repetative and prayerful reading of a short passage (or group of related passages) of Scripture, usually for a prolonged period of time. It involves focus and concentration with the intent of drawing closer to God, learning from Him, becoming like Him and worshiping Him.

The title of this post (ironically from an episode of Babylon 5 - I've always loved J. Michael Stracynski's episode titles and revel in an opportunity to reuse them) was chosen because unless all the above is done with faith that God is present and will listen, with the right frame of mind, due reverence and a right relationship with God (having been united with His son, Jesus Christ), then that is all such mediations will be: the abyss lies open before you and you will not be able to see God there.

This is a fundamental point of difference between Christian meditation and many other forms, especially those found in Buddhism. You mediate on Scripture, not to empty yourself, but to fill yourself up with it. You meditate, not to seek a state of perfect nothingness, but to find a relationship, a conversation with the triune, inherently relational God.

My own efforts at meditation are minimal as yet and I've only been trying for a couple of days, but even so there is benefit in the mere repetition of Scripture. I find myself thinking about it during the day, remembering God's presence with me and, most surprising of all, looking forward to trying the search again tomorrow. Not that God needs found, or that our relationship depends at all on these things that I have done, and yet I must seek, for that shows a heart willing to find, and I must prepare myself, for that shows a heart willing to change. These are mysteries, something we often shy away from as Christians, especially in apologetics, but they are a part of the unknowable aspect of a God who, nevertheless, chooses to reveal Himself to us, out of love. We should ponder them, wonder at them and adore God accordingly.

Having finished 'Meditation...', I'm now reading 'A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology' by Alister E. McGrath, based on his 2009 Gifford lectures, some of which I had the privilege to hear. As a theologian with a background in the biological sciences, McGrath is something of a hero of mine and I've wanted to read this book for ages, but there was always another story catching my attention. It is good to have the time to read it now.

And Lent goes on...

Fiction, Lies and Parables

So, there was a lot I wanted to say in my last post and I think I got the majority of it onto the page, but there are still some important things I wanted to talk about in more detail. Foremost of these in my mind the last few days has been the place fiction actually plays in my life and thinking, why I thought I should give it up for Lent and yet also why I believe it is a really important part of human experience and something Christians should be less dismissive of and more participatory in than they often are.

Firstly, an update on how my Lent had progressed so far.

For three days I have successfully avoided reading any fiction and have spent my mornings feeding my daughter to the dulcet tones of my minister preaching on Song of Songs and Luke's gospel. I have been reading and enjoying John Jefferson Davis' 'Meditation and Communion with God' and have spent a good bit more time aware of the presence of God in my life.

I have not, however, had much time to do any actual meditation on the word of God, or spent much time in prayer and my daughter's current feeding habits have often distracted me from the thrust of the morning message. (She has taken to wriggling, flailing, screaming, spitting and pouting rather than take her milk in an orderly fashion - I wonder if she misses the TV being on?) Any free time I have had has been taken up with other distractions like sleepiness and procrastination. The sinful nature exerts its presence once again.

But there have been encouragements. As I said I have been more aware of God's presence this week, which had affected my behaviour to some degree. I've been less afraid of telling people about my faith as well, going so far as to be accused (light heartedly) of being a Bible basher yesterday evening. I've also seen unexpected fruit from my previous blog post, with evidence of others being encouraged and a sense of having been part of something God has been doing this Lent. I hope that can continue, because that's the real point, isn't it? We participate in God's mission and, at the same time, we participate in the divine nature, being in communion with the Father and the Son through the Spirit dwelling within us. Though it's sometimes hard to believe (and harder still to remember after we've experienced it) it does not get better than that.

I pray that God will continue to reveal himself to me throughout this Lent as I try to focus more and more on him. But how about you? Are any of you doing something special for Lent this year? How's it going? I'd love to hear about it in the comments (assuming they are working...) and add them to my prayers also.

Now: fiction.

Fiction has always been a big part of my life. For a long as I can remember I have loved stories and have taken whatever opportunities I could find to stretch my imagination, acting my favourites out and starting to craft my own. This is something I've never really grown out of, and whilst some would, suggest this kind of imagination is childish and that we should put such things behind us as we mature, I'm reminded of C. S. Lewis' succinct commentary on 1 Corinthians 13:11. To paraphrase, whilst he agreed that we should cease to be childish, one of the ways we do this is in no longer trying to be so grown up! Besides, Paul was using physical maturity as an analogy for spiritual transformation and he did not go into specifics about such things as childlike imagination.

Paul himself was one of the most imaginative writers of the New Testament. Yes, he was writing about genuine spiritual realities, but they were still things unseen and which we may use our God-given imaginations to get our heads around. Paul was very skilled at this and his imagery and analogies can help us alot to understand the spiritual transformation we have undergone as Christians.

So, fiction and imagination have been a huge part of my life. From books, to comics, films to TV series, video games to the stories I write myself, I have continued to surround myself with stories, to the point where my mind is saturated with them. They help form how I think, how I relate ideas, one to another. Some of this is good, it gives me a set of tools to help me understand God, the world and other people, but it can also get in the way. It can be a huge distraction from God at times and it can affect my priorities.

I'd been thinking about this for a while, but found I was really not eager to give up any of this (such things are never easy, after all) and I was convinced that God wanted me to stay in touch with this side of my life for various reasons. Besides, it seems to me that it is a huge part of who I am.

But my identity is in Christ first and foremost, and whatever God's plans for my imaginitive gifts and sensibilities, it's clear that I need to seek him first. This is the crunch point we all must hit from time to time. The difficult part of being a Christian - recognising when we're wrong and God is right. So I saw Lent coming and realised this was an opportunity to break some habits, reassess them and attempt to focus on God as I ought.

But does that mean fiction is bad? Have I given it up forever because it was a serious problem? I don't think so. How I approach it has to change, but that's because how I approach God has to change. It's a paradigm shift of priorities, not a condemnation of fiction itself.

"But isn't fiction a frivolous thing?" you might ask. People do, especially of genre fiction, my personal preference. One Korean student I met once was particularly sceptical, wondering why I would want to experience any other reality than the one God had laid before me.

Whilst there is an element of escapism in fiction (not that that is necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion - all enjoyment we have is a kind of escapism from the corrupting effects of sin in the world, a glimpse of God's good gifts) I don't think that's its only, or even primary purpose. I believe fiction, in any form you might find it, to be one of the most powerful tools the human mind can use. With it we can manipulate reality for others in ways which are not otherwise possible, and so we can open up whole other avenues of experience, even worldviews.

"But isn't it just another way of lying?"

A Christian writer friend of mine once wrote "let me lie to you" in the introduction to one of his works, having qualified it with precisely why he thought you should. Good reasons all! I now believe he was wrong, however. He wasn't lying in his story at all. Fiction is not inherently a deception, benevolent or otherwise, unless it is presented as truth. Otherwise it is merely creation, an expression of that part of the image of God in ourselves.

How else to explain the Parables? Jesus was not telling true stories, complete with those oh-so irritating 'what happened to them all afterwards' bits which, of necessity, accompany every 'true' movie ever. No. The Parables were not direct retellings of actual events, nor did his audiences think they were.  They were made up stories, told with intent, to make a point. Jesus was not lying by telling them, he was expressing truth through fiction, through imaginary images (based in reality though they were) that he had created for the purpose.

That, I believe, is fiction at its most perfect, most sublime, as is to be expected of the Son of God, but humans now are creating beautiful things all the time, with varying agendas and purposes. Some of it is dangerous and we do need to use our discernment, especially when recommending it to others, but there is much of it we can learn from even if we don't endorse the end ideas.

I find this especially true in the worlds of science fiction and fantasy. The Church has never really embraced genre fiction (to the extent it has embraced any fiction at all). Indeed, many Christians have been told to avoid it completely, often for the reasons outlined above, or because of misconceptions about what the stories are actually about. As a consequence more and more genre fiction is being written by those with a non-Christian, even anti-Christian agenda!

Despite this genre fiction is becoming increasingly mainstream and has embedded itself into popular culture. Its ideas are seeping into the public consciousness, but since it often discusses concepts like human destiny, religion, philosophy, meaning and purpose, then it actually offers us a starting point for talking to people about these things - much more so, in fact, than a lot of traditional fiction and even more so still than most people's every day experience in the West.

What I'm saying is this: we are missing an enormous opportunity by dismissing this stuff outright. We should be engaging with it, arguing it with the people who love it and creating it so that the secular messages aren't the only ones out there.

It is for this reason that I don't plan to give this up indefinitely, though I would hope to return to it with a different sense of priority and purpose. I am also still writing fiction at the moment, even though I've stopped reading and watching it, because I believe I'm exercising a gift God has given me. I need to practise and I have readers for whom giving up would not be a good witness, but rather a lack of consideration.

My writing is a long way from fulfilling the purposes I've listed above, but there are glimpses, I think, and God always shines through the cracks that are left open to Him. My prayer this Lent then, one of so many, is that I'll grow in Him and, with the Spirit within me, will get a bit closer to his intent for these gifts.

That's all for today, then. Go well, however you're approaching this season, and may God complete in you all His purposes for your good.