The God Problem - Kingston URC

The God Problem an ongoing personal search for meaning by

Tony Wenman

Page 1

Contents

Preface

page 3

Introduction

page 4

God - a problem of meaning

page 5

What is belief?

page 8

Qualities of God

page 12

Arguing about religion

page 17

God and the Bible

page 20

Talking to and about God

page 28

Love and God

page 31

The church and Christianity

page 32

“I will make you fishers of men”

page 35

Where does that leave me?

page 41

Where do I hope that leaves you?

page 43

Bibliography

page 44

Page 2

THE GOD PROBLEM Preface About ten years ago I published two pamphlets for circulation at Kingston United Reformed Church. One was entitled Questions of Belief, and the other Good God. Both pamphlets arose from arguments that I was having with myself, and had been having for many years, about some of the things that I felt I was supposed to believe in order to consider myself to be a Christian. My views are my own, and are not necessarily the views of any other member of Kingston URC, nor are they views that would necessarily be accepted by the United Reformed Church denomination nationally. Having arguments about religious beliefs is rather like what I imagine the job of working archaeologists to be. They dig and scrape away at bits of earth, and suddenly discover perhaps a piece of ancient pottery, or even part of a building or a grave. They keep on digging, and brushing away soil or sand from the objects they find. Even when all the soil and sand has been removed and the remains of, perhaps, a house are revealed, the house as its inhabitants knew it is still not there; there is still much to guess at and imagine. Trying to understand God is rather like that. However much one scrapes away at the layers of church teaching and tradition and the habits of thought, the words of creeds, and even the superstitions that have gathered over time, one still cannot get to the truth about God. There is a need to look at Biblical text through the eyes and minds of the people who wrote it – that takes a good deal of imagination – and then relate what you find to the present time – another imaginative leap. The pages that follow are the effect of more digging! As a result I offer you not a set of answers to any of your questions, but the equivalent of a dustpan and brush, and an invitation to join the digging. Claygate August 2009

Page 3

Introduction Change is part of life. A belief that changes as new thoughts occur, prompted by reading, conversation or life events, is simply showing itself to be alive. The fact that, professionally, I have had frequent contact with teachers of Religious Education has helped me in that development process. Reflecting on my past professional work in and with primary schools, has prompted in me much concern about the simplistic stories about God that we feed to our children without giving real thought to what questions they themselves are asking. If a six-year-old can ask, as one did, “If the universe was created by a big bang, what was the big bang in?” – a question that would tax the skills of most of us, and certainly phased the child’s mother! – then we must assume that children may be asking themselves very penetrating questions about what we tell them about God and about Jesus, and about how they should or should not relate to others and the world about them. I believe that it is not without significance that Jesus is recorded as saying, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 183). We need to take more note of what children teach us. I don’t know that I shall be re-writing my thoughts in another ten years time – the need for heart by-pass surgery a couple of years ago made me very aware of my own mortality! – but neither do I assume that what I believe now I shall still believe in another decade, if I live that long. My faith has grown and shrunk over the years, but it has always been a response to a feeling that, though the philosopher may call for explanations for everything, God is beyond human knowing. Our task is to think and imagine, but never , in this life at least, to know. I find it hard to treat that God like a friend that I can chat to or beg favours from, as seems to happen often in Christian worship. The God that is conceived of as the power behind all creation is, in my opinion, a God before whom/which we mere mortals must stand in awe, wonderful though we are. But that is only my view. Your view, quite legitimately may be different, for you and I are different, and our experience of life has been different. Read on and see what you think.

Page 4

God – a problem of meaning The work of religious education teachers in schools, colleges and universities is made difficult by the way their students interpret words, and something similar is probably true for preachers in churches. This problem afflicts all of us in all of our speaking and writing to others, no matter what the topic or what the circumstances. What we write/say does not necessarily mean to the reader/listener what we intend them to understand, and it is very dangerous, even in churches, to make assumptions about how one’s words are received. We all have to go back, from time to time, and explain what we really mean in order to clarify misunderstandings. It is impossible for religious education teachers to cover their subject without mentioning the word ‘God’. Daring to talk about God, when, to quote from Sir John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple, “What God is we do not know,” surely lays us open to the greatest possible chance of failing to convey meaning unambiguously.1 Listeners and teachers alike have only that concept of God that they believe to be closest to the reality; the truth about God is not open to us this side of the grave, if ever. The God of the Old Testament is recorded as being male, and doing mighty works at various times following that greatest of all week’s work, the creation of the heavens, the earth and all that therein is. The power of this God was believed to be so great that fear played a great part in early human relationships with God – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). Perhaps some of the most fearsome works attributed to God were those that caused Pharaoh to release the Children of Israel from captivity, for example, or Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt. The echoes of that Old Testament view of vengeful God have reached into the lifetime of many of us. When Fr. John Cremin, then priest of St Agatha’s RC Church in Kingston, preached at Kingston United Reformed Church (then called Kingston Congregational

1

Sir John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple is a major choral work in the form of an all-night vigil. It received its first performance in the Temple Church, London, overnight on 27/28 June 2003 Page 5

Church), many years ago, there was a thunderstorm, and St Agatha’s Church was struck by lightning and damaged. “Act of God?” people, including clergy, asked with a wry smile, clearly not really thinking that it was in any sense God’s intention to zap St Agatha’s to punish its priest for preaching “in a strange land” (Psalm 137 v 4) as it were. However flippantly people said such things, the remark could not possibly have been made had not the image of a vengeful God still had at least some currency. Indeed, Richard Dawkins’ ranting criticism of the Christian religion (Dawkins, 2006) hangs to a significant extent on the assumption that the notion of a God that is recorded in the Old Testament as doing terrible things to humanity still carries weight, together with the historical record of equally terrible things that Christians have done to humanity in the name of their God. A similar view of a punitive God was reflected in an incident I recall from my time as a primary school teacher in the late 1960s. I was in the staffroom of the Church of England school where I taught, when discussion turned to the subject of the emergency baptism by a hospital chaplain of very sick new-born babies. I ventured to suggest, rashly as it turned out, that this was perhaps verging on the superstitious. A deservedly respected woman colleague rounded on me very sharply and said that she was a believing Christian and not at all superstitious. One of her children had died within an hour or two of its birth and she had called for the hospital chaplain to come and baptise the infant before it died in order to ensure its place in heaven. While I tried hard outwardly to apologise sincerely (and doubtless inadequately) for offending my colleague, I could not inwardly accept the notion of a God that would apparently abandon an infant for want of three drops of water from a cleric’s hand. The idea of God as a supernatural, infinitely-powerful male being “up there” or “out there,” to whom the faithful talk and from whom they receive “answers” or “instructions,” is a severe challenge to the intellect of most contemporary humans. “Up there” or “out there” is increasingly known territory these days, and God has not yet been reported on the radar of any space-ships. Perhaps this is at least

Page 6

one reason why some people, including me, bridle at the use of the word “knowing” in relation to God, and stick with the more agnostic 2 “believing.” It is not just a matter of intellect, but also a matter of what can only be described as “gut feeling” when we say, “I believe in God.” But that still leaves unanswered the question of exactly what it is that we believe in. Is our loving God a super-human being with power capable of bringing about the impossible? If so, what is going on when the God with so much power apparently fails to act to prevent human misery, and indeed, is perhaps even responsible for creations that bring about misery – malignant cancer cells for example, or whatever causes motor-neurone disease? Is it because this God has decided that the afflicted man, woman or child, perhaps one whom we love very much, has to die in order to be with God in heaven, and we just have to put up with being separated from that loved one? What is going on when human beings lose their lives in storm and tempest? Why is it that this powerful God does not “still the storm” as Jesus is said to have done on the Sea of Galilee (Luke 824/25)? What is going on when someone with a cancer that is judged to be beyond the healing skill of medical science suddenly gets well, apparently in response to the fervent prayers of relatives and friends? Why does this powerful God apparently intervene sometimes and not others? Such questions are a great obstacle to many people’s acceptance of the traditional view of God.

2

An agnostic is simply a person who does not know whether or not God exists. I would argue that all of us are justified in being agnostic about God because we cannot prove God’s existence. Against that, some people have strong belief in God that leads them to feel that they ‘know’. Page 7

What is belief? It is not possible to ‘know’ what is the nature of God. The term ‘know’ is normally used in connection with established facts, the truth of which is attested to universally, often in some scientific manner. Belief is not knowledge in that universal sense. The soprano aria, “I know that my Redeemer liveth”, from Handel’s Messiah, may appeal as a piece of music, but its words can only be a statement of personal belief, not of universally accepted fact. Sadly the sentence “I believe that my Redeemer liveth” does not readily fit Handel’s music! A URC minister of my ever-grateful acquaintance stood in front of his congregation and posed the question, “What is the opposite of ‘belief’?” Eventually, when pressed for answers, his listeners offered words like ‘disbelief’ and ‘doubt’. Perhaps they were all thinking, “What a silly question! The answer is obvious. What a waste of effort putting up my hand to offer an answer that everybody knows!” Somewhat to the surprise of most of his listeners, I expect, the minister responded, “I suggest to you that the opposite of ‘belief’ might well be ‘certainty’.” 3 Belief is the state of understanding that we reach when absolute rational certainty eludes us. Most people would probably argue that there must be a ‘truth’ about everything in the universe, but since we have not yet discovered lots of those ‘truths’, we are forced to depend a great deal more on belief than we are usually prepared to acknowledge. It may be true that there is life on other planets in the universe, but we do not know that yet. Any statement that there is or is not life on another planet is more likely to be a matter of belief based on clues and impressions rather than knowledge based on proven facts. In more down-to-earth terms, imagine standing at a bus stop near your house. You look at the bus timetable and read that a bus is due at a certain time. Knowing what you do about traffic in your area, and perhaps recalling previous experiences of travelling on this bus route, you adopt a belief that the bus will come at the 3

Rev Roy Lowes, currently Moderator of the West Midlands Province of the URC, in a sermon at Kingston URC some years ago. Page 8

stated time/will be early/ will be late/will not turn up at all. It may be a confidently-held belief, so confidently held in fact that it may feel like certainty, but in fact your position falls short of absolute certainty. All you can be reasonably certain about is that bus company probably intended that a bus should arrive at the particular time stated in the timetable. We might call that the “gospel according to the bus company”. So you move ahead on the basis of your belief. You decide, perhaps, not to stay and wait some little time for the next bus, particularly as darkening clouds threaten rain, deciding that you would be better served, and stay dry, by going home and getting the car. As you are about to drive the car away from your home, the bus that you decided not to catch goes past you, suggesting that your decision, based on your belief about the situation, was in fact not a sound judgement. Life is full of uncertainties and frustrations! Ironically, another aspect of our consideration of ‘belief’ must be the atheist’s4 disbelief. ‘God’ as an idea must be as much in the minds of atheists as in the minds of Christians. The atheist, after all, must surely be clear about the nature of the God in which s/he cannot find it possible to believe. When faced with someone claiming not to believe in God, it is not unreasonable for a Christian to respond along the lines of, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. I might even share your disbelief.” That brings me to yet another aspect of belief. There are at least two phrases in common use that relate to belief: “I believe in ……,” and “I believe that ……”. Saying that you “believe that……” something is the case – as in the example of standing at the aforementioned bus stop – is to present an hypothesis. It is to set up an assumption, based on evidence (in the case of the bus stop, the evidence is the timetable plus your past experience of bus travel) that will eventually be proved or disproved. Indeed, the person presenting the hypothesis might well set up some kind of 4

Interestingly, the word “atheist” was originally used to indicate someone whose religious beliefs were different from one’s own. Very early Christians were considered as atheists by some of their contemporary Jews, for example. Nowadays an atheist is one who believes that God does not exist. Page 9

investigation to establish its truth or otherwise. The philosopher, Karl Popper, suggests that it is only possible to prove what is not always the case 5. The hypothesis that “All swans are white” can only be proved by gathering together all swans, past, present and those as yet unhatched, and making sure that they are white – an impossible task. However, Popper suggests that it is easy to prove that not all swans are white; one simply has to produce one black swan! To believe in something, however, puts us in a different set of circumstances. That “I believe in treating people fairly,” can only be proved by doing just that – consistently treating people fairly. Believing in God (however one thinks of God) similarly implies that one accepts God’s direction of one’s life – whatever that may mean to you. Demonstrating that belief is simply a matter of living out how one thinks God requires one to live. Proving to someone that one does live according to God’s requirements is as impossible as proving that all swans are white; another person cannot see the whole of one’s life and establish that one is true to one’s belief. Journalists and other media news-hounds often take a Karl Popper approach. They thrive on showing that people in high office – members of parliament and priests seem particularly to be “fair game” – do not always live by the high standards they are deemed, by their station in life, to represent. Catching Cabinet Ministers making false expenses claims and discovering clerics with both wives and mistresses, to give but two examples, makes for good headlines by journalistic standards, and shows that such otherwise respected people are not always to be trusted. Religious beliefs, like beliefs of any kind, may be held with confidence, but they nonetheless imply doubt. When, in 1650, Oliver Cornwall wrote his famous plea to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken,” he was not asking for the wholesale abandonment of a belief, but merely pointing out the limitations of belief as against knowledge and certainty. That is a principle that 5

Karl Popper (1959) The logic of scientific discovery. London. Hutchinson Page 10

adherents of all religions might do well to remember today. Dr Martin Corner, a member of the congregation at All Saints’, Kingston Parish Church, summed up the matter of Christian belief neatly in their Church Magazine for the year’s turn of 2008/2009: … people don't commit themselves to belief for no reason. You need to be shown something, something that speaks to the truth of where you stand in your life, in the lives of others, and in the world. That is the truth that we live from, deeper than the neutral truth of fact. For Christians, what we have been shown is Christ. It is Christ that makes belief possible. It is through what we are shown in Christ that we can believe in God (not the other way round). And since showing is the point, belief begins, not in argument and proof, but in a readiness to look. My only slight quibble would be with Martin’s statement that “you have to be shown something.” I think that people can often, though not by any means always, see things for themselves, provided that they ask themselves a version of the question, “What is this all about?” and then seek an answer. That question is the equivalent of the archæologist’s dustpan and brush. We are often capable of sweeping away the obvious – the soil and sand - for ourselves, and revealing what lies underneath. Let’s do some more digging!

Page 11

Qualities of God Philosophers down the ages have debated the nature of God, but in modern times what people mean when they say or hear the word ‘God’ is usually taken for granted; the question, “Who or what is God?” is rarely put. The traditional view of God as eternal and omnipotent – some church liturgy uses the phrase, “Almighty and everlasting God …” – has provoked many arguments among philosophers. We find it impossible to imagine anything as having always been in existence. The word ‘always’, like the word ‘never’, is a very BIG word; it is extremely vulnerable. You may hear someone complain, “I knew you would say that. You always do!” Such statements are very easily disproved by finding just one instance of comparable circumstances when the person referred to did not say whatsoever s/he was accused of always saying – in line with the example of Carl Popper’s black swan. The idea of God never having not been there is too much for most human minds to accommodate. I can understand the idea that God has probably been ‘there’ – wherever ‘there’ may be – in my lifetime, and that God was there in my parents’ lifetime, and perhaps even in the lifetime of my grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-greatgrandparents …… but ALWAYS? The truth is hidden by a ‘cloud of unknowing’ – to appropriate the title of a religious work by an anonymous 14th century author. I can, however, accept and live with that level of ignorance of the truth, for I can take comfort from the confident belief that I am in the company of the whole human race. There are many things that I do not understand about life, and the eternal nature of God is just one of them. The fact that my human parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-greatgrandparents are now long dead, is all the evidence that I need that a God that is really everlasting cannot be conceptualised in human terms. Death just does not seem part of God, even though the infinite power that we call God actually created death, insofar that God made worldly life finite. The one common experience for all human beings after birth, is the experience of dying. God cannot be that human. Charles Wesley’s words relating to the death of Christ as God incarnate, sum up the lasting question:

Page 12

’Tis mystery all: th’Immortal dies: Who can explore His strange design?6 In addition to being eternal, philosophers have accorded God the characteristic of omnipotence, of being all-powerful or almighty. There are lots of snags connected with thinking of a God with such power. Argumentative students in Religious Education lessons at school have been known to raise issues about God’s omnipotence that may appear flippant but in fact touch on the serious. For example, “If God is all powerful,” they might ask, “can God commit suicide?” Another might ask, “Can God create a rock that is too heavy to lift …….. and then lift it?” If God can only do what is possible according to human logic, then God must have only limited power. If God can defy human logic, then perhaps there is a form of logic that is only available to God, and that might, in turn, suggest that we are mistaken when we think of God in terms of human abilities. Another characteristic accorded to God, in addition to those of being eternal and being omnipotent, is the notion of an omniscient God - a God that sees and knows everything. Again the philosopher has difficulty with God’s omniscience, allied with God’s omnipotence, and the effect of that on the notion of human free will. Apart from all the difficulties of knowing being a very human concept, if God knows everything, past present and future, and if God has the power to do anything on the basis of what God knows, human free-choice is nullified, as is the need for prayer. God has power over all that happens in the world, and humans have no say in the matter at all. Church attenders pray to God in vain, for everything is preordained. The fact that a person is going to pray for rain for the crops, for example, is known by God before the person has uttered or even thought the prayer. Not only that, but the rainfall, or lack of it, has already been arranged by God’s omnipotence. The prayer is redundant before it is conceived. If on the other hand God knows what happened in the past and what is 6

From Wesley’s hymn “And can it be that I should gain …” from Psalms and Hymns of 1738. It can be found in Rejoice and Sing, Kingston URC’s hymnbook, at number 366. Page 13

happening in the present perhaps, but not what will happen in future – then humans may have some choice, and some control over their lives. In that case, God cannot be truly all-knowing. When humans have control over their lives, God is not totally omnipotent. God has to put up with the fact that humans may transgress against divine purpose – always assuming that God is of such a nature as to be able to have a purpose. Then the question arises that if humans do something reprehensible, and all-powerful God knows about it and chooses not to correct it and bring it back into line with God’s divine will, one is justified in asking questions about God’s morality. It is a problem that has no easy counter. If we do not wish to question God’s morality, then we must wonder if, and when, and under what circumstances God uses God’s limitless power - on what basis does God make decisions, or does God not make any decisions at all? “If God was able to bring about the birth of Jesus to a virgin, why did that same God not prevent the holocaust?” was a question posed by the former Bishop of Durham, the theologian David Jenkins, to his students 7. This is a truly significant example, for the Bible records that God regarded the Jews, vast numbers of whom died in the holocaust, as his chosen people (Leviticus 2612). Did God desert his own people? If so, is God worthy of our trust/belief? Is God simply the creative power behind all that is, but does not intervene in the world on a day-to-day basis? Or is there some other explanation? St. Teresa of Avila is said to have written the lines that suggest that we ourselves create the influence of God: God has no hands but our hands to do his work today; God has no feet but our feet to lead others in his way; God has no voice but our voice to tell others how he died; and, God has no help but our help to lead them to his side. The precise nature of a God capable of creating the universe out of nothing must surely be beyond human comprehension. If one wants to interest a 21st century unbeliever in the idea of God, it seems 7

Gleaned from a conversation with Rev Ken Bartlett, who studied under David Jenkins. Page 14

rather futile to offer the traditional image of God which often appears as a bearded, white-skinned (if you live in Europe) male in “Eastern Dress” pottering around heaven (wherever that may be) making earth, sky, day, night, stars and planets, humans, animals and plants as it were with some kind of construction kit, a God who listens to and answers, or ignores, prayers. Such a God may have been credible to those who originally told the stories that others later wrote down – writings that eventually became the books of the Bible – but it is not a concept likely to appeal in our time. Most Christians will deny that they hold such a view of God, and yet they talk about and even talk to God in terms that imply that they do indeed have such a “human” God in mind. They accord to God the male gender; they apparently believe that God listens and even does what they ask … or at least sometimes! In doing so, they present to children ideas about God that perpetuate that image, and then wonder why, later, the children, who can be so down-to-earth about things, at best question the existence of God and at worst become sure that it is all a lot of nonsense – unless, that is, along with the ideas adults present, they also encourage children to do some intellectual digging! Recently I was invited to attend a Parents’ Evening at the Local Authority Infants’ school which my four year-old granddaughter, Emma, attends. The topic for the evening was “Philosophy and Questioning Skills.” A member of staff explained that philosophy was part of the school’s approach to the curriculum because it was part of the school’s policy to encourage children to ask questions and to think beyond the obvious. A teacher told me of a conversation that occurred in a Religious Education lesson shortly before Easter: A six-year-old asked the teacher why God let Jesus die. The teacher thought hard – as most adults would in the face of a question like that. “You remember, “ said the teacher, “that soon after God made the world, he saw that it was not working out as he wanted it to, and he decided to start again. He got Noah to build an ark and collect together his family and some animals in that ark. Then God sent the rain and

Page 15

destroyed almost everything that was not in the ark. A long time after that, God again saw that the world was not going as he wanted it to, and he wanted to start yet again. This time, however, instead of destroying everything, as he had done before, he sent his son Jesus to show people how to live. People did all sorts of nasty things to Jesus and killed him, but he still loved them.” A child piped up, “Did God have a computer?” The teacher asked the child, “Why did you want to know about God having a computer?” “Well,” replied the child, “you know when you go onto the internet and a site comes up that doesn’t work properly, you hit the ‘Refresh’ button and start again. That’s what God did when he made Noah build the ark and when he sent Jesus.” Another child chimed in, “Don’t be silly. God couldn’t have had a computer. Computers weren’t invented then.” “I know that, silly,” said the first child. “But God behaved like he did know about computers.” What an imagination that child shows, and what a wonderful opportunity the school gives for the discussion of such ideas. My experience suggests that such opportunities are unusual in primary education because schools tend to be geared too much to meeting government standards (tests and exam results) and perhaps not enough to helping children to be individual people in their own right. It seems to me that Emma’s school is well on its way to helping children acquire the tools with which to think their way through the difficulties of religious understanding. It is encouraging them to dig!

Page 16

Arguing about Religion During its long history, Christianity has been challenged from many points of view, and the list of critical writings continues to grow ever longer. Between them Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (Dawkins, 2006) and Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Good (Hitchens, 2007), among the more recent contributions, offer a battery of criticism of Christianity in particular and religion in general. Both books deserve to be listed as ‘essential reading’ for Christians if for no other reason than that Christians should be aware of the challenges that are made to their beliefs, and should attempt some answers, at least to them selves. Alister McGrath’s two books, The Dawkins Delusion and Dawkins’ God, (McGrath, 2005; McGrath & McGrath, 2007) provide robust Christian responses to Dawkins, but they seem to miss the heart of the matter. They do not discuss the nature of God. Even in Dawkins’ God, McGrath deals more with Dawkins’ arguments in favour of the Darwinian notion of evolution and the rationality of science than with the nature of God. He argues strongly and persuasively against Dawkins’ view that there is no need to believe in God, but he does not get to grips with Dawkins’ notions of God – which seem to be very much based on early Old Testament ideas, rather like those of many traditional Christians. Likewise, Andrew P. Wilson in his Deluded by Dawkins? A Christian Response to the God Delusion (Wilson, 2007) presents a very detailed rebuttal of Dawkins’ arguments, but omits to deal in depth with the nature of God. These writers, among others no doubt, appear to take the nature of God for granted. Furthermore, in doing so, they take for granted the thinking of their readers about the nature of God. While Dawkins and Hitchens appear to assume that the word ‘God’ is understood in the same way by everyone, regardless of religious belief, Wilson refers to an interview for Time magazine on 5 November 2006, in which Dawkins is reported as saying: “If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.” (Wilson, 2007, p. 111) Not being in a position, presumably, to know what every theologian has said about God,

Page 17

Dawkins must be exaggerating somewhat, but the limitations of human language and intellectual capacity are surely more likely to understate than overstate the notion of a God who is said to be almighty, all-knowing, all-powerful, and timeless. Wilson argues that the God of the Bible is far greater than “the small, petulant, Freudian superego that Dawkins imagines” (ibid). This criticism surely ignores Dawkins’ statement in Time magazine that he (Wilson) has just quoted. Dawkins is surely referring to a very big God, so big indeed as to be indescribable. The God of the Bible indeed is said to have achieved some great things. A God that is said to have divided the Red Sea, with walls of water on either side of dry land, (Exodus 1422) can hardly be seen as an insignificant being or power. One wonders, if the tale be true in any sense of the word, what went through the minds of the Israelites and Egyptians before they set off through the gap in the water so temptingly placed before them. A cartoon that I have by my desk shows Moses waving his stick and speaking sternly to the Israelites as they stand timorously on the edge of the path through the Red Sea, with breakers piled up in mid-roll on either side. Moses says, “What do you mean ‘It’s a bit muddy’?” Perhaps it was blind faith in God and Moses that drove the Israelites, and a different form of faith – “anything they can do, we can do” – that drove the Egyptians to their doom thus suggesting that assumptions can indeed be dangerous! The whole point surely, for people confronting Christianity for the first time in the 21st century, is that a supernatural God that is held to be the creative force that made the universe, and continues to be a creative force within it, must be far beyond the descriptive

Page 18

capacity of our human language. Indeed, such a God must be completely beyond human powers of comprehension. Many, perhaps even most, God-fearing people would no doubt admit that the nature of God exceeds the capacity of our minds to understand it, which accounts for the need to believe in rather than know (in the sense of being certain) about God. Nevertheless they, as their forebears did, refer to God in human male terms as he who ‘listens’, ‘touches’, ‘answers’, ‘speaks’. They use perhaps the only terms available to them, but those terms nonetheless surely belittle the nature of God. What may have been adequate language for our forbears in religion is arguably far from adequate for the 21st century materialistic world. The way God is spoken of by many of the clergy and the laity in our churches often resembles the language of the Bible. The reality is probably that most people are confused about how to refer to a God that is beyond knowing, especially when what they seek is comfort and certainty. They struggle to find some aspect of God that they can conceptualise and use as a basis for their God discourse. Thus we hear people refer to a God who sounds very much like a fellow human being. The book of Genesis provides the foundation for such a belief …. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 127) … but rationality suggests that human writing about God must be the creation of human minds. Those minds may well have been inspired by some idea of God, but the idea of God is only a symbolic representation of God, not the substantive God. It is probably more truthful to say that “man created God in his own image” than to accept Genesis 1 at face value.

Page 19

God and the Bible The Bible is generally regarded, by Christians, as the prime source of information about God and God’s will for the world. There is, particularly in the Old Testament, much about the cultural and belief background against which, many would argue, we need to see the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, who, by tradition, is believed to be the earthly form of God. In the New Testament there is a good deal about the reported activities and sayings of Jesus. The Biblical account of Christ’s birth, ministry and death is heavily influenced by the thinking and beliefs of those who wrote down, and edited the oral stories that they had heard about in their attempt to carry on and spread the teaching of Christ. The books of the New Testament were written a significant time after the end of Jesus’ ministry. Paul’s Epistle to the Thessalonians, written probably at least 50 years after Jesus’ death, may well be the earliest New Testament document, the Gospels coming at least a decade later. Given that significant minimum length of time, the accounts we now have of Jesus life and work must rely very much on human memory and oral tradition, neither of which are totally reliable, but they are at least as reliable a source as was available at the time, in the absence of generally available written evidence. The writing of Karen Armstrong (Armstrong, 2007) and Bart D Ehrman (Ehrman, 2003; Ehrman, 2006) give good reasons for us to be sceptical about those who take a simplistic and literalistic view of the Bible as the ground of their faith. Neither suggests that the Bible is not a valid basis for a faith, but both suggest that it contains statements that need to be seen as products of their time, and need to be interpreted carefully by us as we deduce their relevance for our time. Ehrman particularly gives many examples to show how fragments of original documents present us with variations in the text of the scriptures. Copyists and translators too had their influence on texts. Either by accident or design, as Ehrman exemplifies (Ehrman, 2006, particularly Chapters 5 and 6), they changed bits of text and occasionally thereby changed meanings. Even in the Bible as we have it today it is clear that the authors of the New Testament, for example, were not of one mind

Page 20

as to what it was important to set down about Christ’s life and ministry. As Anthony Freeman points out (Freeman, 1993, p. 27), St Paul mentions little or nothing of Jesus’ life prior to his death. From Paul we learn nothing about Jesus as a storyteller or as a worker of miracles. Mark, perhaps the earliest of the Gospel writers on the other hand, writing chronologically 10 or 20 years after St Paul, tells us little except about Jesus’ life. His narrative ends at the empty tomb after Jesus’ resurrection (Mark 168). Most modern Bibles include a further 12 verses that give a brief summary of some of Jesus’ appearances to the disciples after the resurrection. Many authorities agree that those 12 verses were not part of the original Gospel and were probably added by a scribe who felt the need at least to mention some of Jesus’ post resurrection appearances. (see Ehrman 2006, p. 66) The phrase “the Word of God” presents us with considerable difficulty in the face of the incontrovertible evidence that what many Christians refer to as the Word of God is also very much the word of men and not necessarily the designated authors of the books of the Bible. Certainly the texts that we now know as the Bible may well have been inspired by the ideas of God held firstly by those who related their understanding orally, and later by the writers of the various parts of the book. In fact the term ‘compilers’ might be more accurate than ‘writers’ in some cases, for it is clear that the authors of many of the books of the Bible gathered material from other sources, and from each other. There is also evidence of many texts, several listed by Ehrman (Ehrman, 2003), that are of contemporary origin to the Bible texts, and possibly owe their origin as much to divine inspiration as any of the four Gospels of the New Testament for example, but nevertheless did not find their way into the Biblical canon as we know it today. It is quite possible that some of those writings were as much “the Word of God” as those we read in the Bible today, but were excluded for reasons that we may find it hard to understand. Some of the texts that are included may not be in their original form, even allowing for translation from other tongues. The creation of the Biblical canon is not so much a decision as a process that took time.

Page 21

The Bible as we have it in this country, was not written in English – neither King James’ English of the Authorised Version first published in 1611, nor that of modern translations. The Old Testament was written largely in Hebrew, and the New Testament was largely in Greek, the language of scholarship at the time when most of the books were probably written (50 to 100 CE). Moving meaning from one language system to another is very difficult because language and culture are closely intertwined. A stark example of this in our own time is the fact that Eskimos apparently have no single word for ‘snow’, though they have different words for each of what we can only understand as various grades of snow! To take a Biblical example, I remember much giggling at having to sing, as a young Anglican choirboy, in Psalm 86, verse 14, “… the congregations of naughty men have sought after my soul.” The phrase ‘naughty men’, even 60 years ago, implied a very different level of wickedness than was perhaps in the mind of the Psalmist, or his 17th century translator. More significantly, the notion of Jesus being born to a virgin has, over centuries, given Christ a mystical background that came out of the mistranslation from the original Greek parthenos which meant merely ‘a young unmarried woman’. The assumption may well have been that a young unmarried woman was also a virgin, or should have been, in the physiological sense. On the other hand, for example, when we read the translator using the word “virgin” in translating the Hebrew almah of Joel 18 as “Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth” are we to understand the term “virgin” literally? Apart from any semantic difficulties surrounding the word parthenos, one might reasonably wonder, if Mary’s virginity was indeed intact at the time of Jesus birth, one might be justified in wondering why more was not made of it. What greater miracle could there have been to the midwives, doctors and news-mongers of the day? Apart from concern about individual words, there is often room for questions about the overall notion of God that is conveyed by scripture. At the opening of a meeting of church Elders some time ago, I was asked to lead some reflections on the prophet Hosea’s view of God. Although I had occasionally heard lessons read from Hosea, I had never read the whole book for myself. The story that Page 22

Hosea relates is short and raises issues about God’s nature and powers. In Hosea 118 we see God apparently in a dilemma: How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. … but we have to wonder how all-knowing and all-powerful God can be in a position of not knowing what to do. Furthermore, however much Israel might deserve to be chastised, how can loving God do the dreadful things God had been planning? For example: “They shall eat but not have enough; they shall commit whoredom, but not increase [a consummation devoutly to be wished, surely!], they shall be promiscuous and drink both old and new wine that shall take away their understanding” (Hosea 410). In my student days, during one vacation, I nursed patients in a psychiatric hospital. Some of them were suffering the advanced effects of sexually transmitted diseases, and I saw evidence of how promiscuity and ‘lack of understanding’ could be linked, but I cannot for the life of me see why drinking old or new wine might affect understanding, unless done to excess, when the excess rather than necessarily the wine would be to blame. Hosea’s

God,

as

God

elsewhere

in

the

Bible,

has

human

characteristics, some of which are confusing. I respect any view the reader may hold of the God written about in Hosea, for there are no hard and fast understandings open to us here, no absolute truth. All I can say is that, although I believe in God, and while I allow Hosea his concept of God, I cannot, at this time in my life, share that understanding or indeed the Biblical understanding of God in general. Although God is ultimately beyond human comprehension, surely our efforts at understanding God should have made some progress over the past 4000 years or so. No wonder Dawkins and others find reason to be critical of our religion! Our understanding of the God of the Bible, as with much else in that library of writings, has to make allowance for the passage of many years, the changes in culture and their effect on language, and Page 23

above all perhaps, the development of human understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. John Shelby Spong, retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States writes: The traditional view of God, as gleaned largely from the Old Testament, is of a being of supernatural power, existing outside this world, but influencing the way the world works either to accomplish God’s divine will or in response to the prayers of human beings. Given the development in human knowledge of God’s creation since that traditional notion was formed, it is hard to imagine how it is possible to convince our contemporaries that such a God exists. Old Testament God is the product of human perception and understanding conditioned by the experience of life four thousand years ago and more, and life and perceptions of life are very different now. Yet the church still relates to God in terms of a primitive understanding of God. The magic of breaking the power of death by placing blood on the doorposts 8 or on the cross is strangely primitive. The cannibalistic ritual of eating the flesh of the deceased deity 9 is filled with ancient psychological nuances that are disturbing to modern sensitivities. The liturgical practice of re-enacting the sacrifice on the cross 10 and claiming that our participation in that re-enactment is necessary to our salvation is hardly a winning modern formula. (Spong, 2001, p. 11) We have, as Spong states later, to …: … move beyond the deconstruction of these inadequate and therefore rejectable symbols, which have historically been so 8

A reference to the way in which the Israelites in captivity in Egypt marked their doorposts so that, in the 10th plague, - the death of the firstborn sons - the angel of death would pass them by.

9

A reference to the partaking of bread and wine in the Communion Service, particularly where, as some Christians believe, the bread and wine mysteriously becomes the body and blood of Christ.

10

A reference to the Good Friday liturgy. Page 24

significant in the life of the Christians church, and turn our attention to the task of charting a vision of what the church can and must be in the future (ibid) Surely we must attempt to interpret Bible text to suit our reading of the age in which we live, and the life experience of those whom we may try to draw into the Christian faith. Since there is no absolute standard definition of the God all Christians seek to serve against which to compare our personal understanding, we have to work out and rely on our own beliefs about God. These beliefs have to be formed from reflection on, and questioning of, our experience (digging and brushing the soil and sand of tradition away!) and held with due humility and an openness to further revelation. If our faith is a living faith it must surely, rather like a plant, demonstrate its living status by growing and changing as we reflect on our experience of life and our developing understanding of how we see God in that life. We have to accept that other fellow Christians may come to different understandings. We also have to accept that those of other faiths and none have every right to their understanding of the deity, whatever name they give to it. The shortcomings attributed to Israel in Hosea’s time were not unlike some of the shortcomings of our own time, and they boil down to human beings’ lack of willingness to relate to one another and to the universe in a respectful and caring way. But how do we respond to that situation? We are, at the time I write, greatly concerned about knife crime and gang warfare among young people. In the face of this, we in Britain spend much time judging schools by their pupils’ test scores and A-level grades and the number of pupils who have achieved the minimum of “5 good GCSE grades” that government requires of each student. Such attainment is easy to turn into publishable statistics as ‘evidence’ of the government’s positive effect on education. We are apparently much less concerned that the parenting and formal education of youngsters should focus equally hard on the sort of people they are becoming, information which is far less readily turned into statistics. I have yet to meet anyone who does not share my disquiet

Page 25

with that approach to education, but you may well feel that I should get out and meet more people! The Daily Telegraph, in its leader of 24   December 2008, drew attention to the folly of measuring education by ticked boxes rather than the growth of wisdom in pupils. I believe that we desperately need a society where people, no matter how many or how few exam successes they may have to their credit, love one another rather than compete with one another and try to get the upper hand over one another. Karen Armstrong comments: “… most religious people don’t want to be compassionate, they want to be right” (Armstrong, 2008, p. 189). We need to reverse that. We need to set in train the thinking process in which, as Bishop John Spong wrote, “the God who is Love is slowly transformed into the Love that is God” (Spong, 2001, p.   71). Wherever people care for one another they demonstrate love, which is the creative force that is the life-giving energy of creation. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” (Matthew 2545) said Jesus of people who fed the hungry, healed the sick, visited the prisoners and so on. Keith Ward sums up our relationship with the Bible: The New Testament … seems to say that Christian beliefs were not given by Jesus to the twelve apostles to be guarded and protected without change for ever. They were developed within the church as disciples reflected on the disclosure of God that came to them both through the historicallyremembered Jesus (in the Gospels) and through their new experience of the risen Lord (in the letters). What the Christian church … might therefore look for is not an insistent repetition of ancient doctrines, but a re-evocation of the primal disclosures that had led to the formation of the church, in quite different contexts that will naturally lead such disclosures to be formed and expressed in changing ways. Christian faith is a continually renewed encounter with the God who was disclosed in a paradigmatic way in Jesus Christ, Page 26

and who continues to be disclosed in new ways in the church, the community or set of communities that seeks to make the spirit of Christ present in every age (Ward, 2007 pp. 37-38) John, the New Testament writer who clearly claims that when one sees Jesus one sees the Father, is also the one who twice declares that ‘no man has ever seen God’ (John 118; 1 John 412). This reflects the penetrating Old Testament story in which Moses asked to see the glory of God. He was placed in a cleft in the rock, and the hand of God covered the eyes of Moses as the glory of the Lord passed by, and then uncovered Moses’ eyes so that he saw only the back of God (Exodus 3320-23).11 In other words no man can see the face of God and live; one can see only where God has been. It seems to me rather like Latin statement on Christopher Wren’s tomb in the Crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral …

Lector, si monumentum requeris, circumspice. (Reader, if you require a monument, look around you.) … the implication being that we cannot see Wren, but we can see where he has been. Evidence of creator God, the creative power behind all that naturally exists, lies all around us and within us. If you would see God, look around you at the natural world and at yourself and understand the creative energy that is represented by the fact that all of it and you exist.

11

Confusingly elsewhere, in Exodus 3311 and in Deuteronomy 3410, the Bible tells us that God spoke to Moses face to face. Page 27

Talking to and about God We come now to the problem of the way in which we talk to and about God. If we accept a traditional Biblical understanding of God, we, as Christians, could probably continue with the language currently in use in church worship. Church practice across denominations is varied enough for that, of itself, to present a range of content, style and understanding. Christians are free to worship where worship practice is meaningful to them. A problem is created, however, when people join in worship when they have not thought through how to receive the language of liturgy; they may find it hard to understand. I venture to suggest that there can be few groups of committed Christians that do not include among their members individuals with a variety of understandings of the nature of God, most of them no doubt un-stated. That variation presents a significant challenge for worship leaders, be they ordained or lay leaders, but only if it is recognised. By virtue of their calling, Christians are encouraged to “Go … into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 1615). Given the complexities of our social and cultural structure, the language Christians use as they carry out their mission could be crucial to the success of their efforts to carry out their calling, and may even contribute to its failure. There are surely two important limitations on what they can say to convince people of the value of considering God in what I would call “non-church” circles. Firstly, I suggest, they need to avoid using words that have human connotations - for example, the pronoun for ‘God’ – if they use one – should perhaps not be ‘he’. Personally, I feel a strong resistance to the use of a personal pronoun for God, and I feel somewhat uncomfortable about referring to God as ‘It’. Perhaps the only solution is to use the word ‘God’ all the time, although it makes for rather awkward English so to do. Having avoided attributing too much of a human nature to God, there is then the problem of talking about the effect of God on the world. It is hard to imagine how a God might be thought of as doing human-type things in the world – loving, healing, listening to and answering prayer – without imagining that God as a human form. I Page 28

have already mentioned St Teresa of Avilla’s view that we are the agents of God. On that basis, God is not a single person in any sense, but God’s influence in the world is exercised by all humans who are motivated by their understanding of the nature and purposes of God and of their perception of their need to respond to that understanding. There seems to be no reason why, in quiet reflection, one should not consider the hope that people will care for their fellow human beings, and the contribution one might make to that end, but asking God to bring it about seems to me – but perhaps not to you – incongruous. In talking about God we need to convey the notion of a God that is creative. When we are in ‘traditional’ mode, we present to children the idea that God created us, but later they learn how their parents created them. Such a contradiction must surely undermine a child’s willingness to believe in God, in much the same way that children become disenchanted with the idea of Father Christmas, even though they retain a love of receiving presents! That Christianity should ever allow children to approach understanding of the faith in that way is a tragedy both for Christianity and for the individuals whose early introduction to the faith is founded on such a flimsy base. Far better, surely, that children should be encouraged to see evidence of the creative in the world, to be aware of the way in which they were created and are recreated as the body develops and repairs itself, to be aware of the wonder of the birth/growth/ death process and to be aware of the ways in which people have explained the existence and purpose of the world over the ages. On the basis of interrogating that knowledge – why did this or that happen? what is that for? - children can then come to a belief in whatever power, if any, they feel lies behind that existence and purpose. For some that belief may include some form of god, and for others there may be a rational/scientific explanation that will suffice until the realisation dawns that science does not yet have all knowledge. For all, hopefully, there will be an awareness that the whole subject of the world and its existence, despite the claims of science, still lies shrouded in mystery, particularly in relation to the great “Why, and for what purpose?” question. Furthermore, one hopes that awareness of the mystery will engender an acceptance Page 29

that differences of opinion on the subject are normal and not to be used as grounds for condemnation of those whose beliefs are at variance with one’s own. The theologian Paul Tillich, in his book Systematic Theology, (Tillich, 1968) calls God “the ground of all being”. On this basis, God is simply (what an odd word to use of such a complex concept!) the creative energy behind everything that is, in life and in death. The theologian, John McQuarrie (Macquarrie, 1977) similarly writes of God as “being” - not as “a being” but simply “being”. Thomas Merton, a much-respected Catholic writer wrote, poignantly, “The Christian life is first of all a life” (Merton, 1975). The power of God – of being - is within us and around us in our life, and we revere God by facilitating that life, that being, in ourselves and in others. If we impede and even snuff out life, we deny God. The implication of this for Christian individuals, and for the church as a whole, is that we should avoid those things that diminish life: carelessness with fossil fuels; lack of respect for the rights and opinions of others; concern to be better than others (Paul talked in Hebrews 121 of running the race with patience, but not of winning it!) …… the list is almost endless. On the positive side, we should promote the care of others and of the environment. We should respect the views and beliefs of others, though please note that that does not mean that we meekly agree with them. We are allowed to have arguments about what we believe; after all, is Jesus not reported as sitting in the temple and debating with the rabbis (Luke 246)? I return time and again to Bishop John Shelby Spong’s suggestion (see page 26 above) that our religious life will change dramatically, and become more accessible to all, when “the God who is Love is slowly transformed into the Love that is God.” The implications of this are considerable. Spong is suggesting that we tend to focus on the word “God” when we should perhaps focus on the word “Love.” This ties in with the suggestion I read somewhere (and should have noted the source, but didn’t!) that “Faith” is more of a verb than a noun; it is more about what you do and what sort of person you are, than with what you may claim to have.

Page 30

Love and God “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” So writes the author of 1 John 415-17, but what is meant by ‘a loving God’? ‘Love’ is a word that has been used and abused over the centuries. The Bible, in its original languages, uses a number of words for ‘love’, each with a different meaning. The Hebrew word aheb which is used in the Old Testament, has meanings as varied as our modern English word ‘love’. The Greek language, in which the New Testament was written, had a number of distinct words for different aspects of ‘love’: storge meant the natural affection that a mother might have for a child; philia was the sort of love that exists between friends and kindred spirits; eros was normally used to indicate the attraction of desire and sexual love; agape was occasionally used for love but it had specific overtones of self-giving and sacrificial love, such as God is believed to have shown in his gift of Jesus Christ to the world. Agape is thus set apart as a special word, different from the other three Greek words for love. It is this form of love that Christians are called upon to show in their relationship with God – a willingness …. … to labour, and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do thy will. … as St Ignatius of Loyola put it in one of his prayers 12. It is important above all things that we talk to children about the love that is God from an early age, and challenge them to see that God in the world about them and in their own actions and relationships.

12

St Ignatius’ prayer: Teach us good Lord to serve thee as thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil, and not to seek for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do thy will. Page 31

The Church and Christianity Serious issues are involved in saying what constitutes ‘The Church’ and in defining Christianity. It is not too difficult to see the reason for the critics’ implicit assumption that ‘The Church’ and Christianity are the same thing. Our newspapers and other media write/talk occasionally about declining numbers of Christians and base their evidence on figures for church attendance. It is true, however, that many people claiming at least broadly Christian beliefs never attend church services for perfectly good reasons which include infirmity, doing Christian work in some place other than at a church, or attending house groups and other informal Christian gatherings. Some do not go to church because their experience of church-going engenders feelings of dissatisfaction with the church as an organisation, or sets up a feeling of confusion because the language of the church appears inappropriate, not to say incomprehensible. The Church needs to be clear that it is a human organisation that developed, in its early days, to become a powerful controlling influence over a gullible, and largely uneducated people. Belief was not always a matter of conviction but of persuasion by fear. Penalties for admitting deviance from official church teaching have, in the past, included such horrors as torture and being burned at the stake. It was important for people to be able to say, with at least an appearance of conviction, what the church authorities wanted to hear. Faint echoes of such authority linger even down to the present day, though usually without the barbarity. Some Christians feel uncomfortable with their doubts and questions and are reluctant to admit them and tease them out in argument. That, and the power-struggle between religions, is meat and drink to those who would deride all aspects of religion. Christianity is a philosophy of life based on the interpretation of the recorded teachings of Christ. It is not simply a matter of what Christians say they believe; what matters is how they live their lives, reflecting Christ’s teachings. St Francis of Assisi is said to have exhorted his followers to “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.” The idea of being your beliefs rather than Page 32

merely saying what you believe, is a really difficult way of realising Christ’s teaching. The Church cannot get away from its ancient and modern history of brutality and killing “in the name of God”. In that respect the so-called Christian Church is no different from some other religious and political organisations that have shed blood to preserve the dominance of their faith or their régime. In doing so, the religious organisations have, by and large, seriously offended against the principles on which they claim to base their faith. For Christians, such barbarism is the opposite of the kernel of Christ’s reported teaching as shown, for example, when he commanded that his followers should love God and love one another – even to the extent of loving their enemies and doing good to those that hate them (Luke 627). As I first drafted these words just after Easter 2009, I read on the Ekklesia website (www.ekklesia.co.uk) that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Cardinal Cormack Murphy-O’Connor, Roman Catholic Church Archbishop of Westminster, gave similar messages to their flock in their Easter Sunday preaching. The former said that belief in God is about living an unselfish life, not about arguments and rationalisations, and the latter said that Christians should commend the Gospel by example not dominance. The fact that the Church, throughout its history, can apparently put its name to deeds, at various times, that are from opposite ends of the spectrum of human interaction, from the saintly to the horrific, is doubtless held by some to undermine the Christian authority of the body of the church. This undermining of institutional authority lays on individual adherents the heavy burden of demonstrating the agape love that the founder of their faith requires of them, sometimes apparently in opposition to the church organisation to which they belong. If Christians express belief in a loving, caring God, they cannot also use violent means to deal with people of different beliefs, particularly those who profess the name of Christ. The Christian Church is a human organisation. It draws its members from the ranks of those who are very committed to the point of saintliness, of complete agape, and from the ranks of those who join for their own ends in the hope of some magical expiation of

Page 33

wrongdoing in order to inherit everlasting life, or whatever else they might personally hope to gain from membership - and of all shades between those two extremes. Those like Dawkins and Hitchins who want to criticise the organised church can find plenty of evidence, built up over centuries, by means of which to justify a fairly damning point of view. If such critics wish to paint a more balanced picture, which clearly neither Dawkins nor Hitchins apparently wants to do, there is also the evidence of good deeds done with the support of, or by the initiative of, the church. The probability exists that other religions might be portrayed in equally poor or more balanced light.

Page 34

“I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 419)

Jesus suggested to some of his followers that he would make them “fishers of men” (Mark 117: Matthew 419). What that really meant for people of New Testament times is hard for us to appreciate except perhaps in an academic way. Many of the people to whom Jesus was speaking earned their living by being fishermen, so the metaphor of ‘catching’ people would have been very meaningful to them. Most of my readers may not be fisherpersons of any kind, but the metaphor still stands as valid, though the people ‘caught’ should have a much better chance of long life than many a fish on a hook or in a net ever had. The important question for today’s church is, “What will help the church of the 21st century to draw people into its community?” At a practical level the perceived or even real exclusivity of church membership is one major “keep out” sign for many people. The perception is that becoming a church member, or whatever phrase different denominations may use for the way people join church communities, is usually based on a statement of belief. Thus the church is popularly seen as a sort of club, or a group of clubs, for people who think they are special, who believe the same things and who think they have all the answers to life’s problems. The activities of the members of each ‘club’ are assumed to be mainly to do with singing hymns, saying prayers and reading the Bible, and it is popularly assumed that those members think that their rituals and observances give them the answer to all of life’s dilemmas. Church people are also known to have tea and coffee mornings, and meetings of women to discuss knitting and jam making. Why that qualifies the top people in such a church to become members of the House of Lords by right, and why the head of one of the churches, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is regarded as such an important figure in the land, is, to many something of a mystery. There is, no doubt, lots of anecdotal evidence involving clergy who are regarded by non-churchgoers as being surprisingly human because they have leaned on a public house bar and had a beer with the hoi polloi. Confusingly, there will have been among them the Page 35

occasional cleric who managed perhaps to use the word “God” without it sounding like a mild swear word, and yet has occasionally and surprisingly also used other words that would have been ‘bleeped’ out in a television sound track prior to the ‘watershed’. Others will have come across clerics and laity, who have, out of their Christian calling, been of great comfort to them or to close friends in extreme distress, regardless of their own religious position. Yet others will have heard of clerics and church-faithful laity who have had indecent relations with young people. In spite of these confusing messages, the church still has some – perhaps waning - popular influence. There are still those who would prefer, for whatever reason, to get married in church, who would want their offspring to be baptised, and who would expect a cleric to conduct their funeral service either in a crematorium or even in a local church. Given what I said earlier about certainty being the opposite of belief, the church has to accept, and be prepared to state publicly, that it is far from being a community of people of uniform belief who are in possession of all the answers to life’s problems. The church may try to be a community of people seeking a way of living by a clear set of principles, but it still has to remain open to fresh interpretations of and new challenges to those principles. One real challenge for today’s church lies in how to change the public impression of the church from that in which it is seen as exclusive to one that is truly open to all people. We live in a culture that tends to demean people who do not ‘know’. In school playgrounds one can hear children chide each other, “What? You didn’t even know that?” Teachers and parents have been known to go to some lengths to hide the fact that there are matters about which they know nothing. It is regarded as a sign of weakness to be ignorant, and yet all learning must, by definition, begin with ignorance; if there is no admission of ignorance there can be no claim to have learned. Similarly, some Christians consider it a sign of lacking faith to admit to uncertainty. To be called an agnostic is still regarded as a slur, and the idea of a Christian agnostic is a puzzle to many people. In fact, the God in which

Page 36

Christians believe is a God they cannot thoroughly know; they can only experience what they consider might be evidence of the existence of God, and imagination has to do the rest. Whatever that experience is, it is unique to them. Being a Christian surely has to be a constant learning process, and therefore ignorance, or at least uncertainty, must play its part in that learning. “To know,” as TS Eliot wrote, in East Coker, one of his Four Quartets, “we must go by the way of ignorance.” (Eliot, 1959, p. 29 lines 138/139). A significant impediment to bringing about a change in attitudes to the church is the labels Christian churches use. Names like “Anglican”, “Roman Catholic”, “Baptist”, “Methodist”, and perhaps most awkward of all, “The United Reform Church” (my spelling mistake is deliberate, for the URC is often called: “Reform” instead of “Reformed”!) are perhaps unhelpful to people from outside the church community. For members of those communities, the labels may be meaningful. Particularly when in a strange town or village, the “label” helps church people to know what to expect when they enter a church of a particular denomination – though denominational labels do not always lead to the experience of church life that one expects! Those same labels can also be dangerous, for they can represent tight clinging to historic traditions that may or may not be relevant to non-church people of the 21st century. I recall a preacher saying from a cathedral pulpit, “ ‘We have always done it this way’ is the last statement of a dying church.” People seeking to be part of a community, be it church or secular, may well be seeking people with whom to associate for human reasons, and not necessarily seeking a particular religious heritage to which to align themselves. There is more attraction in friendly people, comfortable surroundings, life-related services on offer and the ubiquitous cup of tea or coffee than there is in any aspect of religious worship – for which, in the public mind, churches are most used. As but one example of such a service, I heard recently that the organisation Christians Against Poverty offers free debt counselling in churches across the country – currently a Christian response to a very life-related problem.

Page 37

Kingston URC has boards up on its outside walls proclaiming what it stands for 13 . We believe in God. We are trying to understand what God wants from us, and to follow the example of Jesus Christ. We offer you friendship and invite you to join our simple style of worship in the Reformed tradition. We ask for your help in turning ideas into practical service to the people of Kingston. An oasis in the hubbub of Kingston Bring your friends and find new ones Bring your ideas and find new ones A meeting place for worship and exploring faith together. While there is much that is open and perhaps inviting to seekers in these statements, there are also some points that are either ambiguous, or even off-putting. An example of the positive emphasis would be that on trying follow the direction of Jesus’ teaching. This is a Christian organisation, and the principle of love for all people by which Jesus is said to have lived is challenging but offers hope for the world if all would work to that same principle. The ambiguous element must surely be, “We believe in God.” The whole of the thrust of the argument in this booklet is that “God” is a problematic concept and to state that, “We believe in God,” without further elaboration, is to deal in uncertainties on a major scale. For some people, the off-putting element is represented by the comment about a “simple style of worship in the Reformed Tradition.” I have been a member of KURC for well over 40 years and I would not claim to know precisely what the Reformed 13

I offer Kingston URC as an example not because it is necessarily in any way representative of churches generally, but because it is a church that I know. Readers must pick up from my example anything that parallels their own situation. Page 38

Tradition is, or how relevant that tradition is either for church members or non-church people in the 21st century. Whatever Christianity is – and across the world it appears in many guises as the BBC 2 series “Around the World in 80 Faiths” (2009) clearly demonstrated – it must be considered, first and foremost, as a way of life that is guided by and dedicated to the love of humankind. What an invitation to join a church community in the 21st century should surely emphasise is that it is an invitation to join a way of living that is open to all people. That way of living may well include formal acts of worship, but those do not take up the majority of a Christian life, nor, one might argue, are they the most important part of that way of life. I come back to Francis of Assisi’s reported words: “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.” Our Christianity is not about what we say so much as who we are to others. Our spirituality is very much to do with who we are, and John Hull, former Professor of Religious Education at Birmingham University and a URC Elder wrote: Children are spiritually educated when they are inspired to live for others (Hull, 1996, p.43 ) What Christians are to their fellow human beings, and to creation in general, needs to be characterised by love. That rather obvious and sometimes sadly overlooked statement needs to be made manifest in the way the church presents itself to the non-committed public. First and foremost people should feel drawn to the church because it offers the kind of community and activities in which they feel comfortable and interested. Dancing classes, cookery demonstrations and classes, art classes, parent and toddler groups and other childcare facilities for example, are, initially at least, likely to be more attractive and relevant to non-church people than prayer groups, Bible-study or liturgical services. Some people, particularly those who live alone, perhaps, will be glad of opportunities simply to talk with others about matters of trivial importance or even deeper issues of life. For increasing numbers of people in these difficult times of recession, just somewhere to be warm and dry and Page 39

to be listened to is more important than any form of formal worship. Invoking the ancient custom of the church being a place of sanctuary or shelter might justifiably be a priority for a church as it reaches out to its surrounding community. Where does developing people’s religious belief fit naturally into this provision for very human needs and interests? Opportunities to discuss religion, if they come naturally at all, are most likely to come from conversations in which a visitor might ask a church member, “Why do you do this?”, “Why are you here?”, “What are you trying to achieve?” Responding to such questions with another question, like, “Why are you here?”, “Why do you think that I am doing this?” helps ensure that the questioner becomes actively involved in the conversation and is not limited to the rôle of mere information seeker or, worse still, embarrassed victim of unrestrained missionary zeal. This engagement with people is important, for religious beliefs are formed from questions about how we came to be on earth and what our purpose there might be – from engagement with our environment. It is of little value to get someone to recite set pieces of doctrine unless they have a deep understanding and acceptance of what that doctrine represents. Religious beliefs are surely much more deep seated in one’s psyche than mere statements. True beliefs are controlling factors in one’s life, they are part of one’s essential make up, one’s spirituality. They are grown from one’s direct and vicarious experience of the world. For each of us, that represents a unique source of belief. No two people experience life in exactly the same way.

Page 40

Where does that leave me? The composer John Tavener, in his magnum opus The Veil of the Temple set these words: “What God is we do not know.” Having sat, entranced, through two all-night performances of this long but captivating work in The Temple Church, in London, those words remain ever with me in their musical setting. The music and the philosophical implications of the text have become the inspiration for much of my thinking in this booklet. Karen Armstrong writes: Every day, music confronts us with a mode of knowledge that defies logical analysis and empirical proof. It is brimful of meanings which will not translate into logical structures or verbal expression. Hence all art constantly aspires to the condition of music; so too, at its best, does theology. (Armstrong, 2009) Those who have not had The Veil of the Temple experience, cannot, perhaps, understand the full impact that the words have on me. I can only say, echoing Karen Armstrong’s words quoted earlier (see page 26), that I am no longer troubled by the urgency of being right about what I believe. I am simply overawed by the simplicity of accepting (a) that we do not know God, but (b) we can see, each in our own way, where God has been in creation, directly and through human agency. Christ’s life, as related to us, points to the need to put the love of one’s fellow humans at the centre of what we do. That leads to the point where I do not need to ask God to do things, for to ask a non-human power for things is to talk to oneself. If I were to ask God to do something, the only viable follow-up that I can see is that I make sure that any proposed action is a loving one, and get on and do it, for, as St Teresa of Avilla wrote, “God has no hands but our hands …” In reading the Bible, which I do from time to time – but, many would argue, all too rarely – I read it, not looking for God’s word but for what it says that inspires me to love my fellow human beings. The focus for my meditation is summed up in Philippians 48:

Page 41

Finally, beloved, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. Much of modern life seems to be directed at self interest, at the superficial and that which involves minimal thought and consideration – sound-bights, short slogans, quick profit, winning rather than enjoying the process of playing the game, the exam result rather than the joy of the process of learning, fast food rather than the slow process of preparation, cooking and savouring – and it is the exceptional people (some would call them fools) who are concerned for other people’s needs ahead of their own. To consume is to be king of the commercial world, and to serve is to be a mug. Inevitably this leaves the weakest elements of God’s creation to go to the wall. However you may conceptualise God, there is, inherent in the Christian religion, a requirement to love human kind – friend or foe. That is why being a Christian is so very hard, and why I refer to myself merely as an attempted Christian, because I know that I rarely, if ever, rise to the challenge of the religion I profess. Spong’s notion of Love becoming God rather than the other way around is, in my view, a helpful way forward. If Love is God then the expression of my relationship with that God is changed. As well as talking about and singing hymns to Love, I have to try to show Love to others (Francis of Assisi – Preach the gospel at all times, and [only] if necessary use words). That is to say, I have to try to be God to others, and in some individual cases that is the very hardest bit. That concept of God can be seen as a recipe for a feeling of failure rather than the solution to all of life’s problems. Not everyone that one meets is instantly very loveable, even within the communities one frequents – work, leisure, and even church – but who said that life was supposed to be easy all the time! That’s where I am now. Who knows where I shall be, for you and I might meet and that meeting might take me down a different path.

Page 42

Where do I hope that leaves you? All the foregoing is about my belief. It may not be yours. I have no wish to make your belief fit mine, though your reaction to what I have written may influence my thinking and believing. I hope that you will not try to force me to make my belief fit yours, for that is not possible. Real beliefs are not just held in the head; they affect the way we live. My beliefs, like yours, are the result of the ongoing process of reflecting on experience. I hope that you will reflect on your life experience. What do you think is your purpose in being alive? What rules or principles govern the decisions you make in your day-to-day living? How did your present view of Christianity and the church begin, and what changed it? What encounters with people of religious views have shaped your present attitude to religion? If you are not, and have never considered yourself to be, a Christian, these questions can be applied to whatever religious views you have. What matters is that you consider what your views of religion are and how they came to be there. Our perceptual systems work all the time and they affect our future behaviour in all kinds of subtle ways, some of which produce prejudice. For example, children offered food they haven’t tasted before may well complain, before they have tasted it, “I don’t like it,” and go to great lengths to avoid eating it. Experience of life, of necessity, includes experience of the beliefs of others, either read in books or seen in practice. Like the whole of our development, forming religious views is an ongoing process that is often conscious, as when we decide to read a religious book or set aside time to meditate, but it is more often unconscious. I leave you with a word of consolation. Taking an honest and considered view about God is something that is bound to lead to a “right answer” – right for you, that is. No-one can prove that you are wrong to hold your view, but they might open your mind to other perspectives on God that enable you to take a more rounded view of the infinite creative power that seems to be behind who we are and what contribution we make to creation. Thank you for reading this booklet. I leave you, in St Paul’s words, to “think on these things”. (Philippians 48)

Page 43

BIBLIOGRAPHY Armstrong, K. (2007) The Bible - the biography. London, Atlantic Books. Armstrong, K. (2008) Conversation with Karen Armstrong. In Gordon, M. & Wilkinson, C. (Eds), Conversations on Religion, London, Continuum. Armstrong, K. (2009) The case for God - what religion really means. London, The Bodley Head Dawkins, R. (2006) The God delusion. London, Transworld. Ehrman, B. D. (2003) Lost Scriptures - books that did not make it into the New Testament. New York, Oxford University Press. Ehrman, B. D. (2006) Whose Word is it? - the story behind who changed the New Testament and why. London and New York, The Continuum International Publishing Group. Eliot, T. S. (1959) Four quartets. London, Cassell. Freeman, A. (1993) God in Us: a case for Christian Humanism. London, SCM Press. Hitchens, C. (2007) God is not great. London, Atlantic Books. Hull, J. (1996)

The ambiguity of spiritual values. In Halstead, J. M. & Taylor, M. J. (Eds), Values in Education and Education in Values, pp. 33-44. London and Washington DC, The Falmer press.

Macquarrie, J. (1977) Principles of Christian theology (2nd ed). New York, Charles Scribner's Sons. McGrath, A. (2005) Dawkins' God: genes, memes and the meaning of life. Oxford, Blackwell. McGrath, A. & McGrath, J. C. (2007) The Dawkins delusion: Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine. London, Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. Merton, T. (1975) Thoughts in solitude. Tunbridge Wells, Burns and Oates. Page 44

Spong, J. S. (2001) A new Christianity for a new world - why traditional faith is dying and how a new faith is being born. New York, Harper Collins. Tillich, P. (1968) Systematic Theology. Welwyn (Herts), Nisbet. Ward, K. (2007) Re-thinking Christianity. Oxford, Oneworld Publications. Wilson, A. J. (2007) Deluded by Dawkins? - a Christian response to "The God Delusion". Eastbourne, Kingsway Communications Ltd.

Page 45

Tony Wenman is a retired primary head-teacher and school inspector. Aged 7 years, he became a choirboy at an Anglican church in Derby, and was confirmed as an Anglican. He gained what he regards as his most significant qualification for writing this pamphlet about matters religious while training to be a teacher at a Church of England Teacher Training College in Winchester in the earliest of the 1960s. There he achieved the dubious distinction of failing his Religious Teaching Certificate in each of the three years of his training, while at the same time singing in the cathedral choir. He became a member of this church and married Stephanie, a lifelong member of this church and a teacher of young children, more than 40 years ago. For most of their married life, Tony has served this church as organist and as an Elder. After his retirement from school inspection, he became a part-time student at King’s College, London, where he was awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy for his research into the way in which the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspects and reports on how primary schools address their statutory obligation to provide for children’s spiritual development. His experience in primary schools, his work as an OFSTED inspector and his research has led to much thinking about both religious and secular understandings of spirituality. Some of that thinking has given rise to this booklet.

Page 46

Page 47

Page 48