(A theological reflection in 5 parts. Sections are somewhat longer than usual as there is quite a lot to say, and I hope it may be easier to grasp if I give a considerable chunk at one time, where readers can take on a coherent argument in one go. Please bear with me on part 4, as this is very long, but it is my core idea. There are a few key issues to deal with in preparation for the main argument, and I regard this article as expressing what I think is the very heart of my blog. I will finish by adding an analogy using Philip Pullman’s idea of daemons, which may possibly illuminate my point, but it is not essential to the argument and so please ignore it if it gets in the way)
God as the voice in our heads
Part 1: Moving onto the secular side of the argument
My personal journey of faith has led me to move onto the secular side of the argument. I became a Christian in my early teens under the influence of the very strong religious experiences I had, by which I came to be in relationship with God. My faith has brought me immense joy, insight and comfort. However, like many Christians, there have been periods of doubt, sufficiently severe that I could easily have given up my belief in God. However, I battled through these periods, and by the time of my 50s I found myself in a position where I understood my faith to be invulnerable to attack. This was because I could not imagine anyone saying anything that might threaten or undermine my faith that I had not already considered myself. Thus, as I entered into retirement, I found myself completely happy in my faith. I can only imagine that I will continue in this contentment, and that I will find a church to attend until the day I die. Therefore, “I am alright”. I need do nothing except to enjoy my faith – this wonderful relationship that God has graciously entered into with me.
However, as my faith is so important to me, I dearly want to share it with others, so that they can gain this same satisfaction. Yet I cannot help noticing that Britain has voted with its feet and we are now an overwhelmingly secular country. So, what am I to do? I realise that if I try to promote faith from within my religious understanding of life I will probably get nowhere, because secular atheists have completely rejected my world view. (I don’t take this personally: I have rejected theirs). However, I am intensely interested in the battle for hearts and minds, and it is clear that Christians in the UK are losing, and I would like to try and do something to redress the balance while I am still around to do anything. So, while I am entirely happy with the religious interpretation of the world, and could quite happily inhabit that world for the rest of my days, I have decided to leave religious people happily living their religious lives while I go in search of winning over some secularists to faith in God. To do this, I have moved my reasoning into the secular sphere, and attempt to explain my faith in terms that secularists understand and accept. This is because – for most secularists – there is no point appealing to them in religious terms – for they have rejected the entire package of religious understanding. So, if I appeal to them that, “God loves them”, and “Jesus has died to take away their sins”, it is all simply water of a duck’s back – it makes no connection whatsoever. If they have rejected God and believe that he simply does not exist, then God does not love them – because there is no God. They may accept that there was a man called Jesus; they may conclude that he was a very nice man – kind and loving, a good role model even – but they cannot accept Jesus’ status as having anything to do with God – who is not real – and so whatever Jesus did in his life it can have no effect on them – whether to redeem them from sin or anything else. As there is no metaphysical world – only the material universe – then there can be no religious transactions of any significance.
So, religious appeals tend to be at cross purposes with secularists’ way of understanding and looking at the world. Therefore, I am attempting to “translate” what religious ideas mean in the religious sphere into what they might mean in the secular sphere. In this way, my hope is that secular people will be able to make sense of these ideas and appreciate their appeal. If these ideas actually mean something in the secular sphere, then there is opportunity for secularists to value them, adopt them into their own lives, and then this might lead to them “transferring” their own worldview into the religious sphere. They would not have to completely “convert” to the religious world – as people still do do today, when an atheist turns to God and comes to faith. Instead, they would be adopting a new form of religion, that is thoroughly, genuinely religious, but which operates effectively in the secular sphere. It is my firm conviction that this “new form” of Christianity is completely in tune with traditional Christian faith. Of course, I would be perfectly happy if a secular person does do “the whole conversion” and find themselves in the religious sphere as traditionally understood. However, my particular aim is to see if I can clear the ground so that those with a secular understanding of reality can adopt a religious way of life that will bring them complete fulfilment – along with all joy, peace and love, meaning and fulfilment. Though language and concepts may vary a little from traditional faith, it will be immediately clear that this adoption of faith is real faith, and that those who adopt it are now in relationship with God.
Spiritual Devotion 